Analysing the Spanish Minimum Income Guarantee

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• Around 2.3 million people are estimated to be eligible for the Minimum Income Guarantee (known as the IMV in Spanish).
• Three billion euros per year will be required to fund the measure: 0.24 percent of Spain’s GDP in 2019.
• Led by Vox, the far right launched a campaign of aggression in Congress, labelling those calling for the measure as “lazy” and “scroungers”.
• Social organizations have pointed to the bureaucratic obstacle course, the conditionality of the measure and the exclusion of migrants with irregular status in Spain as some of the limitations of the IMV.

Yago Álvarez Barba, Journalist and head of the economic section in El Salto Diario

Abstract

The Minimum Income Guarantee (IMV) is not the same as an unconditional universal basic income, but it is a big step in the right direction. In a global context of rising inequality and high structural unemployment, with an economic and social system that produces increasingly ferocious cyclical crises, an economic safety net to sustain citizens is more and more crucial. And Spain is no exception.