Emigration
Goodbye, my love, goodbye. I don't know why that song by Demis Roussos came into my head. But it got me thinking. And I thought about an airport, where saying goodbye can be so hard. And I remembered taking my husband's eleven-year-old niece at the beginning of January to the airport to go back to her parents in Mallorca after a Christmas visit with her grandparents. And I remembered picking up my brother-in-law just before Christmas at a train station when he visited his parents from Barcelona. And I remembered all the times I went to pick up relatives and drop them off. And how scattered we are. And how this is a country of emigrants.
Spain, and especially Galicia, has been sending people abroad since the end of the nineteenth century. Before then, actually, though that's when it stepped up. In the early part of the twentieth century most left for South America, Cuba, and the U.S. Every family had someone "facendo as Américas", doing the Americas, working abroad to send a few coins home from time to time. My mother had two aunts, I think, who went to Argentina and an uncle who went to the United States. My father had an uncle who went to Cuba and was never heard from again. Perhaps he died there or decided to begin a new life. That was easily possible then. Towards the sixties and seventies of the last century people started going to other countries in Europe, like my husband's aunts, who went to France. We, however, went to Boston, Massachusetts, where my mother's uncle had gone and where her brother had joined him. I don't remember anything; I was a month and a half old! I was the exception. Mostly parents left children at home with the grandparents. If they expected to stay longer as the children grew older, then they would send for the children. Some neighbors of mine wound up in Boston when they were already teenagers or still tweens.
That emigration actually helped the Spanish economy, because the people working abroad sent money home that was used to build houses, better lives, and open businesses. Franco's regime encouraged people to emigrate and had special offices that helped those looking to move abroad. But with democracy came changes, and the Spanish economy began to grow when it joined Europe. People still emigrated, but in lesser numbers. Jobs became more plentiful here and salaries became more competitive. Until the fall of the construction boom. Now there are almost no new jobs, not for skilled or semi-skilled workers, and even less for recent college graduates. The emigration in the last century was mostly unskilled and semi-skilled workers who could find nothing here with decent salaries. The emigration in this new century is a brain drain because the workers who can't find anything decent are professionals who are taking their ideas and knowledge to other countries, where they can work in the fields in which they studied. Doctors are leaving, biologists, physicists, teachers, computer programmers. All those people who once had excellent job opportunities here. More than half the Spaniards waiting at an airport for a flight now are either living abroad or moving abroad.
Someday my daughter will also follow and leave this country where she has grown up. And we will have to take her to the airport and say au revoir. Like my grandmother did with my parents, and like her parents did with their son, ad infinitum. And all because this land cannot find a way to house its people with dignity.
Spain, and especially Galicia, has been sending people abroad since the end of the nineteenth century. Before then, actually, though that's when it stepped up. In the early part of the twentieth century most left for South America, Cuba, and the U.S. Every family had someone "facendo as Américas", doing the Americas, working abroad to send a few coins home from time to time. My mother had two aunts, I think, who went to Argentina and an uncle who went to the United States. My father had an uncle who went to Cuba and was never heard from again. Perhaps he died there or decided to begin a new life. That was easily possible then. Towards the sixties and seventies of the last century people started going to other countries in Europe, like my husband's aunts, who went to France. We, however, went to Boston, Massachusetts, where my mother's uncle had gone and where her brother had joined him. I don't remember anything; I was a month and a half old! I was the exception. Mostly parents left children at home with the grandparents. If they expected to stay longer as the children grew older, then they would send for the children. Some neighbors of mine wound up in Boston when they were already teenagers or still tweens. That emigration actually helped the Spanish economy, because the people working abroad sent money home that was used to build houses, better lives, and open businesses. Franco's regime encouraged people to emigrate and had special offices that helped those looking to move abroad. But with democracy came changes, and the Spanish economy began to grow when it joined Europe. People still emigrated, but in lesser numbers. Jobs became more plentiful here and salaries became more competitive. Until the fall of the construction boom. Now there are almost no new jobs, not for skilled or semi-skilled workers, and even less for recent college graduates. The emigration in the last century was mostly unskilled and semi-skilled workers who could find nothing here with decent salaries. The emigration in this new century is a brain drain because the workers who can't find anything decent are professionals who are taking their ideas and knowledge to other countries, where they can work in the fields in which they studied. Doctors are leaving, biologists, physicists, teachers, computer programmers. All those people who once had excellent job opportunities here. More than half the Spaniards waiting at an airport for a flight now are either living abroad or moving abroad.
Someday my daughter will also follow and leave this country where she has grown up. And we will have to take her to the airport and say au revoir. Like my grandmother did with my parents, and like her parents did with their son, ad infinitum. And all because this land cannot find a way to house its people with dignity.
very interesting post! Do you expect your daughter to leave Spain?
ReplyDeleteHi Lisa! Yes, I do expect her to leave because at any job she might find here she probably won't earn enough to live on her own. Most recent graduates are finding minimum wage jobs at which they have to work long hours. And minimum wage here is just over six hundred euros a month. About eight hundred dollars.
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