The advance of the census data as of January 1, 2023, provided by the INE, has been released by the Alicante City Council because it allows the city to rise to tenth place in the list of the most populous cities in Spain. The 10,500 inhabitants that Alicante has gained compared to 2022, compared to just 551 more than the Biscayan capital, allow the city of Gabriel Miró to count 348,901 residents, out of the 344,678 registered in the town of Miguel de Unamuno.
Separated by just over 700 kilometers in a straight line, the urban planning, geographical configuration and climate of Alicante and Bilbao are very different, and despite having an almost identical number of inhabitants, there are also significant demographic differences.
For example, while in Bilbao 64.6% of the inhabitants are from Biscay and one in four (24.6%) is 65 or older, only 54.4% of those registered in Alicante were born in the city or in the province, and one in five is of retirement age (19.3%). In both cases, the population does not decline thanks to the flow of immigrants. 14.10% of the people from Bilbao and 17.77% of the people from Alicante were born outside of Spain.
But while the demography of Alicante offers a more dynamic and thriving image, in socioeconomic terms the tables are pointing in the opposite direction. The latest comparable unemployment figures registered 13.7% unemployment in Bilbao compared to 19.08% in Alicante. And in terms of average annual income, the difference is notable: in 2020 data, 16,026 euros is the average annual income of a person from Bilbao, compared to 11,676 for a man from Alicante.
It is not strange, if we take into account that the average salary of the Biscayans, in June 2021, was the third highest in the country, with 2,302 gross euros per month, only behind those from Alava and Gipuzkoa, while the Alicante only earned more on average than Extremadura: 1,636 euros, that is, 666 euros less, a notable (and devilish) difference.
If on the banks of the Postiguet it costs more to earn a good salary than on the banks of the Nervión, the resources that the city council makes available to the residents are also lower. Because Luis Barcala, Mayor of Alicante, must "settled" with a budget of around 325 million euros per year while his colleague Juan María Aburto has 663, more than double. This means that spending per inhabitant in Bilbao amounted to 1,672 euros in 2021, while in Alicante it stood at 782 euros, less than half.
It must be taken into account that the foral regime of the Basque Country and Navarre grants the councils a collection capacity that in the rest of the country corresponds to the State, since it includes the Personal Income Tax and those of Companies, Patrimony, Inheritances and Donations... And each provincial institution distributes a municipal financing fund (Udalkutxa) among the municipalities, which in 2022 exceeded one billion euros in the case of the Bizkaia Provincial Council.
The distribution among municipalities is carried out following criteria such as population, unemployment rate, fiscal effort, number of schools or population dispersion. In the specific case of Bilbao, 60% of its 663 million municipal budget come from that regional fund.
