Bad News

My country made me cry. It’s been just a few lonely tears, but it’s still too much. I remember when it was easy to live there, and now, even living abroad, the news that come from Spain make me realize how different the things are.

I’m not an economist; I don’t understand what went wrong the last 10 (15? 20?) years; I can’t imagine… actually, I can’t even try to have a clue about how this mess could be sorted out. And neither does the most of Spanish people; and, believe me, that makes all of this even more frustrating.

I woke up this morning with terrible news: 24.4% of unemployment (that rise 50% if talking about young people), more than 5 and a half millions people without job, 1.7 million houses where nobody is working, and the worst part is found in Andalusia (the region where I came from): 2 out of 3 andalusian are unemployed. 

Unluckily, it’s not ‘numbers’ who live there in Spain: it’s people. Millions and millions of people that don’t know what else they can try out, millions of families where the parents aren’t working, millions of young people that don’t know what to do for their living... But they need to eat, and to pay the bills, and to take their children to school and, if you’re lucky, go out with your friends to have a coffee that helps you forget that your life’s becoming impossible. It’s not fair: you shouldn’t need to be lucky to afford to have a 1’20 € cup of coffee once in a while.

And it’s not fair because it’s not their fault. I think, for example, about my father: he’s a man in his sixties that’s been working hard since he was 18 (or less) and he’s still running a farm, he’s always paid his taxes as he was supposed to, he and my mother brought up the family and raised their children to be good and honest citizens for the country. But now, if he gets ill, he will have to pay for the ambulance in case he needs it, he will have to pay for the pills or the treatments, of course he can’t retire yet, but he doesn’t earn a lot of money for the vegetables he sells either, because the prices are going down and down, and, the worst for him: he can’t have his children living near him because there’s no future for them. So, what did he do so wrong? And he’s still lucky!

I’m currently living in England and it’s all right, I don’t mind living abroad a few years, I don’t mind if I have to move from here to there, if I have to work at Mcjobs though I’ve got a degree and I could do something better… But it’s not about me; it’s about all those people dressed up as numbers that don’t deserve this. And, to be honest, I don’t want to imagine what’s waiting around the corner. Although the new government is cutting the budget, increasing the taxes and introducing all sorts of reforms that are supposed to help the business and, therefore, create new jobs… it’s not working at the moment. The result: the Spanish have to struggle to live in this new difficult situation so that things start to improve; but they don’t improve, they’re getting worse.

Spain is such a fantastic place with so many people looking forward to work… So every time I have a look to the newspaper or I see a tweet with the trend topics #Spain or #PainInSpain or #Eurocrisis or something like that, a mix of shame, range and fear starts growing inside and makes me upset. And, again, I’m still lucky. 

“The biggest mistake would be to do nothing”, says Rajoy, Spanish prime minister. I just hope that they’re doing it right, that it really works and all those hard social policies shortly help Spain start being what it was: a wonderful country to live in. The country where I eventually want to live.

More info: BBC  report here