“How much do your neighbors earn?”, asks us the headline, alluring, of ARA, to show us this statistic, from every year, of the per capita income municipality by municipality. Matadepera, Sant Just Desvern and Sant Cugat del Vallès, as every year, are those that have the most income per inhabitant, taking into account that the average is made with the chicken statistic: if I eat a chicken and you eat none, both of us have eaten half a chicken. In the case that we are offending the vegan collective, let's do it with other foods, but then, I say it now, the statistic won't come out right because I won't eat a whole plant-based protein.

In 2024, Matadepera was once again the Catalan municipality with the highest income. The town in the Vallès Occidental was followed by Sant Just Desvern (Baix Llobregat) and Sant Cugat del Vallès (Vallès Occidental) on the podium of localities with the highest household incomes in the country. In fact, on a national scale, Matadepera ranked second, surpassed only by Pozuelo de Alarcón, in Madrid, according to household income distribution data published this Monday by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

Matching the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of the main countries of the European Union (EU) may cost Spain between two and three decades of growth above the average. This is a path already initiated in 2013, but one that requires many more continuous years to equal the leaders in wealth per inhabitant, which are Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, known as the EMU4. This is pointed out by the document The sources of growth in Spain and the main European economies: total factor productivity and sectoral heterogeneity,published by the Bank of Spain.