The latest active population survey attests that it is in Catalonia 780 thousand foreigners work Out of a total of 3,800,000 employees. The number of arrivals to Spain as a whole in the coming years is estimated at half a million people annually.
This is one of the pillars of recent economic growth Foreign labor became necessary for many economic sectors. In Added Value, we analyze three: transportation, people care, and healthcare.
In April this year, one of them was accepted into the House of Representatives A popular legislative initiative to regularize the situation of undocumented workers That there are in Spain, which could be half a million people. Seven migrant status regularization processes have been completed so far, the last of which was in 2005.
Migrant workers in transport
Alex Gilbert He is the managing director of the company Tessa: “We lack drivers. What this whole situation has brought us is the stopping of buses. There is nothing more dramatic than having the material resources, but not the human resources.”
José Luis Tordesillas prepares to go to work as a bus driver from Tisza to Girona. He is Colombian, lives in Gandia, and the company offered him free housing for three months because they could not find drivers in the Girona area.
“I had an interview with Alexandra and Perry, from HR. I told them about the situation and they told me that if I was willing to come, they would help me stay for three months, with the idea of seeing whether I would be able to adapt or not. I see that there are many possibilities to find a job in Girona and this is what I think suits me.”
TESA provides facilities for drivers to prepare food, as another facility for those arriving from abroad. In addition, it provides training to people who work in slaughterhouses in the area, where they receive lower wages and fewer night hours. Moving into the transportation sector can be an economic and social improvement.
Alex Gilabert emphasizes that they tried “to find a professional outlet for people who were in other sectors so that they could get better wages by facilitating their training.”
The job of bus driver – or truck driver – no longer attracts local young people due to long working hours and difficulty reconciling it with family life.
In the company Tisza employs 96 foreign workers of 36 different nationalities. Beginners drive minibuses and can choose between different services to find what they like best.
“I like the roads between cities because dealing with people is not easy, there are different people, some are calm and some are aggressive, depending on the personality of each person. The idea is to keep moving forward, because in this world the formation can continue.”
Growing professionally in the personal care sector
Doris Logroño is from Ecuador and works in Collaborative audio For 20 years. He is responsible for the cleaning unit in one of the specialized companies in this group, which employs 5,000 people. Most of them are for home care for elderly dependents, which are paid for by the public administration.
“My first job was to go out and do full or permanent cleanings. Little by little, the number of clients increased. We started with three or four workers and now we are about 150 or 160. I am now one of the managers of the cleaning unit.”
90% of the people who work at Suara are women who devote their efforts mainly to direct care, but there are also management positions and participation in the cooperative’s governing bodies.
More than 500 people in this company hold foreign citizenship, although many Spaniards have obtained citizenship in recent years.
Monica Vasquez, Suara’s personnel director, says 12% of the workforce is of migrant origins, mostly from Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and also Morocco, among the main nationalities.
“Yes, it is true that there is a part of the workforce that has been here for a long time and has been nationalized, and it will not be found in the 12% of the database. We have a policy that encourages internal promotion and that professionals can take paths where they can take on different responsibilities.”
to’The arrival of migrants in Catalonia has accelerated Once the 2008 crisis and the Covid pandemic are overcome. Its contribution is one of the reasons for economic growth in recent years.
Ten thousand foreign doctors work in Catalonia
There are more than ten thousand foreign doctors in Catalonia Most of them work from Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia. According to data from the Council of Medical Faculties of Catalonia, these professionals are represented 22% of the total practitioners in the country.
Natalia Gomez is a psychologist who was born in Colombia, studied in her country and came to Catalonia to expand her knowledge.
“I decided to come to study, I did a master’s degree in rehabilitation and then I started my doctorate. Let’s just say that’s when the difficulties and problems started. They don’t pay you what you should to become a specialist. But in the end you settle it because you work on your specialty. “
All board-certified doctors hold the title of licensed physician, but most have many more Problems in verifying specializationThis is partly due to differences in educational systems.
But doctors also condemn arbitrariness. Ana Graciela Angulo is Head of the Department of Non-EU-Trained Physicians at the College of Physicians of Barcelona.
“It takes five to seven years to give an answer, and most answers are negative. Only 15% of doctors surveyed admitted, and that’s very few. The rest of us do our specialty under supervision, waiting for a negative result or a positive answer.”
Abdel Hakim Mustafa was born in Lebanon, studied medicine in Cuba with a scholarship from its government, and completed his specialty in Spain. He now works at Saint Pau Hospital in the advanced cardiac imaging service to improve surgical interventions.
“We came to do MIR here, I did residency as a cardiologist and I subspecialized in cardiac imaging. What we do here is create a digital twin of our patients’ organs and we practice what is called ‘digital surgery’ to perform surgery, and there are surgeries, such as maxillofacial surgery or treatment Trauma, where time can be reduced by fifty percent.
More than half of the doctors registered in recent years are foreigners, and Catalan healthcare could not function the same way without them.
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