The ‘non take-up’ elections

We have fully entered the tainted electoral race. We are beginning to hear more nonsense than usual, gross demagoguery. And not only from politicians, but also in the popular echo on social media, in bars, in homes. The media, some increasingly specialized in infoxication, contribute to it in abundance.

What are we talking about? The right-wing parties will seek to avoid the housing problem and focus on Ceuta instead of Maricarmen. Basically, they will blame immigration for the impoverishment of the middle class and the loss of identity. If we go into more detail, they will attribute to the newcomers the blame for low wages and the abuse or hoarding of public services and aid. The responsibility for wages should fall, in the first place, on those who pay them, not on those who receive them, who are the weak link in the system... Anyway. But now I want to focus on the second point. Specifically on the aid, the handout, as some call it from the comfort of their sofa.

Let's look at the data. More than half of the homeless in Catalonia are foreigners (54%). The risk of poverty is 17.2% if you have Spanish nationality and 48.6% for those from abroad (and that is also counting the expats). The non-take-up rate (people who are entitled to aid but do not receive it due to lack of knowledge or because they do not know how to access it) was 64% in 2025 for the minimum vital income. It is even worse with the child support supplement: last year 78% of potential beneficiaries were left without it, many of them migrant children or children of migrants. With the guaranteed minimum income, the non-take-up stands at 30% (2022 data, the latest available).

Against the idea of abuse, reality shows that there is underutilization of aid. Poverty and social exclusion often go hand in hand and form a vicious circle. Public administrations and social entities are failing to break it. They do not even come close to reaching all those affected. Bureaucratic barriers, digitalization, the institutional web, obstacles to registration, and even shame mean that many people in a situation of manifest precariousness do not receive the support they would be entitled to, protected by the Constitution –so sanctified by some– and by the Statute. Are we or are we not a social and democratic state of law? To what extent is social protection real?

The population of Catalonia that is at risk of poverty or social exclusion reaches 24.8% (one in five). 8.9% suffer from severe material deprivation. These are high and entrenched percentages. Almost four out of ten people who work receive income below the minimum wage, which has gone from 735 euros per month in 2018 to 1,221 euros per month in 2026. Even so, currently having a job does not guarantee a dignified life. The housing problem has greatly aggravated the situation, and has socialized the unrest to the middle class as well. Households with children are the most precarious: 30.8% are at risk of poverty. The composite sketch of those who are suffering the most would be an immigrant and racialized woman who lives without papers, without a partner, who does odd jobs as she can, and who has dependent children.

But if things go as the polls say (all except the CIS), these will be the elections of non-take-up: the majority will vote for the right and the far-right who, by magnifying the suspicion of abuse, will cause public social aid to be reduced or for access to it to become even more complicated. Following the Ayuso model in Madrid, they will also move towards the privatization (and not precisely through non-profit social entities) of the health and education systems. Textbook Trumpism: tax cuts and a less social state. The substitution task performed by the so-called third sector will be more necessary than ever. But these entities, which feel the harsh reality on the street every day, are at the same time at the limit of their capacity for care and in part also depend on public budgets (budgets that, in the Catalan case, will once again remain anchored in the fiscal deficit: there will be no new financing). If the votes on November 29th do not contradict the polls, in the coming years we are heading towards a more unequal society, with a foreseeable increase in poverty.