Spain's new middle class: stuck at home eating sunflower seeds
Inflation and lost purchasing power are forcing Spain's middle class to cut back on holidays and leisure. The data confirm a silent proletarianization that is changing the country.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
The middle class is being proletarianized: fewer holidays, more time at home, fewer restaurants
Imagine a thirty-something who used to go on holiday twice a year and now spends weekends at home eating sunflower seeds. It is not a lifestyle choice: it is the portrait of a middle class that has lost purchasing power and is being forced to adapt. The phenomenon, dubbed by sociologist Marqués as the "proletarianization of the middle class", is backed by data: according to the analysis, households that a decade ago could afford trips, dinners out and living in trendy neighbourhoods are now cutting spending because they have no other choice.
The CPI that doesn't match the wallet
Inflation has hit everyone, but the middle class formed in recent decades has had to scale back expectations more than the working class, which is culturally more used to modest horizons. While a worker in the 1970s could buy a house, a car and support three children at 35, today his son needs to be a doctor and work two jobs to achieve the same. The downward mobility is not one of social class, but of purchasing power – as Marqués points out – and it has been entrenched in Spain for at least seven years.
From the bourgeois dream to the consumption cage
Some analyses go further: the middle class has become an "impoverished consumer class", trapped in a system that keeps it going with handouts and a digital wallet to control spending. Niño Becerra's prophecies about the housing bubble and the disappearance of the middle class seem to be coming true, with a generation that went down the drain after the 2008 crisis and the subsequent inflation.
The unsettling figure: even with stable nominal incomes, the perception of belonging to the middle class is fading. Thirty-somethings living with their parents, young people who cannot afford a bar because of the "premium" and families swapping restaurants for the sofa and sunflower seeds. The middle-class dream is not dead: it has been locked up at home.
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Imagine a thirty-something who used to go on holiday twice a year and now spends weekends at home eating sunflower seeds. It is not a lifestyle choice: it is the portrait of a middle class that has lost purchasing power and is being forced to adapt. The phenomenon, dubbed by sociologist Marqués as the "proletarianization of the middle class", is backed by data: according to the analysis, households that a decade ago could afford trips, dinners out and living in trendy neighbourhoods are now cutting spending because they have no other choice.
The CPI that doesn't match the wallet
Inflation has hit everyone, but the middle class formed in recent decades has had to scale back expectations more than the working class, which is culturally more used to modest horizons. While a worker in the 1970s could buy a house, a car and support three children at 35, today his son needs to be a doctor and work two jobs to achieve the same. The downward mobility is not one of social class, but of purchasing power – as Marqués points out – and it has been entrenched in Spain for at least seven years.
From the bourgeois dream to the consumption cage
Some analyses go further: the middle class has become an "impoverished consumer class", trapped in a system that keeps it going with handouts and a digital wallet to control spending. Niño Becerra's prophecies about the housing bubble and the disappearance of the middle class seem to be coming true, with a generation that went down the drain after the 2008 crisis and the subsequent inflation.
The unsettling figure: even with stable nominal incomes, the perception of belonging to the middle class is fading. Thirty-somethings living with their parents, young people who cannot afford a bar because of the "premium" and families swapping restaurants for the sofa and sunflower seeds. The middle-class dream is not dead: it has been locked up at home.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (31 replies).
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