[holgerschurig]

That is because EU is everything ... but not something homogenous entity. Living in Austria is very different to living in Spain, is different to living in Greece.

There are countries in EU where it is almost impossible to get out of public healthcare, for example. And then some like yours, where this seems to be quite common.

But I guess "rent is higher than minimum wage" isn't true for all of Spain. Spain is extremely centralized, everything is in Madrid. But if you somehow can get away with living in the middle of nowhere, then I don't expect rent to be higher than minimum wage.

These extremely expensive metropoles exist all over Europe (London, Prague, München, Madrid, Paris, ...) but also in the USA (New York, and probably 40 others).