Experts say that such new realities are already having a powerful effect on Spain’s political landscape, where, as in Greece, there has been growing support for populist, anti-establishment parties, many of them fielding candidates who have helped the poor and others who denounce rampant corruption among Spain’s political elite.

Campaigning for his center-right party recently, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy talked of Spain’s recovery in glowing terms, at one point saying that no one was even “talking about unemployment anymore.”

But local and regional elections this spring were humbling for his Popular Party and for the center-left Socialist party, which lost control of cities throughout Spain, including Zaragoza and the capital, Madrid, though both parties have done better in recent polls.

Since then, Mr. Rajoy has curbed his optimistic language and promised change. But polls suggest that anti-establishment parties could still do well when the country holds regional and national elections this year.

The official unemployment rate sat above 22 percent at the end of the last quarter, with more than 5.15 million people out of work (2.7 million of them unemployed for more than a year). Many of them no longer qualify for any benefits and have family members who are already overextended trying to help.

Redouane El Omari, 35, his wife, Esther Mendoza, 32, and their two children, for instance, are about to be evicted from the church housing where they have been living for more than 18 months, so that another needy family can move in. But they cannot turn to relatives for help. Ms. Mendoza’s brother and his family are already living with her mother, and all of them survive on the mother’s pension of 300 euros, or about $331, a month.