Hi there,
Here I am going to make a compilation of my experiences during the years I lived in Spain so that you understand why it is a country that I do not recommend even for tourism. I want to emphasize that this post is based on my experience. There will be people who feel identified and others who do not. As I told you, I arrived in Valencia totally deceived since they had sold me a country that was not true.
The first thing I noticed was the lack of hygiene. The number of people who smell bad, who don’t brush their teeth, who don’t know about personal care, who laugh and have half their teeth missing. I got tired of seeing my classmates with broken nails and chipped nail polish. Imagine the shock coming from Venezuela, where regardless of economic status, people are always impeccable.
When I started going to the gym, I was shocked because almost all the instructors were fat or too skinny. In any normal place they would never hire a person who was not in good physical condition to work in a gym. Even in 2022 when I spent the summer in Valencia again, most of the instructors were far from being a role model.
In Spain there are no friends. I went to a gym for a year where I made many “friends”; I got tired of inviting people to eat at my house, I paid for coffees, etc. No one ever invited me to their house, nor did they ever invite me anything. Spaniards responded with the excuse that they “valued their privacy very much.” It is seen that it is only when they must invite because they never refused to eat for free at my house.
When I was in the process of buying my apartment, I needed someone to do me the favor of renting me a room for a couple of weeks and all my so-called friends disappeared. My idea was to pay, I didn’t even want to be hosted for free. This is the opposite of what would happen to you in Venezuela, where your friends always have a bed or a plate of food to offer you.
Diego told me that I had bad luck with the people I met, but I proved him wrong. When I met him, he had tons of friends, more than I had ever had in my life. But it turns out that when they invited him to eat at their homes, he had to pay for what he consumed. Also, the only time he asked for a favor to help us with a move, only two showed up who did almost nothing and then Diego had to pay for lunch for them and their partners.
But Diego lent things, did favors, invited people to eat at his house without charging them, etc.
When one of his friends got married, he was asked that one of the wedding guests stayed in the room we rented on Airbnb. She was stuck in our house for more than a week without paying anything and the least I expected was to be told that this favor already counted as a wedding gift. But no, Diego still had to pay 250 euros as a wedding entrance fee.
The few times we returned to Spain, Diego went out of his way to write to these so-called friends to see them, but only two people cared to see him.
Another thing that is very traumatic, especially for those who emigrate from Latin America, is how rude and bitter the people are.
They even treat you badly when you go to a store to buy or when you pay for a service. There are no polite words like “Good morning”, “Thank you”. It seems that you bother if you go to the store, hospital, gym, etc.
If you have paid for a product or service, do not expect them to treat you with dignity, much less give you information or explain things.
After living in Spain and knowing what the working conditions are like, I understood why Spaniards are like this. They have jobs that look a lot like slavery and earn miserable wages with which they never manage to be independent. So the vast majority lives bitter and depressed.
Spain is one of the few countries in the world where salary is never included in a job offer; moreover, they take offense if you dare to ask. As I have reached a point in my life where I do not allow myself to waste a minute of my time, when they contact me on LinkedIn, all I do is respond with my salary expectation and several times I have been told that “it is not the best way to start a conversation about work.”
A friend told me that in most of the jobs she had, she started working without knowing how much she was going to receive at the end of the month.
With the terrible situation that the country is experiencing and with the highest unemployment rate in the European Union, companies take advantage and profit from the misery of the people. Even with miserable wages, abusive conditions and unhealthy work environments, companies are overwhelmed by job applications because people are desperate.
Your company exploits you and the State also with its taxes.
Let’s start with the self-employed who are the ones who practically maintain the country. These people pay more than half of their income in taxes to be entitled to almost nothing. Many are not even entitled to a pension at retirement.
Spain is the country that charges the most to the self-employed in the European Union and I think it has the worst tax system in the world.
Taxes don’t correspond neither to the standard of living nor to the average salary. There are countries like Luxembourg or Switzerland that charge more taxes, but in these countries you can see that money really goes to maintain the country’s infrastructure.
Think that to sell my apartment I had to request a document that cost almost 400 euros when my salary was 1000 euros a month. What they gave me after 2 months was a handwritten piece of paper with a stamp on it.
Another interesting piece of information: Spain holds the world record for bankruptcies: 13.
Paying so much tax to not even have decent public health care. Here is a very important point: Public health in Spain is negligent and mediocre.
When I went to live in Spain I had private health insurance and my impression was that the doctors had no idea what they were doing. So, I kept doing my medical checkups when I went to Venezuela.
When I started working, I stopped paying for private insurance to try the public health system that I had been told so well about. When I went to the first consultation with the family doctor, he told me to forget about medical check-ups and to go only if I was sick.
When I moved to Diego’s house, I changed my GP and although he was polite, he didn’t have much idea what he was doing either. Then I went through a horrible illness and fortunately I found a Venezuelan doctor and I changed hospitals because if not, they would have killed me.
Many people die from medical negligence. Prevention does not exist and doctors, in addition to being incompetents, care very little about the lives of patients. In fact, you go to consultations, and they don’t even look you in the face.
There is also no education on health and good lifestyle habits. Most people eat crap, smoke, don’t play sports and never go to the doctor for an annual check-up. Spain is the country where I have seen more obese people.
Mental health is not taken care of either. There are many people who live with anxiety and depression and the appointment with the psychologist in public health is given every year (almost no one has the financial capacity to pay for a private psychologist). Since there is no way for a psychologist to follow up once a year, what they do is prescribe medication and since the cause of the problem is not treated, people spend their lives taking pills.
By the summer of 2022, 11 people were committing suicide a day in Spain.
To this we must add the femicides, rapes and sexual harassment. In this aspect, Spain is very scary, especially because of the impunity that exists. The laws in that country are a joke and most of the rapists if they go to jail, after a couple of years (at most) they are free.
So that you can see how absurd the legal system is in Spain, I give you this example of real cases: A male police officer rapes a girl and does not go to jail, the only penalty is the obligation to attend a sexual re-education course. Instead, a policewoman steals money from a lost wallet and gets 22 months in jail.
In addition, the number of rapes committed by adolescents who did not reach the age of majority was overwhelming. Also groups of rapists who are looking for victims through applications such as tinder.
Finally, in Spain there is a racism like I have not seen anywhere else. They criticize and have nicknames for everyone: the South Americans, the French, the English, the Australians, the Africans. No matter where people are from, Spaniards will always find a “defect” to justify treating them as if they were inferior.
The country is dirty and even more so if you compare it with the rest of Europe. The sidewalks are covered with cigarette butts and in Valencia you also have dog droppings everywhere.
Despite everything I’ve told you, most Spaniards fill their mouths saying that “As in Spain you don’t live anywhere“.
The Spaniard does not even think of opposing or demonstrating against so many problems that the country has. Since the 2008 crisis, the state has been making more and more cuts, lowering salaries, worsening conditions, health system is getting worse, there is less and less democracy, they are more and more oppressed by taxes, etc. Instead of complaining, society has become increasingly mediocre and conformist.
When I discuss these things with Spaniards, the response is almost always “Well, it’s not that bad either.”
I remember that, regarding one of my posts about the situation in Spain, a woman who was a gym instructor insulted me on Facebook and offered to pay a plane ticket for me to return to Venezuela.
Because that is another typical response, since the Spanish are not capable of accepting negative comments of their country, they always try to attack you by speaking ill of yours. Even if it is Luxembourg or Australia, they are always going to get something to believe themselves that their country is not so bad.
The funniest thing about this woman who wanted to pay my ticket to Venezuela is that many times she didn’t even have money to buy food and had fixed her car with the money her boyfriend lent her. She was the living example of working conditions and the standard of living in Spain, but she was offended because I wrote about it on my blog.
Logically, there are countries that are worse. Before living in Colombia, Peru, Vietnam, Cambodia, Mexico, Costa Rica, etc.; I prefer to live in Spain. Although it is Europe’s third world, it has better conditions than other countries.
I also understand that for many Latinos arriving in Spain can be a little easier than arriving in other countries and many use it as a transition to later go to a better place.
For example, for Latinos Spain is the first world, but for an European with a bit of intelligence, Spain is the worst of the European Union and they know that they have to go to other countries where there really is quality of life.
For all that I have explained to you before, I do not recommend Spain to emigrate or for tourism because even when you go as a tourist, they treat you badly and they are racist; In addition, it is not safe especially for women due to the large number of rapes and feminicides. To this we must add the crime that by the summer of 2022, was serious in cities like Barcelona and Madrid. I could tell you many more things about the country, but the post would be too long.
If after everything I have told you, you still want or need to emigrate to Spain, consider the following:
- The jobs are a lot like slavery, and you need to be a member of an union that really protects you. In my opinion, the CGT is the only union in Spain that works.
- Don’t get stuck. Even if you get a job which is relatively good, keep looking for better options at a European level, there will always be offers that improve your current conditions.
- You need to know your rights very well and the channels you have to make complaints. There is the consumer office, the Spanish Data Protection Agency, a channel for complaints of a health nature, another channel for administrative complaints, etc.
- Spain has the worst tax system I have ever seen in my life. Taking this into account, you will have to investigate and learn a lot about the subject to try that the State steal as little as possible from you.
- If you are a woman, be very careful and take the necessary measures to protect yourself.