Spain's young people are leaving the country in droves - but will they come back?

Many young Spaniards are heading to Germany in search of better job opportunities. Eberhard Thonfeld.

Youth unemployment in Spain is currently at 57.7 percent, the second highest in Europe after Greece, forcing thousands of young people to try their luck abroad, leaving their families and friends in the hope of securing a decent job in a more economically stable country. 

For those young Spaniards still at university, their thoughts rest more and more on the future: what are their prospects, should they go abroad and if so, where?

Diego Sierra is typical of this young breed of Spaniard - a well-qualified English speaker who has experience of living abroad as part of an Erasmus year at Sheffield University in the UK, he is currently studying Telecommunications Engineering in Oviedo, having previously studied Industrial Technical Engineering. He knows what he will have to do post-university:

“Nowadays every well-qualified person is looking for a job outside of Spain as there is nothing promising here”. 

Everyone here knows someone who has a university degree, or even a postgraduate degree, yet has been forced to take unskilled service jobs after they graduate, for lack of anything better:

“If you are one of the best you can get a mediocre job here or a great career opportunity in another country”, Sierra says. 

The rise of the ‘mileurista’ - an employee with a €1,000 salary - has been well documented in the Spanish media ever since 27-year old Carolina Alguacil wrote a letter to El País in 2005 called ‘I am a mileurista’. She described the term, “...After several years you finally get a full time contract, but you won’t be earning more than 1,000 euros a month. But you’d better not complain. You won’t be saving any money; you can’t afford a car; and forget about children. You live from day to day”. 

The tragedy of the economic crisis in Spain is that the picture Alguacil painted back in 2005 has, if anything, only worsened in the subsequent nine years, which have seen Spain plunged into the depths of recession and rising numbers of Spaniards moving abroad. Where once young Spaniards would be earning a pittance, at least this was usually in their chosen field - these days they are lucky if they manage to get a job at the local supermarket. 

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy currently has an approval rating of just 18% according to Consulta Mitofsky, a Mexican consulting firm that released a roundup of world leaders’ approval ratings last month. Compare Rajoy’s 18% approval rating with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 70% and you start to realise just how unpopular the Spanish PM is at home. 

Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, presenting recent unemployment figures. Ricardo Gutiérrez. 

Diego Sierra thinks Spain’s government is missing out on using Spain’s young graduates to the best of their potential:

“I think the main problem is that they are trying to adapt the population to the job market and not the other way around. Spain has thousands of highly qualified young people but the government prefers to say ‘they are over-qualified’ than try to adapt and invest more in those areas where Spain could make huge profits and make the most of its young graduates”. 

Spain seems to be taking somewhat of a laissez-faire attitude to the many hundreds of young graduates it is losing to foreign countries each year, but perhaps the country should be making more of an effort to retain young graduates in order to prevent the inevitable brain drain looming on the horizon. 

Germany is one of the top destinations for young Spanish graduates. Alex Sorarrain Mendieta, from San Sebastian, has been working just outside Frankfurt as a mechanical engineer since late 2012. 

“Many young Spanish people are forced to go abroad to start their career” he says. “It is clear that the political management of the country caused this: corruption and more corruption”. 

With many young Spaniards blaming the Spanish government for getting them into this situation in the first place, you have to wonder how inclined they will be to return home once they have settled in a new country, often with much better career prospects. As Mendieta says,

“...it is bad for the future of Spain because it is not assured that these people (young Spaniards) will come back, after Spain has invested a lot of money in them”. 

So rather than seeing a return on its investment in young people, Spain is instead witnessing its best and brightest leave for often much better career prospects abroad. 

Even immigrant populations who once saw Spain as the promised land are upping sticks and heading back to their home countries; 2013 saw the number of Spaniards living abroad rise by 6.6 % to over 2 million. Many of these are naturalised Spanish citizens moving back to their home countries, often in Latin America. 

Recent figures show a rise in both alcohol consumption and suicide among young Spaniards, a sign perhaps of the increasing frustration and helplessness sweeping through a whole generation. You have to remember that, while well-qualified and multi-lingual Spaniards can move abroad relatively easily, those who are less qualified and, commonly, do not speak a foreign language, find it much harder to leave Spain. 

With a rock-bottom approval rating and a brain drain crisis threatening to grip the country, Mariano Rajoy should not forget Spain’s young people - for it is this generation that will rebuild the country in the years to come. Spain cannot afford to keep losing them to the brighter futures they seek abroad - who knows if they will come back. 

Comments

[Publicado por: Jorge]

The ever increasing red tape and the dreaded autonomo are also preventing youth from forming startups, other countries make starting a business much easier without crippling initial taxes and even tax breaks for the first 1-2 years. Why anyone would setup a business in Spain is beyond me

[Publicado por: Antonio]

After 20 years out you still have found Spain as it was before? Really? Only the money from Eu has not produces this change, (not existing under your point of view). Are you looking for reasons to convince yourself of being out? Sorry, to say that. Probably there is lot of corruption, but also lot of people claiming for that, and the people will be able to change the current status. No doubt..

[Publicado por: Antonio]

After 20 years out you still have found Spain as it was before? Really? Only the money from Eu has not produces this change, (not existing under your point of view). Are you looking for reasons to convince yourself of being out? Sorry, to say that. Probably there is lot of corruption, but also lot of people claiming for that, and the people will be able to change the current status. No doubt..

[Publicado por: Antonio]

After 20 years out you still have found Spain as it was before? Really? Only the money from Eu has not produces this change, (not existing under your point of view). Are you looking for reasons to convince yourself of being out? Sorry, to say that. Probably there is lot of corruption, but also lot of people claiming for that, and the people will be able to change the current status. No doubt..

[Publicado por: tocquevillano]

No, they will not come back, they should not come back, if they are smart and truly qualified. I left Spain 20 years ago and have just spent a sabbatical here. I don't see any improvement: it is still an economy based on tourism and construction, with a poor education system still focused on rote learning and completely oblivious to the changes the world has been going through in the last 50 years. Of course, the country is much richer now (thanks to all the money coming from the EU and from all the selling of real estate to foreigners). Of course, the food is great and the weather is fantastic. But the only way to really get ahead is by joining one of the political parties early on and partaking of the corruption. The socialists and the labor unions have opposed any aspiration to excellence, while the right wing party has managed to bring the country socially to the 1950s. In the process, members of both parties have filled their pockets with easy money and gotten into positions for which they were not qualified. So no, don't even think of coming back to raise your families in such a country. I know I won't.