Guissona One in ten immigrants living in Catalonia works in construction, double the percentage of those who have Spanish citizenship. A person born outside the peninsula has three times more chance of becoming a waiter than a young person born in Catalonia. Among those who clean the house, the odds are multiplied by six. Three out of four foreigners do menial jobs, are machinery operators or work in agriculture, catering and construction. With those from here, the figure drops to 42%. These are data taken from various CCOO studies that highlight the difficulty of accessing skilled jobs for the immigrant population.
An example of the difficulties encountered by people who leave their homes to seek a better future in Catalonia can be found in the countryside. Thirty years ago, Catalan teenagers mingled with sub-Saharans when picking fruit in the plain of Lleida. Now, the young people are gone and it’s all foreign workers, who mostly take the hardest and most poorly paid jobs.
La Portella is the third municipality with the most immigrants in the country. In one of the fruit companies in the small town of Segrià, 90% are African workers, which in high season can reach more than 200. On the other hand, all those in charge are natives. “It’s hard for them to take responsibility, it’s a question of character and culture”, they argue from the management.
If in Portella the percentage of immigrants is around 40%, in Guissona there is still much more: there are just over 7,500 inhabitants of almost fifty nationalities who represent 53% of the total population. Especially Romanians and Ukrainians, who add up to more than 2,300 people; followed by the Senegalese, almost 600 and, on the other hand, there are practically no South Americans (less than 200) or Asians (about forty). The municipality of Segarra is a unique case, unemployment is practically non-existent, below 3%. As the mayor, Jaume Ars, says: “Whoever is a good worker and has no physical problems, has a job in Guissona”.
Tour to promote
It’s any Monday in January. Thick fog persists. A group of children with sub-Saharan roots, between ten and twelve years old, joke with each other in Plaça Major de Guissona. They do it in Catalan. They have left school and are entertaining themselves on the porch of the Renaissance house in Ca l’Eril while they go home for lunch. When two older boys, from Eastern Europe, approach them, the laughter and games continue, now in Spanish.
Right in front of the group is a computer store. The Ant The name appears in 24 different languages. The owner is native, the dependent foreign-born. It is one of the few exceptions among the shops in the center. Natali is another one. She arrived eighteen years ago from Ukraine to clean houses, then she worked in a broadcasting company, later in bonÀarea, and seven years ago, despite her husband’s doubts, she “took a risk” to open an underwear store.
Montse works a few meters away. He verbalizes the phrase that the whole town repeats when it comes to immigration: “Fortunately, everyone has a job, and that means there are no problems.” Coexistence is good, he assures, despite the fact that the different cultures that reside there, due to being very numerous, “don’t need contact” with the native people. Everyone does their own thing. Behind the counter of the haberdashery, Mercè describes the change the town has experienced over the last two decades: “Some traders live more off foreigners than the people here.”
La Belén takes a tour of the old quarter with a group of friends from the UAB. His partner is from outside. Her best friend too. He grew up in a school in which half came from different corners of the planet. He relativizes the phenomenon of immigration because the concept depends on the rucksack that everyone carries: “My family lived in Terrassa and we came when I was five years old: in a way we are also immigrants”. Belén, who is 21 years old, believes that the children of foreigners, those who are now her age, are the ones who will opt for much more qualified jobs. The social elevator will start working with the children of immigrants.
It is the hope of Ars. The mayor of Junts believes that “the second generations will mark the social rise”. Despite the fact that there is currently a “tour to promote” in Guissona, there are still links in the working gear that are almost forbidden for newcomers.
Intermediate positions
However, in Segarra, the social elevator has started to move. In BonÀrea they have almost 5,000 workers. According to data provided by the same company, around two hundred foreign people of 26 different nationalities hold middle management positions, in positions linked to management, maintenance or production. Stefko is one of them. He arrived from Bulgaria in 2000, and after a two-year period in Butsènit, part of the Lleida vegetable garden, he landed in a feed factory in BonÀarea. He is now the deputy maintenance manager for all factories. Like him, Mustafà, who has been in Guissona for 18 years since he arrived there from Senegal. In that time, he has been climbing the ranks, has obtained an intermediate degree in mechanical electronics and is now a driver. BonÀrea has made a bet to offer training and give incentives to workers to take root in the territory: from a food or transport school, to the first dual training cycle offered by a company, in which half of the students come from of foreign families and 75% end up hired by the same company.
Mohamed has been living in inner Catalonia for a short time. He spent five years working in the field without papers and now has a good position within the Segarra company. He is well-dressed, with a branded scarf and cap, and ends up arguing with a friend about the possibility of climbing positions. They do not agree. Guissona is not idyllic for everyone. Nor for Mohamed Reda, another boy from Morocco, who has been in the region for a year and believes that foreigners do not have the same opportunities to improve.
One of the most distrustful of the social elevator is Stefan. He is the president of the entity that brings together the Romanian community. 80% have been in town for more than a decade. Many were working in Germany and BonÀrea went looking for them because it needed specialized labor. At the turn of the millennium, the company opened a recruitment process, especially in slaughterhouses. Only 12 people from Spanish territory were interested in the offers. The solution to respond to the search for personnel to continue growing was to go to the European markets.
From children to grandparents
“You have to speak Catalan, you go to meetings and you don’t understand anything,” said Andrés, Stefan’s son, to his father. He had been in Segarra for fifteen years, but he had had enough of Spanish. Now, for three years, he always uses Catalan. Even for the messages in the WhatsApp group of the Cohesion Table, a tool that the council launched in 2019 and in which the main communities participate, as well as Health officers, local Police, Mossos… “We treat issues such as racism, how to help newcomers, or if someone is causing discomfort and is from my country, I’m going to talk to them”, says Stefan. Now, for example, the Senegalese community has raised an issue that worries them: divorces.
Stefan feels like a loser: “I don’t want to go back to Romania anymore, two and a half years ago I sold my house there because now my life is here, with my children”, he says proudly, looking at his two descendants It is what the council of Ars is looking for. Close the vital circle. That the people who have been working in the region for 25 years, stay until the end, since now there are many “retirees who are still leaving”. In fact, the data speaks for itself. Guissona has nearly 4,000 men and just over 3,400 women, and the male population over 65 is 8%. Very few
Future challenges
Ars has identified three more challenges. The first, cultural. Children of foreign parents, through the school, integrate perfectly. However, when they reach adolescence they “recover their pride of identity”, they start to “group” according to nationalities and speak their respective languages again. “We have the square of the Russians, the fountain of the Ukrainians…”, he points out.
The second challenge, housing. There is a property bubble, with rents of 600 euros, which also affects nearby towns such as Tàrrega. Guissona has started working with Incasòl to rehabilitate spaces in the old quarter. It is the policy of the public company, rather than making new constructions.
The third, the screaming effect. At the end of the year, about sixty Senegalese arrived from the Canary Islands, most without papers. They live in friends’ houses and Guissona’s policy is to register them so that they have basic rights. “We care about people”, says Ars, who has not always felt comfortable with some of his party’s speeches. But these young people, from an area near Dakar, what they want is papers to work. If they are expedited, what will the neighbor who has been waiting months or years for his documentation think?
2024-02-04 08:44:55
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