section_path: By country/Spain
section_name: Spain
paragraph_text: Spain
  
  Welfare in Spain is characterized by a Mediterranean Welfare state model based on three pillars: education, health, and pensions. As in most European countries, in Spain the Welfare State is a great achievement for its society since the State guarantees protection to all people who may find themselves in a situation of economic difficulty or any other. The social policies implemented by the Spanish State, as in the rest of Europe, are a set of measures and tools aimed at protecting and ensuring basic human needs, especially in the field of education, health, and economic security.
  
  The Mediterranean Welfare state model is found not only in Spain, but also in countries such as Italy, Greece and Portugal, countries in the Mediterranean region where social protection arrived late, in the 70s and 80s of the 20th century. It is a model that mixes elements of the liberal (or Anglo-Saxon) and continental (or Bismarckian) welfare state. It is characterized as the welfare model with the lowest spending, with little investment in social assistance, a more fragmented social security system, and high spending on pensions, making pension benefits greater than unemployment benefits. One of the most particular features of the Mediterranean model is the large role of the family, which combines with the market and the state in the provision of welfare. Thus, the state assumes that the family covers certain services (such as childcare or care for the elderly), which in other models would be covered by the state. As for the labor market, it is characterized by high employment protection, the persistence of gender biases and a lower dispersion of workers' wages due to the importance of trade unions in negotiations.
  
  The Spanish social welfare program can be separated into three categories or fundamental pillars: education, health, and pension system, as established in the Spanish Constitution ratified on December 29, 1978. It relies especially on Article 27 on education, Article 41 on the social security system and Article 50 on the pension system.
  
  The beginnings of the Spanish Welfare state date back to the last decade of dictatorship, Francoist Spain, when it began to develop through the Social Security Law of 1963. Later, after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco and with the arrival of democracy, it would be when the existence of public needs not covered by the State became evident, and when education, health and social services were universalized. This advance of the welfare state was also marked by the economic crisis, which led to a deterioration of the labor market and highlighted the need to increase public spending to offer greater protection to the retired and unemployed.
  
  Social policies in Spain constitute a set of legislation, decisions and activities that seek to promote the welfare of all Spaniards and improve their quality of life, facilitating access to society's goods and resources to cover their basic needs and respond to complex situations that citizens may face. These policies are governed by the principles of equality and equity. The social policies of the Spanish State, like those of most countries in the world, are in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and, as the rest of the European Welfare States, also depend on the guidelines of a higher body, the European Union.
  
  Among these policies are those oriented towards healthcare, social welfare policies to prevent and end poverty, free education, social security policies, security and justice policies or access to housing. Free public health care policies are aimed at improving people's living conditions and provide the medical and pharmaceutical services necessary to protect and restore the health of the insured. Health care is one of the benefits universally recognized for all citizens.
  
  Education is another of the pillars of Spanish welfare. Educational policies are focused on guaranteeing access to the entire population, without any kind of discrimination, to free and compulsory general basic education from the age of 6 to 16. After that, citizens can also have free access to high school and vocational training. University studies, although not free, are also financed by the Spanish State. The educational model has a decentralized character and the competences, functions, services, and resources in the field of education have been transferred from the central government to the different Spanish autonomous communities in both university and non-university matters.
  
  Finally, the third pillar of the Spanish welfare state is the pension system. The Spanish pension system includes a wide variety of pensions including widow's pensions, contributory pensions, and non-contributory pensions. The widow's pension covers people who suffer the death of their spouse. Contributory pensions are transfers from the state that depend on the worker's previous contribution and vary according to the number of years worked and the worker's contribution. Non-contributory pensions, on the other hand, have a welfare character and cover people for disability or retirement (if they have not contributed enough to qualify for a contributory pension). This public pension model is often supported by a private dimension formed by pension plans to which workers contribute a percentage of their salary during their working life, to receive a larger pension during their retirement.
  
  In Spain, the welfare state is considered to be very scarce and less developed, especially compared to the European Union average, where social policies and the welfare state are strongly developed. Spain lags behind EU values in social protection spending measured both as a percentage of GDP and in absolute terms and in the proportion of adults working in state services. However, public spending in general, compared to the rest of the world, is very high. Moreover, the Spanish welfare state is polarized, which means that the higher income groups use private services (especially in health and education), while the lower income groups use public services.
  
  The Spanish state's low investment in public spending affects the quality of its services. As for healthcare, almost all healthcare competencies have been transferred from the State to the Autonomous Communities. Public health spending is below the average of the European Union, in 2020 it was around 8% of GDP or €1907 per capita, while the European Union average stood at €2,244 per capita. It is even more worrying when the spending figure is separated between what is invested in healthcare as such and what is invested in the pharmaceutical industry. This ends up causing a great lack of resources and deficiencies in the Spanish healthcare system, such as long waiting lists, even for life-threatening operations, scarce primary care, etc. These deficiencies have accentuated the polarization of the Welfare State and have made the private sector acquire great importance in Spanish healthcare, becoming more similar to the healthcare systems in Latin America than in Europe.
  
  Education is another of the pillars that support the Spanish Welfare state, but it also has a polarizing character in society. The low state investment in public education has led to an increase in the number of private and charter schools that have greater resources and create inequality in basic compulsory education.