Spain: Sleeping rough in numbers

Madrid, Barcelona and Lleida are home to 1, 800 homeless people. More than one thousand volunteers took part in Spain’s first ever attempt to quantify homelessness in the three Spanish cities most affected by the phenomenon. The project kicked off in Madrid in February, reached Barcelona in March and concluded in Leida in April. Below are some of the results, to take a more in-depth look at the situation, download the pdf from our toolbar (left).

The “homeless identikit”? The majority of homeless people in Spain are 41 years old, male and not of Spanish origin. Surprisingly 9% of them are graduates of higher education institutions.   

Behind the project is Pedro Cabrera, a professor and sociologist who is also in charge of coordinating a group of sociologists from the Papal University of Comillas in Madrid and the Autonoma University in Barcelona.

Madrid: The streets of the Spanish capital are home to 651 rough sleepers, 10.9% are women. Their average age is 41, however one third are not yet 35. In Madrid the homeless population is equally foreign  and Spanish, an unusual finding as in both Barcelona and Leida there are many more homeless foreigners are than Spaniards. 

The survey also investigated educational background, highlighting that while the majority of homeless people who were interviewed had primary education, around 10% were higher education graduates. 75.3% of interviewees are singles, have been homeless for more than a year and usually sleep in the city centre. Only 21.6% stated that they had an income derived from being employed.

Barcelona: The streets of Barcelona are home to 912 homeless people and those interviewed confirmed the identikit traced in Madrid: male, 41, foreign, with a very small income.

Of all the cities Barcelona has the highest percentage of young homeless people, who account for 39.1% of all the interviewees. 8.9% were young people with University degrees who have been homeless for more than 1 year.

Lleida: The research volunteers counted 70 homeless people in Lleida. Again the identikit was similar: male, average age of 40 years and mostly foreign. Here only 3% were women while the greatest number of foreigners was noted, 75% of the total.

Source: CanalSolidario.org