Editor’s note: This article was first published in December 2012. It refers to Spain’s 6 million unemployed, the show having aired for “more than 2 years” and a newspaper report published “this Sunday”, all as of December 2012.
Españoles en el mundo (“Spaniards Around the World”) is a programme that has been on Spanish television for more than two years. It shows the success stories of Spaniards who one day decided to take the plunge, pack their bags and emigrate to another country. Every week, millions of Spaniards in precarious jobs or out of work feel real envy watching the positions these “Spaniards around the world” hold: a good job at a company, a wonderful partner, an enviable home and, in some cases, even a boat and a company gold card.
In a country with 6 million unemployed, who wouldn’t want to be like these Spaniards on television? Obviously, all that glitters is not gold. The Spanish embassy in Norway has warned of the danger of the show’s “pull effect”, saying that the programme does not show the legion of Spaniards in Norway who have a trade but no work, wandering the country’s streets and even having to turn to charity.
Thousands of Spaniards leave our country hoping to be like these happy Spaniards around the world, and once outside Spain, the vast majority run into reality and come back within two months. In some cases, they spend all their money in a few weeks without finding a job and have to ask their families to send them money so they can return, because they don’t even have enough left for the plane ticket.
This Sunday the newspaper Ideal published a long report titled “Españoles en el submundo” (“Spaniards in the underworld”), with testimonies from many Spaniards who warn of all kinds of dangers, especially financial ones: there are many Spaniards who even left with a contract but, after failing their probation period, found themselves with no job and no health insurance.
It’s true that salaries are higher in many European Union countries, but that doesn’t mean those salaries go to an immigrant. There are several testimonies from Spaniards who have worked for less than €800, with a very high cost of living.
“The norm isn’t to arrive and have a 300-square-metre house and a company car. What’s most common, if you want to save some money, is to share a flat and take the bus.”
They warn that a Spaniard has trouble even getting work as a waiter in some countries, because employers ask for two years of proven experience. “Once you arrive, you’ll be lucky if you get a job at a McDonald’s, because in the end that’s what most Spaniards are chasing,” says one Spanish woman abroad.
Engineers cleaning toilets and archaeologists making beds in cheap hostels, not to mention the architects eating in soup kitchens.
Alfredo Pérez, 35, with a master’s degree in European Economic Studies, eight years of experience in his field and three languages, currently earns €1,100 in Berlin. He admits that Españoles en el mundo has done him a lot of harm.
Mónika Bolaños, 39, is a metalwork technician and feels lucky to have finally found a job as a cleaner.
José Llorente, 32, was invited by a temporary employment agency to go back to Spain.
Many of them say they couldn’t wait to leave Spain because of the country’s bad situation, but now they can’t wait to return. Most agree that they left looking for a chance to achieve what some Spaniards had achieved, but once they arrived, they found a country full of Spaniards looking for that same opportunity, which for some never came and which others didn’t wait around for.
In short, we have a few isolated cases of people who achieve the “Spaniard around the world” dream, and then we have the far more common case, which may one day get its own slot on television in a programme called “Indignados Around the World” (a nod to Spain’s indignados protest movement).
Featured image: Gabriel González from Pontecarreira-Frades, España, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
