  We present XMM-Newton spectral analysis of all 38 Seyfert galaxies from the
Palomar spectroscopic sample of galaxies. These are found at distances of up to
67 Mpc and cover the absorbed 2-10 keV luminosity range ~10^38-10^43 ergs/s.
Our aim is to determine the distribution of the X-ray absorption in the local
Universe. Three of these are Compton-thick with column densities just above
10^24 cm^-2 and high equivalent width FeKa lines (>700 eV). Five more sources
have low values of the X-ray to [OIII] flux ratio suggesting that they could be
associated with obscured nuclei. Their individual spectra show neither high
absorbing columns nor flat spectral indices. However, their stacked spectrum
reveals an absorbing column density of N_H~10^23 cm^-2. Therefore the fraction
of absorbed sources (>10^22 cm^-2 could be as high as 55+/-12%. A number of
Seyfert-2 appear to host unabsorbed nuclei. These are associated with
low-luminosity sources Lx < 3x10^41 ergs/s. Their stacked spectrum again shows
no absorption while inspection of the \chandra images, where available, shows
that contamination from nearby sources does not affect the {\it XMM-Newton}
spectra in most cases. Nevertheless, such low luminosity sources are not
contributing significantly to the X-ray background flux. When we consider only
the brighter, $>10^{41}$ \lunits, 21 sources, we find that the fraction of
absorbed nuclei rises to $75\pm19 $ % while that of Compton-thick sources to
15-20%. The fraction of Compton-thick AGN is lower than that predicted by the
X-ray background synthesis model in the same luminosity and redshift range.}
