Caritas, the Catholic Church’s organisation for helping the needy, assisted 1,327,298 people in Spain last year, 50% of whom (around 670,000) were in employment, i.e. they were working poor. Moreover, one out of every three people assisted was in an irregular administrative situation, according to the Caritas Confederal Report.
The document details that, during 2023, Caritas invested a “record amount” of €486.5 million, which is €29.3 million (6.4% more) than the previous year’s figures. Thanks to these resources, Caritas was able to support 2,567,680 people inside and outside the country. Specifically, it benefited 1,327,298 people within Spain and 1,240,382 people in International Cooperation. In the case of Spain, the figures are again similar to those of 2019, the year before the pandemic (1,403,299), according to the Report.
According to the secretary general of Caritas, Natalia Peiro, the succession of economic and social crises means that 26% of the population is facing “increasingly complex situations of social exclusion”.
The secretary general pointed out that “the improvement in the activity rate and the decrease in unemployment over the course of 2023 has not translated into an increase in the quality of employment, especially for people in situations of social exclusion”. “With a rate of 11.9%, Spain continues to be one of the EU countries with the highest rate of in-work poverty due to partial employment, low salaries and temporary employment”, he pointed out.
