Culture and dignity

The Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) has just presented a report that updates the Metropolitan Reference Wage (SRM) for the year 2022. The reference wage, as the authors of the document explain, is an indicator that establishes the income threshold from which a worker and their family can live with dignity. In the case of the city of Barcelona, the SRM amounts to 1,552 euros. An outrage. And hold on: living with dignity in Barcelona is 46.5% more expensive than five years ago and there is nothing to suggest that we have reached a ceiling.

I downloaded the complete AMB document, mainly because I was interested in knowing what methodology the authors of this report use to calculate the SRM, and I got an unpleasant surprise that I will tell you about later and which, after all, is the raison d'être of this article.

However, first of all, I want to offer you some more details on how the AMB manages to conclude that Barcelonians need more than 1,500 bucks, as they say in the Upper, to live with dignity in the city. The calculation methodology they use is called Basic Living Costs Approach and is an adaptation of the methodology used by the Greater London Area and that developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In short, it consists of preparing a budget of basic needs that allows for a dignified life and, then, quantifying it monetarily. An amount that, of course, varies depending on how many people live and work in each home. For example, in the case of a single person with a child, more than 2,400 euros are needed to live with dignity.

More than the typology of households, for me, the crux of the matter is the concept of "basic needs." There are very obvious ones like housing, which takes 34% of the SRM, or food and beverages, 22%. Below these two major basic needs are extraordinary expenses (15%) and household expenses (12%). To be clear, from changing a blind to buying a refrigerator. If you do the math, you will see that we have already spent 83% of the salary. The remaining 17% is distributed as follows: 7% for personal expenses and leisure, 4% for education, 3% for clothing and others, 2% for transport, and 1% for cleaning.

And now the unpleasant surprise: where does culture fit into all this distribution? I have delved a little deeper into the details of each of these items looking for spending on culture. That is, the purchase of books, tickets for theater, cinema, concerts or exhibitions. Well, my astonishment has been enormous to discover that the only trace of culture contemplated by these basic needs appears under the personal expenses and leisure item. To calculate this 7%, spending on restaurants, the mobile phone bill and... cinema tickets! are taken into account.

Regarding this scarce presence of culture in the basic needs of "dignified" Barcelona residents, I want to say three things:

The first: I think it says very little about us that the only cultural expense included in this basket of basic needs falls under the leisure item. No, gentlemen, culture, as I understand it, is not simply a distraction to pass the time.

The second: it seems worrying to me that someone considers that, in a first-world city and in the 21st century, one can live with dignity without having a certain capacity for spending on culture. Precisely, one of the great advantages of living in Barcelona is access to a very wide cultural offer.

And, the third: linked to everything I have pointed out previously, I believe that these data should raise alarms for the municipal government, the AMB itself and the Generalitat. We can already subsidize cultural production and run campaigns in favor of Catalan: if there is no market, there is no cultural industry. If citizens are so short of money that, once the mortgage or rent is paid and the fridge is full, they can only afford Netflix or, not even that, pirate movies and books, who will be the brave one who will dedicate themselves to writing, making theater or composing songs? And, even more difficult, to do it in Catalan?