In the middle of the debate on the pension revaluation Looking ahead to 2026, the data show a much starker reality: there is a significant (and growing) gap between the pensions charged in the most industrialized communities and those that are less.
With an aging population increasingly dependent on pensions, this gap between territories has become one of the great axes of economic inequality in Spain, to the point that between Vizcaya and Orense there is already almost 800 euros of difference in the average retirement pension.
The two Spains in retirement. The Social Security data of November 2025 show that the provinces with higher salaries and a denser industrial fabric also concentrate the highest pensions, while the areas with lower salaries and older people are left behind.
Social Security places the average retirement pension in Vizcaya at 1,872 euros per month, while in Orense it remains at 1,085 euros, which represents a gap of 787 euros per month between the province that pays its retirees the best and the one that does the worst. In 14 payments, this difference is equivalent to more than 11,000 euros per year between a pensioner from Biscay and one from Ourense.
An upward trend. If we compare these same data with those of the same month As of 2020, the distance between the highest and lowest retirement pensions by province was around 615 euros per month, so in just five years this gap has increased by just over 170 euros per month according to the series from the National Social Security Institute.
The data for November 2025 confirm that the Basque Country remains at the top of the retirement pension ranking, accompanied by Navarra, Madrid, Asturias, Aragon, Cantabria, Catalonia and Ceuta, which are above the national average. For their part, Galicia and Extremadura remain in the pension queue, well below the national average.
Average Pension by autonomous communities. November 2025. Source: Social Security
The weight of salary and the industry. This pension gap It is nothing more than a reflection of the salary situation of each of these communities. The Annual Salary Structure Survey from the INE for 2023 indicates that the average annual salary in the Basque Country was 33,504.92 euros, while in Extremadura it was 23,684.22 euros; The difference is around 41% and indicates that the Basque Country is clearly the community with the highest salaries and Extremadura is the one with the lowest salaries.
These territorial differences are not the result of chance, but of type of jobs and salaries that each community has had for decades. The Social Security distribution system itself rewards long careers with high contributions, so that provinces with more industry and high salaries transform that advantage into more generous pensions.
They are the same positions that they occupy in the ranking of communities with the highest and lowest pensions given the close relationship between the salaries received by workers, your Social Security contributions and the amount of their pensions. Therefore, those from more industrialized communities that have traditionally paid higher salaries are the ones that now have the highest pensions.
An increasingly decisive pension. Given the aging of the population, pensions have already become the main stable income of a growing part of Spanish households, especially in the territories of emptied Spain, with the highest average age. In provinces like Orense or Zamorathe number of pensioners is approaching that of busywhich reflects the extent to which the local economy depends on the money that arrives each month from Social Security.
This reality is aggravated in communities with less industrial fabric and worse salarieswhich have average pensions clearly below the national average and negative balances between contributions and benefit income, as occurs in Andalusia, Extremadura or Galicia.
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Image | Unsplash (Val Vesa)
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