North-South and urban-rural divides in the way unemployment is touching Spanish citizens is fuelling social unrest, according to the International Labour Organisation’s International Institute for Labour Studies (IILS).

Unemployment nationally stood at 8.3% in rural areas and 7.8% in urban areas in 2007, but this gap has now widened as it stands at 26.1% in the country and 24% in the town.

Meanwhile, unemployment in the North of the country has jumped from 5.9% to 15.4%, while in the South it has gone from 11% to 32.8%, again disproportionately affecting the area already worse off.

In the same time period, the IILS’s social unrest index has doubled between 2006 and 2011, with protests including land occupation and organising food raids in supermarkets, with protest leaders claiming the latter was not robbery but legitimate action distributing food to the needy.