Top Earning Neighbourhoods in Madrid
In 2020, the neighbourhoods with the highest average net annual income per inhabitant were El Viso (€40,815/year), Recoletos (€37,067) and Castellana (€36,660). These figures were revealed in the ‘Urban Indicators 2023’ report by the Spanish Statistics Institute (INE).
Income Inequality within Cities
The INE report also highlighted significant income disparities within cities. The statistics collected data for levels below the city level, referred to as the ‘Sub-City District’ (SCD). In many instances, these levels align with the existing division into administrative districts or neighbourhoods.
SCD Neighbourhoods Across Spain
The current list of ‘SCD neighbourhoods’ includes 17 cities: Alicante, Barcelona, Bilbao, Cordoba, Gijon, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Madrid, Malaga, Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Seville, Valencia, Valladolid, Vigo, Vitoria and Zaragoza. In total, 523 ‘SCD neighbourhoods’ are included in the statistics.
Top Income Neighbourhoods in Madrid and Barcelona
Of the 10 neighbourhoods with the highest income, seven are in Madrid and three in Barcelona. These include Piovera (€36,045/year), Nueva España (€34,317), Almagro (€33,101) and the Aravaca-Plantio-Valdemarin area (€30,073). The Catalan neighbourhoods Les Tres Torres (€32,958), Pedralbes (€32,462), and Sant Gervasi- Galvany oest (€30,407) also feature on the list.
Housing Prices in High-Income Neighbourhoods
Most of these neighbourhoods have the most expensive housing prices in their cities, and in the whole of Spain, although not in the same order according to income. Some of the most expensive housing districts do not even appear at the top of the INE’s income ranking.
Recoletos: The Most Expensive Neighbourhood
According to idealista’s used home sales price data for April, the Recoletos neighbourhood is by far the most expensive, at €9,053/m2, reaching its highest price in the history of the southern European real estate marketplace.
Income vs Housing Prices
The district with the highest income does not appear until the sixth position between the two capitals. El Viso (€6,756/m2) is also behind Castellana (€8,136/m2) or Almagro (€7,143/m2), and even neighbourhoods such as Jeronimos or Diagonal Mar i el Front Maritim del Poblenou, in Barcelona, which do not appear in the INE’s top 10.
Lowest Incomes in Seville and Alicante
By contrast, the lowest incomes were in Seville, in the Poligono Sur neighbourhood of the Sur district (€5,816) and the Los Pajaritos and Amate neighbourhoods of the Cerro-Amate district, with €6,043, and in the Juan XXIII neighbourhood of Alicante (€6,503).
Urban Areas with Highest Income
The report includes data for Functional Urban Areas (FUAs). Each FUA consists of a city and the municipalities that comprise its labour influence. There are 70 functional urban areas defined for the whole of Spain.
Populations of FUAs
A municipality belongs to the FUA of a city if 15% or more of its employed population commutes to that city for work. In 2022, the FUAs with the largest populations were Madrid (with 6.98 million people), Barcelona (5.09 million) and Valencia (1.78 million).
Top Earning FUAs
The FUA of Donostia/San Sebastian topped the average annual net income per inhabitant in 2020, with €16,836, followed by Bilbao (€15,436) and Madrid (€15,407). Torrevieja (€8,441), Lorca (€9,402) and Marbella (€9,721) were the Functional Urban Areas with the lowest incomes.
Municipalities with Lowest Unemployment Rates
Sant Cugat del Valles, in Barcelona, is the municipality in Spain with the lowest unemployment rate, with an estimated average unemployment rate for 2022 of 5.2%. It is followed by Pozuelo de Alarcon (Madrid), with 5.8%. In third place is the Basque municipality of San Sebastian with 6.5%, followed by Las Rozas de Madrid (6.7%) and the Madrid municipality of Majadahonda (6.7%).
Municipalities with Highest Unemployment Rates
In contrast, the municipality of La Linea de la Concepcion in Cadiz is the one with the highest unemployment rate, with an estimated rate of 29.3% in 2022, followed by Ceuta (28%), the municipality of Linares in Jaen (25.9%) and the municipalities of Jerez de la Frontera (Cadiz) and Granada, both with an unemployment rate of 24.2%. Of the 15 municipalities with the highest estimated average unemployment rates for 2022, most are in Andalusia.
