The Spanish Exodus
ALAN, RAY
SAFETY VALVE AND SIPHON The Spanish Exodus By Ray Alan Madrid "How's your brother these days?" asks Pepe. 'I haven't seen him for ages." "My poor brother!" sighs Paco. "He's gone where...
...Hundreds more depart monthly for Switzerland, the Benelux countries and Australia...
...At least one of Spain's three political police services is known to be worried by the security threat represented by Spanish emigrants who spend their summer vacations in Spain, as did over 800,000 last year...
...Semi-official talks between Spanish and German industrialists and economists held within the framework of a "German Technical Week" in Madrid established agreement on the need to increase German investment in Spain...
...Language difficulties deter professional men from joining the rush to the European El Dorado, but Spain's current hemorrhage is no less serious...
...He's got a job in Germany...
...Ray Alax is a British correspondent who regularly reports on Europe, Africa and the Middle East...
...Nobody knows exactly how many Spaniards have left their country during the last 25 years...
...The 1962 total was about 300,000...
...According to government statistics...
...Working a sixday week, 10 hours most days, he earns 2,800 pesetas (under $47) a month—inclusive of overtime (70 hours), a "hardship bonus" of 7 cents a day (paid for dangerous or exceptionally heavy work), and a family allowance for three children...
...When I held out my hand it cost them quite an effort to shake it...
...Ya, the leading Catholic daily, puts the 1961 figure at 200,000, pointing out that many left the country as tourists and failed to return or (since passports and exit visas are expensive and may be withheld for political reasons) simply crossed the frontier illegally...
...and," as he said, "I'll have a real union to protect me...
...The joke at the head of this article originated in embittered Falangist circles...
...Nearly 30 per cent of today's emigrants are classified as "skilled" or "specialized" industrial workers...
...But no urgent government action to discourage emigration is expected...
...and even today, according to the official journal of the Bilbao chamber of commerce, the purchasing power of the legal minimum wage—60 pesetas ($1) a day—is less than that of the minimum wage fixed by the Republic in 1936...
...the brunt of the 1959 stabilization decrees and devaluation was borne by the workers...
...Opportunities for vocational training are being expanded, but only half-heartedly, since—to quote the Falangist Voz de Espana—it seems "illogical for Spain, which is short of skilled workers, to train them only to see them emigrate at the first opportunity...
...The same point was made in the preamble of a draft law intended to stimulate Spanish exports of finished goods, published in Madrid last winter...
...and since the émigrés associate the Church with the Franco regime, they are suspicious of the priests who are periodically sent out from Spain to make contact with Spanish emigrant communities...
...For another, emigrants' remittances to members of their families remaining in Spain have become an indispensable source of foreign exchange, amounting to the equivalent of $116 million in 1961 and $175 million in 1962...
...money will no longer be the factor determining the educational opportunities open to his children...
...At the end of 1960 there were 27,000 Spaniards in the Federal German Republic...
...The exiled Spanish Socialist party's weekly, published in Toulouse, is finding an expanding readership among the emigrants...
...and many of the unskilled are (for their occupational category) exceptionally intelligent and adaptable...
...Catholic sources say the total was nearer 650,000...
...Some idea of the loss Spain suffered in the pre-1959 emigration may be gathered from the catalogue of 3,500 works by Spanish émigrés in Latin America compiled in connection with a recent book fair in Mexico City: Their authors included 610 university and high-school professors, 601 other teachers, 1,195 officers and established civil servants, 375 members of the medical and pharmaceutical professions, 548 engineers, architects and technicians, 434 judges and advocates, and 109 journalists, novelists and other writers...
...A worker employed on a major hydroelectric project showed me his paysheets recently...
...Yesterday 1 went into a cafe patronized by Spanish workers [in Switzerland...
...Economic rather than political motives underlie the present wave of emigration, though the two are sometimes linked—notably in the conviction of many emigrants that General Franco's regime has a basic anti-worker bias...
...There are already shortages of some skills, and more will become apparent . . . unless the pace of vocational training is stepped up...
...Even Falangists admit that half a million more left in 1945-58...
...Many Spaniards fear that the continued outflow of skilled, industrious workers may jeopardize their nation's hopes of putting into effect a development plan based on the recommendations of the World Bank...
...The free movement of labor as well as capital is, moreover, one of the basic principles of the European Economic Community, with which the Spanish government is still seeking association...
...One such priest recently wrote in an unusually frank article in a Barcelona weekly: "They do not go to mass and they wish to have no contact with priests...
...Oh, he's not dead...
...Though barely literate on arrival (since General Franco's government devotes an even lower percentage of the national income to education than the governments of Portugal, Greece and Egypt), they are rapidly assimilated, linguistically and culturally: In many an urban school in southwest France the palmarès, or list of children receiving prizes for good work, reads like an extract from the Valencia or Saragossa telephone directories...
...During most of the 1950s, real wages were held down so as to permit heavy government expenditure on internal security and autarkic industrial development...
...Dissatisfaction with the sindicatos —the official and only trade unions —is widespread among Spanish workers and often referred to by emigrants...
...For one thing, emigration acts as a safety valve, siphoning off the most ambitious—and potentially most restless—workers...
...Hombre, that's terrible...
...Estimates range from 1.7-2.5 million...
...Most of the men among them are affiliated to Socialist, Catholic or Communist trade unions, and some have been found to be in possession of anti-Franco propaganda...
...As one Spanish businessman put it, "It is more humane to bring employment to our workers than to oblige them to emigrate in search of employment...
...What did he die of...
...59,000 emigrated in 1959, 79,000 in 1960, and 146,000 in 1961...
...Between 1945-58 most Spanish emigrants went to the Americas— chiefly Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela...
...Spanish officials are naturally distressed to see so many of their compatriots "voting with their feet" against the regime which General Franco claims to be "socially the most advanced in the world...
...Later this year he will be going to France where, for the same type of job, his basic pay will be twice his total earnings in Spain...
...He's gone where we'll all have to go in the end...
...The wife of one said: 'We have seen so much evil among the priests . . . '[Hemos visto tanto malo en los curas . . .'] They told me that Christianity ought, to their minds, to be totally different from what the Church practices in Spain...
...At least 450,000 fled to France when General Franco's forces conquered Catalonia...
...The Bank's mission to Spain observed in its report that the emigration of trained workers is undesirable "since the loss of such personnel could handicap the growth of Spanish industry...
...A Catholic publication friendly to the regime has admitted that over five million Spaniards are seriously undernourished and more than one million families do not even have a decent home...
...in Madrid alone, 28,000 families live in shacks while 48,000 recently completed luxury apartments are unoccupied for lack of tenants or purchasers...
...Efforts to persuade emigrants to maintain links with the Falange and sindicatos meet with little response...
...The emigrant's children, too, when in due course they follow their fathers, represent a loss to Spain and an asset to the country receiving them...
...today there are over 150,000, with 600-700 emigrants now leaving Spain for Germany every week...
...In addition, he will receive from the French State a family allowance of over $30 a month...
...Since 1959 France and Germany have been the principal beneficiaries...
...In 1961, 80,000 Spaniards were given permanent jobs and 30,000 short-term contracts in France alone...
Vol. 46 • August 1963 • No. 16
