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.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS