Let’s talk about social class in Spain.
This morning I read an article in La Vanguardia about los pijos.
And it made me consider the social class issue.
Not that I haven’t thought about it before. I have, many times.
The class system, in fact, is a bit of an obsession for me. It has been since I was a teenager back in the Arizona desert, printing out a copy of The Communist Manifesto at the high school computer lab.
(I figured reading Marx would be a way to piss off my English teacher while completing the assigned book report. I was a rebel, but I also wanted to keep my 4.0 GPA.)
In other words, I’ve thought about social class a lot. And I’ve eaten lentils and drunk too much coffee at several different income levels as well.
So I was surprised when recently, someone commented on my podcast that I sound like a privileged property owner who’s never been in a financially precarious situation. I was talking about the changes in the Poblenou area, here in Barcelona, and I might have struck a tone that was less-than-critical about the whole “gentrification” issue.
Anyway, that anonymous commenter took a guess about me, and was wrong.
I moved to Spain almost 20 years ago without a work permit and was actually quite precarious for several years – working under the table and hoping my landlord didn’t realize I was sinpapeles.
I was pretty damn precarious for a bit back home, as well, as a college dropout being rejected by every shitty customer-service job in Phoenix.
Since then, things have changed a lot – suffice it to say, I’ve seen the Spanish class system from various angles at this point, and lived to tell the tale.
So read on, for a fair and balanced discussion of social class in Spain.
Who are the “pijos”, exactly?
The pijos are basically just posh people.
You’ve probably seen them around. You can tell who’s a pijo by the way they dress. Nice shoes, fancy sweaters. That kind of thing. Politically, they lean conservative.
That article in La Vanguardia talks about a book that chronicles the history of pijos in Spain – you can check it out if you want, it’s called Quiero y no puedo, by Raquel Peláez.
Personally, I’m interested in social class as an issue, but not in fashion.
Even so, we should give the pijos their due. They’re a typically Spanish urban tribe, like chonis, or perroflautas – but (in many cases) with better grammar and hygiene.
According to El Faro de Vigo, the word “pijo” first entered the dictionary in 1984, as a synonym for the male reproductive apparatus. That’s now the third definition, with the first two dealing with people with upper-class tastes.
In my day, back on the ranch, we were calling people like that yuppies, and the fashion was (of course) a bit different. I only knew about the word “posh” because of Posh Spice, AKA Victoria Beckham, who had been popular in the 90s.
I’m pretty sure, though, that I didn’t find out what “posh” actually meant until much later, when I moved to Spain.
(I also wasn’t aware that Posh Spice had gone on to marry a soccer player and was somehow still a public figure in Europe, but that’s another story.)
WordReference also suggests “preppy” as a translation for pijo, which captures part of the fashion aspect, I guess.
Back when I lived in Madrid, I spent more time among the pijos, for various reasons. In the Tetuán neighborhood I lived quite near the very posh area around Callao and Plaza Castilla, and I’d hang out there regularly.
Here in Barcelona, the pijos are all the way on the other side of town, and I don’t get over there much.
But first things first.
Isn’t Spain supposed to be a socialist society?
There’s a stereotype among a lot of Americans that European countries have solved poverty, or something, and that there’s not much of a wealth gap out here.
I used to believe it as well.
For years I had the impression that basically everyone in Spain was getting by on a similar sort of salary, and that life under socialist President Zapatero meant a largely classless society.
I now realize that was naive. But due to my lifestyle as a recent immigrant and barely employable 20-something in ripped jeans and a shoplifted winter coat, I tended to associate with broke people, who also tended to associate with broke people… and you get the idea.
Also, this was before the big economic crisis, and the vibe was much different back then.
In those days, Spain was experiencing some serious economic euphoria, and a lot of people felt like they were on their way up the social ladder. The Great Recession crushed that idea, but it was nice while it lasted.
While it’s true that Europe tends to have more income equality than the US, Spain’s got a class system just like anywhere else. Even the socialist utopia up in Sweden has its problems, as I confirmed when I was there last year.
So. What’s the deal with social class in Spain?
The Spanish Royal Family
Spain has royalty, so I guess we should have that conversation before we move on.
When I was in middle school, maybe sixth or seventh grade, my Social Studies teacher made us all memorize the preamble to the US Constitution.
She then tried to make us understand that the first words of the preamble, WE THE PEOPLE, were making quite a statement in themselves.
I didn’t get it at the time, of course. I was twelve. I didn’t get a lot of things.
But the Spanish Constitution of 1978 has a heading, before the preamble, which starts with the words DON JUAN CARLOS PRIMERO, REY DE ESPAÑA…
My social studies teacher was right. Doesn’t that hit a bit different? It then goes on to talk about “la Nación española” and “el pueblo español”. But the king is literally the first thing in there.
These days, the king’s power is limited. But he’s officially above the law, and he earns 270,000€ per year, he lives in palaces… his life is a bit more luxurious than that of most people in Spain.
Also, Spanish university diplomas have the king’s name right at the top: the degree is given to you by the university dean in the name of the king.
My brief encounter with Spanish royalty
According to surveys, only about half of Spaniards want a monarchy at all. But the Bourbon family is nothing if not resilient, and they’re hanging in there, right at the top of the social hierarchy.
The closest I ever got to the King of Spain was after a bullfight.
(Yeah, yeah, I know… bullfights.)
What happened was, a friend had a pair of tickets to the first day of the San Isidro festival in Madrid, and invited me to go with her. The king was there, too – Felipe VI, recently after his coronation.
When the bullfight ended, my friend thought maybe we could see the king on the way out. And indeed we did: His Royal Highness, el Rey Felipe himself, was out there waving to the commoners before getting into his car.
I was both shocked and amused when the group of people gathered there, including my friend, started shouting “¡Viva el Rey!” at the sight of him.
But it happened, I promise. (This was probably 2015.)
Nobility in Spain
Apart from the king, there’s the nobility.
I’ve met a couple of nobles in my day, but generally, I get the impression we don’t get invited to the same parties.
In any case, below the royal family there’s a whole hierarchy of counts, dukes, marquises, etc.
There’s no specific privilege associated with nobility these days, but I’d imagine people like that are well-connected, and maybe own a country estate or two.
The only prominent noble I can think of is (or was) the Duchess of Alba, who was always in the tabloids back in the day. She’d probably been publicly rich and famous for about 70 years by the time I moved to Spain. She died in 2014. Her family (la Casa de Alba) owns el Palacio de Liria, the largest private residence in Madrid, which was finally opened for public visits in 2019.
All the books about the Spanish Civil War start with the causes, and one of the causes is understood to be a class of very conservative landed aristocracy who could do whatever they wanted while the peasants on their land lived in very poor conditions. The Civil War books all end with Franco taking control of Spain – I’ve never read a follow-up about what happened to the “terrateniente” class after the war.
I guess people like the Albas are probably the remnant of that class, and doing just fine.
What is middle class in Spain, exactly?
But generally, when people talk about social class, they’re not talking about royalty or nobility. They’re talking about how much money people make, or something similar.
So it’s worth defining “middle class” before we continue.
Spain has a large middle class. And if you ask, over 60% percent of people will say they belong to some part of the middle class: upper, middle or lower.
The most common definition of “middle class” I’ve found is someone who earns between 75% and 200% of the median income… That’s the median, not the average.
According to the National Statistics Institute, the median income for a Spanish household in 2021 was 16,814€ – which means a middle-class household earns between 12,610€ and 33,628€ per year.
In other words, the upper class starts at less than 34,000€ per year.
I should mention that those numbers need to be adjusted for the number of people in the household.
It’s a bit complicated and I don’t want to get into it here, but you can check out the National Statistics Institute website for clarification: two adults and one kid, for example, would be 1.8 “units of consumption” – so adjust accordingly.
Also, it’s interesting that almost nobody in Spain will admit to being upper class. One survey I’ve found says that only 0.4% of people in Spain identify as being upper class – in other words, more than half of the 1% considers itself to be somewhere in the middle.
(Surveys about class identification tend to give widely varying numbers, from what I’m reading. It probably depends on how you ask the question – for example, one source mixes “upper class” with “upper middle”, and therefore gets a different result.)
Is that the full story on being middle class in Spain?
I always giggle a bit when I read some article that suggests you’re upper class at 34,000€, because… well, first off, that’s not a ton of money, and secondly, it ignores what I feel are some very important social and cultural nuances.
Similarly, I giggle when I find that a person making just under 1100€ per month is also middle class. I was often earning that during my English teaching days, living with roommates in some really unexciting neighborhoods.
I may have considered myself middle-class in some broader existential sense back then, but certainly not as a function of my income.
Other factors to take into account when determining who’s middle (or upper) class should probably include educational level, stability of employment, owning a home vs renting… things like that.
I’d imagine there’s a lot of regional difference that’s also being ignored when you treat all of Spain as one statistical group. Here in Barcelona, the average rent is over 1100€ a month – and living with roommates doesn’t sound very middle-class to me. Although I guess a couple, both earning lower middle class salaries, could manage it.
There are a few other big Spanish cities where prices are through the roof. But I’d imagine that a person earning a middle-class salary in La Mancha is doing significantly better than someone on the same salary in Madrid.
CaixaBank Research has an article that does the numbers on the middle class by Comunidad Autónoma, which is a bit better, but still doesn’t account for the fact that people in big cities tend to live more expensive lives than people in smaller towns.
Lower and working classes in Spain
Spain has a lower class, too. Some surveys call it the working class.
I find “working class” to be a bit ambiguous, personally. But “lower class” doesn’t sound great either.
Once again, according to the surveys, most people would rather say that they’re lower-middle class: the number of people who identify as clase baja o pobre is between 9 and 15 percent of the population.
The official poverty line is 60% of the median income, so that includes anyone earning less than around 10,000 to 11,000€ a year. As usual, the data shifts year on year, and things like 10% inflation and global pandemics move the numbers around. And if you’re a couple with two kids, you obviously need more money for the household. Etc.
More data from the National Statistics Institute, about 26.5% of people in Spain live in poverty or are “at risk of poverty or social exclusion” – but that varies regionally as well.
Places like Andalucía have a high rate of unemployment and a lot of seasonal farm work, and tend to be poorer than more industrial areas like Catalonia, the Basque Country and Madrid.
About the working class: a lot of the traditionally blue-collar or working-class type jobs are done by immigrants these days. I’m sure there are still some Spaniards out picking olives every winter, but not many.
So what happened to the working class?
When you meet someone who says they’re “working class” – clase obrera, in Spanish – what they often mean is that they went to university and learned about the Marxist theory of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat… not that they’re mining coal or carrying stacks of bricks for a living.
So they work white-collar jobs, call themselves working class, and pretend like nothing’s changed since 1848. But Marx didn’t predict the 8-hour work day, or the welfare state, or the expansion of white-collar work. He didn’t predict the growth of the middle class, or government subsidized universities, or minimum wage laws, or the pension system.
He thought things were going to get progressively worse for the workers until there was a socialist revolution.
In other words – and I wish I could go back and tell my teenage self this – Marx was wrong.
Having said all that, a lot of social class is rather subjective.
If you work in an office and earn 1000€ a month, are you really working class? You might consider yourself middle class because of your job title – your income says otherwise.
Or what if you’re a hard-working plumber who just happens to make 45,000€ a year? Does that make you upper class? Maybe. But I’m not sure you’d identify as such. You might just be a well-paid working class guy.
Typing out these numbers, I’m once again shocked at how much lower people’s expectations are here in Spain from what they’d be in the US.
If someone who makes 38,000€ a year is upper class out here, well… Spain is different. (My plumber who makes 45K a year is purely hypothetical – such a person may not exist.)
According to a website called talent.com, a Spanish doctor makes around 32,000€ a year, gross. A dentist might make double that amount… that’s because most dental treatments aren’t covered by social security. A waiter makes 19,000€ a year, and a public school teacher makes 25,000€.
Those are estimates, of course, and it varies. But you get the idea.
Class mobility in Spain – “el ascensor social”
In a healthy society, it’s possible to move between social classes – either up or down.
In Spanish they call this the “ascensor social” – the social elevator.
The Spanish middle class grew massively starting around 1960. When George Orwell was in Barcelona during the Civil War, he mainly talks about two classes of people: the workers, and the bourgeoisie. The middle class of shopkeepers, clerks, and such, was barely mentioned – because they barely existed.
All that changed in the second half of the 20th century, when Spain experienced a sort of “economic miracle“.
As part of that miracle, many Spaniards moved from the countryside into the cities, and a lot more people started going to university, which was priced to be affordable for most families. Within a few decades, Spain was a developed country and one of Europe’s largest economies.
And in the midst of all these changes, a large middle class was created from what was once the Spanish proletariat.
Of course, there are some problems created by all this: large parts of rural Spain are now depopulated, while rents in the cities have never been higher. The Spanish economy didn’t develop quite as fast as the people did, so now we’ve got millions of highly-qualified young folks in a country that needs more waiters.
And some studies even indicate that the social elevator has mostly stopped – that people can’t move between social classes as they once did.
A friend I spoke to while writing this article mentioned that the Spanish don’t seem to have the same drive to “get ahead” and move towards the upper middle class that people in the US do – and I agree. Owning your own business is tough, and having a lot of ambition would probably be seen as “weird” in most families. For many, the Spanish dream is to work for the government, and have a “funcionario” job you can’t lose.
More on that in my article about Spain’s anti-business culture.
Foreigners and social class in Spain
As a foreigner in Spain, I’ve always felt like I didn’t really fit into the class system.
Or Spanish society in general, to be honest.
And don’t get me wrong… I love Spain. I’m just not particularly integrated into Spanishness. (The fact that I’ve always lived in Madrid and Barcelona, places with massive expat populations, certainly plays a role here.)
Back when I was a hot young single on the dating market, I dated a couple of upper-class Spanish girls. They lived in houses with actual art on the walls, and their dads were important-looking guys wearing suits for no particular reason – or at least no reason I was aware of.
I don’t know if they were important-looking because of the suits, or if they were important-looking guys in their own right – I have a feeling that social class is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy for a lot of people.
Anyway, those relationships were doomed from the beginning. There are 99 reasons why I was never going to be with those girls in the long-term, and 98 of them had to do with social class.
If I had to describe a “why” I’d just say that those particular upper-class girls had some lifestyle expectations which I found to be either unachievable or frankly ridiculous.
Lifestyles of the lower-upper-middle class
Even now, after a significant improvement in my finances, I’m not at all interested in living a pijo lifestyle.
And asking around, many of my non-Spanish friends also don’t feel like they’re part of any social class.
Since a lot of social class in Spain depends on who you know, where you grew up and where you went to school, we foreigners sort of float around the edges, unacknowledged.
And to bring it back full-circle, it’s worth mentioning that some of the more obvious indicators of social class can be faked, or bought on credit.
The pijos you can see from a mile away in certain neighborhoods might be massively in debt paying for a lifestyle they can’t afford. Or their logos might be fake.
A handbag or a polo shirt aren’t indicative of much, really – and you can’t see into someone’s bank account to know what’s really going on. Some of the most successful people I know walk around in hoodies.
My favorite quote from Machiavelli is about just this topic, and we’ll end on this note: “Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are.”
I always try to keep that one in mind.
That’s all I’ve got for today.
Stay classy, y’all!
Yours,
Daniel AKA His Royal Highness, the Most Exalted Mr Chorizo.
P.S. Thanks for reading! Did you know that you can support my lower-upper-middle class lifestyle by making a donation to this blog right here? Thanks! You’re the best. Also, feel free to tell me what you think, right here in the comments…
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