This August, the Bank of Spain published a report on the cost of living in Spanish cities. Surprisingly, or not, Madrid and Barcelona have a cost 20% higher than the rest of the cities in our country, mainly due to the price of housing.
According to various sources, rental prices in Madrid and Barcelona are increasingly rising and, in 2020, the cost of renting in these two cities was 82% higher than in other urban areas of Spain.
Despite this, and according to the Bank of Spain, salaries in Madrid and Barcelona were 45% higher than in other urban areas in 2018, which could offset the high rental prices in Spain’s two big cities.
With the Bank of Spain report in hand, we know that living in Madrid and Barcelona can be more expensive than in other parts of the country. Consequently, there are other cities with a much cheaper cost of living. For example, the most affordable city to live in is Elda-Petrer, south of Alicante: it has a 31% cheaper cost of living than Madrid and Barcelona.
Other cities such as Lorca, Cartagena, Cáceres, Mérida, Talavera de la Reina, Almagro, Lugo, Ourense and Zamora are between 30% and 25%. Some slightly more expensive, but around 20% cheaper than Madrid and Barcelona, are the cities of Jerez, Granada, Cordoba, Huelva, Valencia, Alicante, A Coruña and Vigo.
