They're Back
It's summer. It's the tourist season. That means finding myself behind cars that suddenly hit the brakes, make right or left turns on a dime without signalling, and that crawl along so slowly you wish an agent would be around to fine them for driving too slowly (yes, that's possible). That also means driving around a block five times to find a spot to park in when all I want to do is pick up one thing from the supermarket, and I'm in a hurry to make lunch.
One way to open up parking space in our town, is indulging in the practice of leira parking. Generally, that is a private parking option run by the owners of said leira (field), and who are paid a fixed amount by each driver upon ingress. Since that is considered competencia desleal (disloyal competence; in other words, that you are a self-styled entrepreneur without having paid the corresponding taxes, etc.), and is actually illegal, our township rents the leiras from the owners, paying them a fixed amount, no matter how many cars end up parking there in the summer.
This means that the population of our township, and others along this coast of the Ría de Arousa, grows exponentially in the summer. There are blocks of newish flats that lie dormant all year until July and August come around. Then, you look at the windows and wonder if the real estate boom has come around again, and that all the units have been sold. You find yourself behind eight people at the checkout counter in the supermarket at four o'clock of a weekday afternoon and wonder if the next township is closed for a local holiday. Where you would see three or five tables occupied at a sidewalk café in the center of town on a weekday morning, now you see people waiting to be seated.
So, this means more people leaving more money, right? This is why unemployment statistics are down locally, right? Yes and no. Whereas there are more people, they aren't throwing largesse around. More people have been hired, but only for temporary jobs. After the thirteth of August they're gone. The jobs aren't exactly bank-makers, either. Most of those hired are waiters and will earn below minimum wage, which is around €700 a month. The employers get away with that because on paper the new employee is hired for four or five hours a day, and are paid for that. Yet, they end up working up to twelve hours a day.
There was a complaint that made the rounds and ended up in a newspaper. A person got in contact with an employer about a job offer for a waiter, asking for salary and hours. The message he got was very typical. He would have to work from seven in the morning to five in the afternoon, have a break, and then return from nine in the morning to closing, which could (and would) be around two in the morning. All this for €800 a month. Fifteen hours for a little over two euros an hour, with only Mondays free.
When the prospective employee complained, the employer replied, "It's summer. It's what there is." What there is, is a lot of people who want to make thousands of euros off the work of others. There are people who see goldmines in the tourist hordes coming in, and will try to snap up as many nuggets as possible, and keep them all to themselves, much like Gollum with the Ring. "It's miiine!"
The new age of slavery is here, it seems. Women who work the floors in hotels, cleaning up to twenty rooms in four hours for paltry earnings. Waiters who work two or three months without resting, for salaries that don't even pay the rent. Other workers in the tourism industry that have to live in their cars during the summer in hotspots like Ibiza because there's no way to pay a rent on the island on their salary. Once the tourists go home, these people will return to the unemployment line.
Tourism is the easy industry to create. When the terrorists hit Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey, many tourists decided on Spain for a cheaper summer vacation. Now that people are returning to those other destinations, tourism has fallen somewhat in Spain. What will happen if it disappears for one reason or another? There is no other industry that is being coddled by the government in any way. No other industry is leading in job creation. But that's the problem in Spain. We've always loved the short-term, fast solution to our problems. The real solution can be looked for mañana.
And out-of-towners will keep bugging me on the roads.
One way to open up parking space in our town, is indulging in the practice of leira parking. Generally, that is a private parking option run by the owners of said leira (field), and who are paid a fixed amount by each driver upon ingress. Since that is considered competencia desleal (disloyal competence; in other words, that you are a self-styled entrepreneur without having paid the corresponding taxes, etc.), and is actually illegal, our township rents the leiras from the owners, paying them a fixed amount, no matter how many cars end up parking there in the summer.
This means that the population of our township, and others along this coast of the Ría de Arousa, grows exponentially in the summer. There are blocks of newish flats that lie dormant all year until July and August come around. Then, you look at the windows and wonder if the real estate boom has come around again, and that all the units have been sold. You find yourself behind eight people at the checkout counter in the supermarket at four o'clock of a weekday afternoon and wonder if the next township is closed for a local holiday. Where you would see three or five tables occupied at a sidewalk café in the center of town on a weekday morning, now you see people waiting to be seated. So, this means more people leaving more money, right? This is why unemployment statistics are down locally, right? Yes and no. Whereas there are more people, they aren't throwing largesse around. More people have been hired, but only for temporary jobs. After the thirteth of August they're gone. The jobs aren't exactly bank-makers, either. Most of those hired are waiters and will earn below minimum wage, which is around €700 a month. The employers get away with that because on paper the new employee is hired for four or five hours a day, and are paid for that. Yet, they end up working up to twelve hours a day.
When the prospective employee complained, the employer replied, "It's summer. It's what there is." What there is, is a lot of people who want to make thousands of euros off the work of others. There are people who see goldmines in the tourist hordes coming in, and will try to snap up as many nuggets as possible, and keep them all to themselves, much like Gollum with the Ring. "It's miiine!"
The new age of slavery is here, it seems. Women who work the floors in hotels, cleaning up to twenty rooms in four hours for paltry earnings. Waiters who work two or three months without resting, for salaries that don't even pay the rent. Other workers in the tourism industry that have to live in their cars during the summer in hotspots like Ibiza because there's no way to pay a rent on the island on their salary. Once the tourists go home, these people will return to the unemployment line.
Tourism is the easy industry to create. When the terrorists hit Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey, many tourists decided on Spain for a cheaper summer vacation. Now that people are returning to those other destinations, tourism has fallen somewhat in Spain. What will happen if it disappears for one reason or another? There is no other industry that is being coddled by the government in any way. No other industry is leading in job creation. But that's the problem in Spain. We've always loved the short-term, fast solution to our problems. The real solution can be looked for mañana.
And out-of-towners will keep bugging me on the roads.
Comments
Post a Comment