María Ángeles, who has heart disease, migrated from the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea. Then she had her son in Valencia and raises him alone. “We live in a rented apartment which, miraculously, we got. Diego is a very quiet boy who is usually in his room and helps me cook, wash the dishes and tidy up his room, ”says María Ángeles. He acknowledges that sometimes he is overwhelmed but ensures that they are comfortable in Valencia. Her son goes to public school and likes to play football – “he says he’s a forward on the left” – and she received a work permit last year. Until now, she has been doing jobs helping a friend as a cleaner. Today she is looking for formal work in the cleaning and domestic workers sector. “But it is difficult due to the pandemic and because many times the schedules that they offer me do not adapt to the schedules in which I have to take care of Diego,” explains María Ángeles about the difficult conciliation.
It touches to square accounts
Thus, this month seems uphill for María Ángeles with the return from school and the bills that are increasingly high, an explosive combination. “Since there are two of us, normally 30 euros of electricity would come to me, this month I have received 50, if next month, as it continues to rise, I will receive 55 or 60 I do not know how I am going to do it if I have to pay for the material, the Ampa uniform, football … », he lists.
He earns 35 euros every day he works – and you never know how many times a month he will work -, he receives 600 euros of the minimum living income and pays 400 for the rent. The thermal social bonus for homes in energy poverty is just a few euros and the monster on the bill has already eaten it. “Many times at Save the Children they help me with food and that’s it, I don’t have any more help.” If that happened, possibilities such as “going out to the pool and spending the day at the beach” would disappear for María Ángeles and Diego, something they have been able to do this summer.
For now, food prices are below the average of the consumer price index (INE), which in the last twelve months has seen a rise of 2.9% in Spain – the most recent data available is the one that corresponds to July. However, various industries have indicated that prices will have to rise if the electricity continues to shoot and so does gasoline. «If the purchase goes up, that would be horrible, I could not feed my son as usual. I have no idea how I would do it, “says María Ángeles.
Like Diego, there are 310,000 children in the Valencian Community at risk of poverty or social exclusion. It is 34.8% of the little ones who live in Valencian territory, according to Save the Children data. From that organization, its director in the Valencian Community, Rodrigo Hernández, insists that as soon as possible “all aid for Valencian income be increased.” “Energy is a state competition, but what the Consell can do is claim the rental aid.” For Hernández, the problem of families is “all added together”, so lowering the rent would offset the rise in other services.
The endless rise
The wholesale price of electricity, which represents a quarter of the total bill, accumulates a 256% increase in one year. Fuels have grown by 17.9%. Super 95, the most common fuel, is 21.53% more expensive, already standing at 1.41 euros in C. Valenciana, more or less in the Spanish average. To this is added from this month a monthly expenditure of 166 euros on average per child only in school expenses in autonomy, according to the Organization of Consumers and Users of Spain (OCU).
Those average expenses multiply if the family grows more than usual. This is the case of the home of Clara Fornés, president of the Valencian association of large families Más de Dos. In her house are her, her husband Miguel and their children Clara (6 years old), Candela and Miguel (four-year-old twins). Hers is a different reality from that of María Ángeles, but also busy. Educating a four-year-old in energy efficiency that resonates so much these months “is difficult,” jokes Fornés. “You always find a light on, a tap that is suddenly open.” For her and Miguel they are neither more nor less than three fronts open when trying to spend less. They put about three washing machines a day and the purchases are high with five mouths to feed. And now to school again. And the uniforms. And the material, “which are not just books.”
But Clara and Miguel have a plan. «What we do is try to bring a lot of organization. Everything you can organize before September, during July and August, you do during those months, ”says Clara with the assurance of someone who has already repeated the same strategy on more than one occasion. “That means that spending, even if it is strong, is not the same to do it in a month as between two or three months,” he argues. Their children attend a concerted school, so in their case the cost of complete uniforms rises. “You do have to buy shoes in September, because before summer you can’t tell if a child is going to grow one or two sizes. As for the uniforms, we try to stretch them and it is possible that in the middle of the course we will buy others, “he says.
The oldest of the three, Clara daughter, begins the Primary stage this year and Clara considers that she is going to have an extra expense with her that until now, in Infant, was not produced. “I’m going to be even more aware of the expense,” he says.
Both she and her husband do drive, unlike María Ángeles, and the peak in fuel is also noticeable, in addition to that light multiplied by five users. Filling the tank in the Valencian Community now costs 70 euros, about 12 euros more than a year ago, when the liter was 1.14 euros – it is true that this price occurred in a context of sinking oil prices during 2020.
“Those who have a bad time are all families, since behind all these increases there are many taxes that benefit many people,” says this Valencian. Clara works precisely and ironically in an electricity marketer, and is frightened by what is said in circles about her company about the long wait until prices in the sector register a downward trend.
Urgent solutions
It was said in other years, in times of crisis, that the classic Spanish January slope was coming forward. But this time the ninth month of the year comes accompanied by two exceptional circumstances. “This September slope can be even worse than the January slope,” says the general secretary of the Valencian Community Consumers Union, Vicente Inglada. The bad weather is not yet going to arrive climatologically speaking, but there are just days until a perfect storm with hurricane bills that threaten to blow the money out of the pockets of Valencians this year.
It is a problem that will occur at the state level, although Inglada remarks that “the bad financing that the citizens of the Valencian Community receive from the State ends up affecting the consumers themselves.” That is, one more nail for the monthly grave. “And this is especially affecting families with fewer resources,” he warns.
Autonomy, in turn, ranks third from the bottom on a key issue for consumers: updating wages with respect to the CPI. If year-on-year inflation is 2.9%, wages only did it by 1.37% on average until July, which represents an annual loss of purchasing power of 47.24%. Almost half.
Although they are figures far from the two figures that salaries are left against inflation in other countries -mainly in those that are developing-, Spain and the Valencian Community are on the way to closing an inflation in the calendar year 2021 that was not seen since 2012, when the indicator marked a 2.90% increase.
Inglada points out that if the government’s rise in the price of electricity can be deactivated, this could stop the rest of a vicious circle that for now leads to a general rise in prices. “With the rise of all the elements, the industry will never lose out: it will affect the final product in our purchase, we will see that prices will rise,” he asserts. As advice for September, Inglada warns families not to get into debt with “toxic” credit offers and to try to follow energy efficiency schedules so as not to be further harmed for a month to which families will have to measure themselves in a hard pulse.
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