With a secure job as a bricklayer, Hugo Ramirez never thought he would need the help of charity to feed his family, but with the cost of living soaring across Europe, the 44-year-old father of three is one of a growing number of people in Spain turning to food banks to make ends meet.
“We see prices increase every week, even for basic goods,” he said as he stood before wooden crates of fruit and vegetables at the entrance of a residential building in Madrid.
Driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine, Spanish food prices last month jumped 15.4 percent from a year earlier, their biggest increase in nearly three decades, the National Statistics Institute said.
Photo: AFP
Sugar was up 42.8 percent, fresh vegetables rose 25.7 percent and eggs 25.5 percent as staple items soared.
In a bid to ease the pressure on squeezed households, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government — which faces an election next year — has spent billions of euros on extra welfare spending.
Every Saturday Ramirez, who is from Venezuela, comes to a food bank set up by a neighborhood association in the working-class district of Aluche during the COVID-19 pandemic to pick up food supplies.
He earns 1,200 euros (US$1,231) a month while his wife makes 600 euros working part-time as a domestic helper.
After paying their monthly rent of 800 euros and 300 euros for utilities “there is not much left,” he said.
The line of people seeking help stretches far down the street. Many of them are immigrants. Similar lines, dubbed “hunger queues,” can be seen regularly outside other food banks across the country.
“Every week we see new families in need, especially since the start of the war in Ukraine” in February, said Raul Calzado, a volunteer with the Aluche neighborhood association.
The association offers aid to 350 households, a number Calzado said he expects to rise to about 400 by the end of the year.
Behind him dozens of other volunteers are busy at work, surrounded by boxes of pasta, canned goods and baby diapers.
“Some beneficiaries have no revenues, but we also have more and more retirees with small pensions or people who work, but whose salaries are insufficent,” said Elena Bermejo, the association’s vice president.
Among the measures Spain has introduced are subsidies for transport, a one-off payment of 200 euros for the unemployed and a 15 percent increase in pensions for the most vulnerable such as widows.
However, charities say the measures are not enough.
“For some families, even buying a lite of olive oil or a kilo of lentils has become difficult,” Bermejo said.
Food banks, which had started to see dome relief as people returned to work after pandemic shutdowns, are struggling to meet the growing demand.
“With inflation, we are seeing a decrease in donations” as people have less money, Spanish Federation of Food Banks spokesman Luis Miguel Ruperez said.
Higher prices also means food banks can afford to buy less food themselves, he added.
Food banks provide help to more than 186,000 people in the Madrid region, and 1.35 million in total in Spain — roughly the same population as Barcelona, the country’s second-biggest city.
One household in seven in Spain experiences food insecurity, meaning inadequate or insecure access to food due to low income, a study published earlier this year by the University of Barcelona said.
“I hope it will get better but I’m afraid that won’t be the case,” Ramirez said, clutching a bag of groceries from the food bank.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to