Immigrant workers leave struggling Spain

CostaBravaTouristGuide.com — Spain’s on-going economic crisis has resulted in high levels of unemployment, especially among retail and restaurant workers.

One result is that many immigrant workers have returned, or are planning to return, to their home countries.

CNN recently highlighted the trend, focusing on immigrants from Argentinia.

One such worker is Laura Dominguez.

In an effort to escape Argentinia’s economic crisis she moved to Catalonia in 2003.

Now she and her family have returned to Argentinia:

In June, Dominguez, 36, moved back to Argentina because the economic situation in Spain was so dire that she didn’t see strong prospects there for herself or her three young daughters.

Dominguez worked as a waitress in the beach resort town of Blanes in the Cataluña region. She says tourism there has dropped considerably in recent years, compared to when she first arrived in 2003 and could count on five steady months of restaurant work.

“I had a job, and I was one of the lucky few. Almost everyone I knew in Spain was unemployed,” says Dominguez.

Over the past three years, the tourist season has shrunk to two months; the domestic market has virtually disappeared and it’s holidaymakers from Germany and Holland who are keeping any life in the industry, she says.

“There were scores of closed businesses in Blanes. They just kept closing and closing and closing. Construction sites were paralyzed. Nearby, entire towns were abandoned. It reminded me of Argentina during our last crisis,” she says.

Ironically, Argentinia’s own financial meltdown — in 2001 — is what sent Laura and thousands of other Argentines looking for a better life in Spain.

CNN says

The rowdy protests that took place on the streets of Buenos Aires a decade ago look similar to those currently taking place in Madrid and throughout Spain, where the latest unemployment numbers show that 21.5 percent of the Spanish population is jobless. [...]

Spain and Argentina have always looked to one another in times of crisis. The largest Spanish community outside Spain resides in Argentina, and it’s commonly believed that nearly half of all Argentines have Spanish blood.

These close cultural and linguistic ties have always made Spain a popular destination for Argentine immigrants seeking financial stability that Europe had traditionally offered.

But with Spain’s bleak economic situation, and similar problems for its Eurozone neighbors, more and more Spaniards are now coming to Argentina.