Economic crisis drives Spaniards to seek jobs abroad (Feature)

By Sinikka Tarvainen Aug 18, 2010, 4:19 GMT

Madrid ­ As Spain's economic crisis deepened, Maria Recio's anxiety mounted.

The secretary from the western Spanish region of Extremadura saw an increasing number of her colleagues get fired, and feared that her employer might not renew her contract.

In March 2009, Recio decided that the Spanish labour market could no longer be counted upon, and moved to Ireland, where she started off as a nanny.

The 35-year-old has now moved on to an administrative job, and though she still earns only a half of what she did in Spain, she is not planning to leave County Kerry for her native country for the time being.

'I have seen 40-year-old Spanish au-pairs' in Ireland, Recio told the daily El Mundo.

Stories like hers awaken echoes of the 1960s and early 1970s, when Spain was under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, and more than 2 million Spaniards fled poverty and unemployment to wealthier European countries and Latin America.

Around 600,000 Spaniards went to work in Germany alone, doing jobs that the local people shunned and sending money home - much like Latin Americans, Eastern Europeans and Africans now working in Spain.

As Spain gradually caught up with wealthier and more modern European countries, it evolved from a country of emigrants into one of immigrants, whose numbers soared from less than 2 per cent to 12 per cent of the population in two decades.

However, Spain's worst economic crisis in half a century has partially reversed the trend, thinning the influx of migrants to a trickle and sending thousands of immigrants back to countries such as Argentina, Ecuador, Romania or Morocco.

Despite some signs of the economy beginning to recover, unemployment is still running at 20 per cent, the highest in Western Europe.

In a new development, increasing numbers of Spaniards are now moving abroad in search of jobs, though experts still prefer to describe it as a slight tendency rather than as a general trend.

'Emigration is the only way out for many Spaniards,' said David Corral, who moved to Switzerland after getting a job there with an oil company.

Nearly 27,500 Spaniards moved abroad in 2009, almost 40 per cent more than in 2008, according to electoral census statistics quoted by the daily La Vanguardia.

About 23,400 Spaniards moved home from abroad in 2009, around 20 per cent less than in 2008.

It is, however, difficult to know how many of the people who emigrated did so because of the economic crisis.

The emigration statistics are difficult to interpret for another reason: They include not only born Spaniards but also immigrants who obtained Spanish nationality and returned to their countries of origin.

The new Spanish emigrants include waiters in Dublin and construction workers in Switzerland or Algeria, according to Spanish media reports.

However, the new emigrants are generally different from those of the 1960s and 1970s in that they are often highly qualified, come from Madrid and Barcelona rather than smaller localities, and speak foreign languages. Many of the Spaniards who go to work abroad seek a (professional) recognition they are not getting in Spain, or want to complete their training,' sociologist Carmen Albert said.

Spaniards living abroad only make up about 3 per cent of the population of 48 million, compared to more than 10 per cent in countries such as Ecuador or Morocco, according to figures quoted by La Vanguardia.