It’s five in the morning in Valladolid, and Beatriz and her two-year-old son Dylan begin their day. They weave together a bus, a mid-distance train, and the regional rail to Chamartín, arriving before eight. Three hours of travel that turn getting to work into a “marathon.” She could take the AVE, which would take only 53 minutes. The problem is that the AVE on a daily basis is not economically viable.
Her case, broadcast on La Tarde by COPE, reflects the expulsion effect: more and more people live where their salary allows, not where their jobs are located.
400 km every day just to get to work
The case of Beatriz, who works more than 200 km from home, is not an anecdote and certainly not an isolated incident. It is so common in our country that it already has a name, the expulsion effect. According to research by the Vocento group newspapers, almost 900,000 people cross daily the borders of their province to go to work, representing more than 4% of the country’s total employment, the highest figure recorded so far.
Madrid acts as the great magnet with 246,000 workers arriving in the capital from other provinces, 83% more than ten years ago, while Toledo contributes 77,000 and Guadalajara, 43,500. Valladolid, better connected thanks to the AVE, has joined this corridor with its own daily flow.
The Beatriz case illustrates the so-called expulsion effect. People no longer live where they work, but where they can afford housing. They have been pushed out by housing prices in their workplace area. Her three-hour journey, recounted on COPE’s program, is just one example of a structural problem.
The Bank of Spain calculates that Spain carries a shortfall of 750,000 homes accumulated between 2021 and 2025. Last year 240,000 new households were created, but only 92,000 homes were completed, so for every home that enters the market almost three families are looking for a place to live. More than half of this imbalance is concentrated in six provinces: Madrid, Barcelona, Alicante, Valencia, Murcia and Málaga, the same ones that concentrate most of the employment.
The sectors that fuel this mobility the most are the public administration, education and health, which together account for 28% of interprovincial employment, followed by transport and communications (15%) and finance and professional services (another 15%).
As journalist Julio Llorente noted, the solution is not only about building more, but about distributing job opportunities more evenly to prevent Madrid from continuing to act as a magnet that draws population from much of central Spain.
Images | Ayşe Key, Samirah A.
