How do the poorest get through these financially difficult times? There are people who are concerned about that question, and there are people from real estate companies like the one Ángela Sánchez (32) rents her apartment from. Although her contract was still running, her monthly rent recently shot up by 100 euros, the Dominican-born says, as she flies her buggy over the streets of Madrid’s Entrevías district. She’s almost late for a check-up with the doctor; baby Tiago, who doesn’t get anything from the rush under the hood of the buggy, was born on April 1 with fluid in his small lungs.
Two months later, she heard that her rent would rise from 520 to 620 euros, says Sánchez, a mother of three who has to live on what her husband earns in construction, supplemented with a benefit. But hasn’t the Spanish government introduced a maximum rent increase of 2 percent, precisely to help minimum workers like her? ‘That is what I thought.’ Only paper is patient, and the real estate company is not. ‘I’ve resigned myself there. That causes me less stress than if they just keep calling.’
Aid package of 30 billion euros
Inflation, inflation, inflation: not many words conjure up so much doom as the term that seemed long to be a thing of the past in Europe. With the end of the war in Ukraine not yet in sight and the European population looking to face a harsh winter, the various governments are pondering the best way to alleviate the economic hardships among their populations, thereby to keep anxiety under control.
Unlike in the Netherlands, where until the presentation of a multi-billion dollar package on Budget Day, there was more grumbling every day about the cabinet’s ‘loitering’, the left-wing government of Spain has been piling one crisis measure after another since the outbreak of the war. It has led to an impressive tower: a discount on the energy bill, partly free train transport, cheaper fuel at the pump, an increase in social assistance benefits and a check for 200 euros for the most vulnerable households. The whole package is good for a sloppy 30 billion euros, says Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
And the citizen is saved, you would almost think. The fact that well-intentioned plans alone do not always work out as expected is apparent from the example of another support measure: the maximum rent increase. Where previously landlords were allowed to increase the monthly rent at the start of a new contract year with the current inflation figure, a maximum increase of 2 percent has been applied since April. A measure that costs the government itself nothing, but can save tenants tens of euros per month now that the inflation rate remains dangling around 10 percent.
Can save, says Pilar López. “But many of the people who live here don’t know about a maximum raise.” ‘Here’ is Entrevías, one of the poorest areas of Madrid, in the southeast of the capital. A neighborhood with a bad image, and therefore the setting for the latest Spanish hit series on Netflix. Wrong Side of the Tracks, the wrong side of the track, is the little ambiguous English title. In Spanish the series is simply called Entrevias: between the tracks, the name given to the district because of the railway lines that surround it.
‘Renters must accept’
In the series, this part of Madrid has been abandoned by the police; even for a shooting, the cops don’t get out of their nest. But enter Entrevías on a weekday, and what you see is a jovial working-class neighborhood, where clean laundry hangs out of the windows of high-rise flats to dry and residents with big dreams line up in front of the lottery shop. ‘I wouldn’t trade this place for the center for anything,’ says López (61), a determined woman with blond highlights in close-cropped brown hair. She knows the living situation in her neighborhood like no other: she has been running a tiny real estate agency there for 22 years.
In recent years she has seen the prices double: where once lived one family, there are now two due to financial necessity. ‘There are simply too few affordable housing.’ Some of those landlords feel untouchable in that situation and pay little attention to the law. Even when it comes to rent increases. ‘From 700, they suddenly end up at 800 euros per month. And the tenants accept it’, even if they do know about the maximum. ‘Because there is no other house to be found.’
The same kind of stories are coming in at the Tenants’ Union in Madrid these days, says spokesman Pablo Martínez. “These landlords play with their tenants’ fear of being evicted, even though that is not allowed by law.” The Spanish Landlords’ Association, Asval, did not respond to requests for comment.
For the residents of Entrevías, the rent increase is an extra dark cloud in an already threatening sky. Take Pablo Teruel (34) and Nieves Castillejo (27), who are on their way to pick up their 6-year-old daughter, also named Nieves, from school. They just scraped together $730 to buy books and a school uniform for Nieves, says Teruel, who wears a dragon tattoo on his arm and a gold chain around his neck.
As a stage builder, he earns 1,900 euros, one third of which is spent on rent – and then next month’s rent increase has yet to come. They have never heard of a maximum of 2 percent. Teruel: ‘But the landlords do what they want anyway.’ And they will pay, Castillejo says. ‘What else can we do?’
‘Price of fruit and vegetables should be frozen’
Now that prices in supermarkets are going upside down due to inflation, the Spanish government is also trying to intervene here. Yolanda Díaz, Labor Minister and rising star on the left, is trying to get the major supermarket chains to freeze the prices of fresh basic products, such as vegetables, fruit, bread, meat, fish and eggs.
One of the risks is that the price difference between large supermarket chains and smaller entrepreneurs, who have a less full piggy bank to absorb inflation themselves. Such as Javier Cano (56), owner of a fruit shop in Entrevías. To be fruiteria is one the likes of which are no longer made: the perfect rows of peaches and pears, stacked steeply on top of each other with no danger of ending up on the floor, betray Cano’s craftsmanship. ‘The supermarkets may be able to afford to sell their fruit at cost price. Their customers also buy other products. But for me, all I have is fruit,” he says. “It’s an absurd plan. Let them lower taxes.’