Malaga province is home to the poorest municipality in whole of Spain

Benamargosa in the Axarquía area of Malaga province has made headlines in Spain for a reason that will surely not please its inhabitants: it has become the poorest municipality in the country, based on the average gross income declared to Hacienda - the Spanish treasury. This is the conclusion drawn from new tax data for 2023, collated by Spain's national tax agency (AEAT) for the latest statistical report on personal income tax returns by municipality. The report only includes those municipalities with populations exceeding 1,000 inhabitants across Spain, excluding all those in the Basque Country and Navarre. The Axarquia town had an average income per taxpayer of 13,831 euros in that year, 4.4% less than in the previous year.

This decline, together with the increase experienced by the other 16 municipalities that were previously below Benamargosa in the table, has meant that this small Malaga town has suddenly found itself at the bottom of Spain's per capita wealth ranking.

At the other end of the scale is Pozuelo de Alarcón, a municipality in Madrid where per capita income is 88,011 euros per annum, making it the wealthiest municipality in Spain for the fifth consecutive year. Not even six residents of Benamargosa with their combined annual income could reach that figure. The gap between the richest and the poorest places in Spain widens year after year and there is a significant territorial gap from north to south. Of the ten municipalities with the lowest reported average income in Spain, eight are in Andalucía: Algarinejo, Montejícar, Colomera and Guadahortuna in Granada province and Cambil, Noalejo and Montizón in Jaen province. The other two are in Extremadura: Zahínos and Higuera de Vargas, both in the province of Badajoz. In contrast, of the ten richest municipalities, all are from the provinces of Madrid or Barcelona except for one, which is Aigües in Alicante.

In Malaga province, the richest municipality according to this classification continues to be Benahavís, with a per capita average income of 43,159 euros in 2023, a sharp increase of 8.5% on the previous year. A taxpayer in this Costa del Sol town - where the exclusive urbanisation of La Zagaleta is located - earns on average 3.2 times what someone in Benamargosa earns. Benahavís is also the richest municipality in Andalucía and is 56th in the national ranking (last year it was 71st).

The town with the second highest average declared income in Malaga province is, once again, Rincón de la Victoria, with 34,176 euros and a 5% increase. Third and fourth places also remain unchanged: Marbella, with 32,306 euros (up 2.2%), and Alhaurín de la Torre, with 31,681 (up 6.2%). There is a new entrant to fifth place: Benalmádena (30,392 euros) overtakes Malaga city (30,030) after increasing its average income by 5.4% (the provincial capital only increased average income by 2.9%). Torremolinos, Casares, Estepona and Fuengirola complete the top 10 of the most advantaged municipalities in Malaga.

As for the municipalities with the lowest reported average income, the bottom three in the provincial ranking are small towns in the Axarquía area: Benamargosa, Almáchar and Comares. Then, in ascending order of income, are Valle de Abdalajís, Periana, Cuevas de San Marcos, Villanueva de Algaidas, Arenas, Benamocarra and Teba. None of them reach 18,000 euros in per capita income.

Some readers may recall that Alhaurín de la Torre, not Benahavís, has been mentioned as the richest municipality in Malaga. It's not that the ranking has changed: the list headed by Benahavís is drawn up by the AEAT, while the one headed by Alhaurín is compiled by Spain's INE national statistics institute. They differ because they are compiled in different ways, although they take the same tax data as their source. The tax agency divides the total income declared by each municipality by the number of tax returns filed, while the INE divides that same total income by the total population residing in households in each location.