In 2019, the last year before the pandemic and the subsequent price crisis, the difference in income between the richest and poorest municipalities in the Canary Islands was 8,858 euros per year –738 euros per month. The Tax Agency has just published the data for the 2021 income tax return, the one presented last year, and the gap has been reduced by 7.2%, to 8,224 euros. Two factors explain this slight approach: the first, that The average wealth of the wealthiest localities decreased by 1.3% in the two hardest years of the crisis; the second, which that of the least well-off municipalities increased by 2.1%. So in terms of income, and in broad terms, the less wealthy places on the Islands have weathered better the attacks of the pandemic and inflation; although for themselves they wanted, of course, the economy of the most prosperous. However, this reading reveals new nuances the closer the magnifying glass is to the Tax Agency data.
The richest town in the Autonomous Community is Santa Brígida, Gran Canaria.. Each of its citizens declares in the Personal Income Tax (IRPF) an average annual profit of 37,735 euros gross, so their average disposable income, that is, once taxes are deducted, is 29,704 euros. And if Saint Brigid is the side of this particular coin, The cross is carried by the residents of the La Palma municipality of Garafía.
The disposable income of the Garafianos is a meager 14,421 euros per year. Less than half of what a resident in Santa Brígida has, 106% less, and that even though wealth – always on average and always equating the term to income even though they are not exactly the same – has fallen in the Gran Canaria town and uploaded in Garafía. The citizens of Santa Brígida declared an average income of 32,505 euros in 2019, so the covid and the first blows of the inflationary wave They took with them almost 9% of their disposable income. On the other hand, in the municipality of La Palma It went from 13,966 euros in 2019 – it was the only one of the 88 towns in the Archipelago where the average wealth did not reach 14,000 euros – to 14,421. An increase of 3.2%. It is evident that the distance between rich man of Saint Brigida and the poor man Garafía remains sky-high, at 15,283 euros –1,274 euros per month–, but the truth is that it has been cut in the middle of persistent socioeconomic uncertainty that the pandemic brought about and that even today continues without blurring.
The ‘top ten’
Saint Brigid is accompanied in the top ten Of the wealthiest territories in the Canary Islands, six municipalities are from Tenerife, a second from Gran Canaria, one from La Palma and another from Lanzarote. The second place on the podium is occupied by the metropolitan town of El Rosario, with an average disposable income of 26,713 euros per year.. AND In third place is Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, with 23,833 euros. But while the average wealth of the residents of El Rosario has grown by 2% since the outbreak of the coronavirus, that of the citizens of the capital of Gran Canaria has decreased by 1%. The top ten places in the ranking they complete them Santa Cruz de Tenerife, with 23,417 euros; the Lanzarote Teguise, with 22,903 euros; and Candelaria, Tegueste, El Sauzal, Tacoronte and the Breña Baja palm tree, where the disposable income ranges between 22,818 euros per year in Villa Mariana and 21,811 in the town of Breñusca. The average net profit of the taxpayers of these ten municipalities, the wealthiest in the Autonomous Community, is 23,877 euros per year. The crisis took 1.3% off them, since in 2019 it was 24,194 euros. Just the opposite happens in the ten most impoverished towns in the region.
Along with Garafía, the sad red lantern of the classification, the other nine territories that have the dubious honor of being part of the ten poorest municipalities in the Archipelago are El Tanque, which with the palm tree town is the only one where the average disposable income does not reach 15,000 euros per year –less than 1,250 euros per month–; the also palmeros Fat tipwith 15,126 euros, and Windward, with 15,519; and The Village of San Nicolás, Buenavista del Norte, Barlovento, Tazacorte, Vallehermoso, Los Silos and Hermigua, whose citizens declared net income in personal income tax last year ranging between 15,634 euros in La Aldea and 16,364 in Hermigua. So that, the worst positions of the ranking They are taken over by one municipality from Gran Canaria, three from Tenerife, three from Gomero and as many from Palma.. That is to say, nine of the ten are from the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and up to six, 60%, from the green islands. On the other hand, there is not a single one from Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, which shows, on the one hand, to what extent the economy of the two easternmost islands of the Archipelago has improved. in the heat of tourism; and, on the other, how green islands They have been left behind precisely because they have not known, been able or wanted to take advantage of the tourist success to the extent that the rest of the region has done. However, the gap with the richest localities has narrowed. Little but he has done it.
The use of tourism marks the difference between the ‘green islands’ and Fuerteventura and Lanzarote
The ten least wealthy municipalities in the Autonomous Community had an average disposable income before the outbreak of the pandemic of 15,336 euros. Now it has risen, according to 2021 personal income tax data, to 15,654 euros, 2.1%. As occurs between Santa Brígida and Garafía, the two towns that occupy the extremes, the difference with respect to top ten of the richest territories of the Islands continues to be very large, but was cut by 635 euros, 7.2%, in the first two years of covid and inflation. In any case, the 8,224 euros that separate the residents of the ten most privileged municipalities from the citizens of the ten least wealthy demonstrate that the socioeconomic progress of recent decades has had very different speeds between towns, islands and provinces. And the difference is not so much marked by the capital islands as, it must be insisted, by the peripheral ones.
The Tax Agency groups the data by province, which allows the figures of the two Canary Islands to be compared. The first thing that stands out is that the annual net income of personal income tax filers from Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, always on average, is 19,777 euros, 1,196 more than the 18,581 euros of residents in Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro. The difference is a non-negligible 6.4%. The average citizen of the province of Las Palmas thus has about one hundred euros more per month than the average citizen of the district of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The citizen of the province of Las Palmas manages one hundred euros more per month than the citizen of the Tenerife district
If you put a magnifying glass on the data for the two capital islands, disposable income exceeds the provincial average in both cases. In Gran Canaria it is 19,850 euros and in Tenerife, 18,965, so the difference between them remains at 885 euros.. A minor difference but one that may be surprising if you remember that Of the ten richest municipalities in the region, six are from Tenerife and only two from Gran Canaria. What separates the two main islands of the Autonomous Community is that in Gran Canaria there is only one town where the average income falls below 17,000 euros per year – La Aldea –, while in Tenerife there are ten that do not reach that amount: El Tanque, Buenavista, Los Silos, Icod de los Vinos, San Juan de la Rambla, Guía de Isora, La Guancha, La Victoria de Acentejo, Vilaflor and Arona.
The distance is abysmal between the peripheral islands of one province and the other, a reflection of these two speeds in the development of the region. The disposable income in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura is 19,649 euros, so the convergence with its capital island, Gran Canaria, is almost total. On the contrary, in La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro, the green islandsit is only 18,065 eurospractically a thousand less than in Tenerife and up to 1,584 euros below the figure of the two most eastern, 8.8% less.
