A bit of background here since I keep seeing the craziness that is going on in the US. While jobs in Spain are not great, the social safety net is quite good in

A bit of background here since I keep seeing the craziness that is going on in the US. While jobs in Spain are not great, the social safety net is quite good in general. With the coronavirus, most jobs were frozen into place with a government unemployment plan (ERTE). This administrative tool existed before where the company could put your job on pause for a specified amount of time. This way you get full unemployment benefits from the government, and after said period finishes you keep your job as it was before. In practice it is commonly used to try different jobs meanwhile or to take some time off after working for a while in a company. So in the current covid-19 situation, the government has mandated that most (all?) of the people who cannot work during this time to be on this program. They have also frozen mortgages and rent payments. This is amazing for the society at large, since it means most people will be able to not go bankrupt during this time. The two big worries right now are what will happen to the companies (and those frozen jobs) and where will the govt get the money if the situation gets too long. So a basic income program would not be such a large change here as it would be e.g. in the US. It's still massive of course, because it'd apply to students and everyone who didn't have a job before, but I think it's important to clarify the background. EDIT: I haven't read anything about a basic income in the Spanish news yet so I cannot say about the accuracy of these news.