6 Ways Spain is RAPIDLY Changing

[Music] so number one is tapas culture disappearing number two is far right politics here to stay in Spain and number three is climate change changing the way we live in this country mostly I have the feeling in the last couple of years you know post pandemic a lot of things have changed and very fast so we want to share these changes that are happening in the country with you because maybe you're thinking of living in Spain of moving here and it's important to have a clear-eyed understanding of what's going on in the country that you would like to move to or even if you're looking to travel here as a tourist I think some of these things are going to potentially affect your trip and you should be aware of them and this is going to be a mixture of some data and also our experiences living here as someone well at kiwi who's lived here for 12 years in espanol who has lived here pretty much her whole life apart from those five years where I took you to New Zealand and I should say it is great to have Yoli back by popular demand doing these videos at home again thank you for asking for me guys so let's kick off with something that's really dear to well my heart you're hot I think very very dear and your hearts as well Tapas right tapasbas the kind of the lifeblood of Spanish communities or you know what traditionally was the lifeblood of Spanish communities and still is in a way but Tapas bars the number of them in the country is decreasing it has been decreasing for years and so there are 10 percent less bars in Spain traditional bars than they were 10 years ago but the number of restaurants in Spain are rising I get the feeling that after the pandemic some people maybe a lot of people are being drawn to the more calmer environment of having your table having your space than the kind of the hustle and bustle of a bar or standing they're looking for a little bit more Comfort I don't know this is what I'm thinking do you see this I mean we definitely got very comfy you know during the pandemic at home and so that means I mean I walk past a really busy bar nowadays and I'm like you know another way I'm gonna go in I'm not I haven't got yeah that worries me Ollie I haven't gone that far but but I think there might be something going on there the other thing is that look and we're going to talk about immigration in one in this video later on but there are more International options here in Spain to eat there's more Chinese restaurants for example and you eat Chinese food generally in a Chinese restaurant and not in a tapas bar people have more options for where to go and eat and so when you go out it's like am I going to go to the to the restaurant and or am I going to go and stand at the bar you know 40 50 years ago it was the the bar right yeah okay so that's what's happening less Tapas bars more restaurants but what about the mom and pop side of things the kind of family run places why are there less of those so family run bars and restaurants I guess are struggling because I mean one in rural places uh they struggle because there is a huge depopulation of rural areas in Spain you're one bar that you had in your small village um you know needs needs support right needs the the support of the people that live there if no one lives there so it's actually even a movement amongst rural bars that um say that they need the support from the government so you know we'll be kind of like subsidized bars which will feel very Cuban and then there's also uh the family run places that are struggling in the cities because the rent prices are going up the roof uh that's obviously very very uh hard for family run business to um you know survive it actually also leads to more franchises because those big brands are the ones that are going to be able to pay the rent every month and you know Netflix and chill people stay at home so we love it yeah we uh do you know what it means of course I didn't yeah okay Boomer if that's the crisis of Tapas bars it's also a bit of a crisis in the Tapas bars someone said it's harder in some areas to go out spontaneously because it's all reservations so what we're seeing these days is more and more places that once you could just walk into the bar and stand around find your spot get your elbows out more and more places are requiring you to book a table also uh you see a lot of cues you know of people waiting to just get in you know in in those places where they won't take our reservations maybe uh but they still want to like control the numbers of people the number of people that are inside some people might prefer the kind of the the controls the calmer thing you said you were a bit nervous you're a bit nervous when you see a busy bar you know like the idea of like the hustle and bustle and like being really in there and like it's really fun but I don't know you know we have a baby I'm tired as well so disappointed so disappointed I married you for Because You Loved I mean all I'm gonna say is that you do need a lot of energy to go in a hustle and battle Ambiance you know like really go and go for it yeah we gotta move on because this is killing me uh you know we'll talk about this later but for those of you are still still on my side and are actually energized uh by the hustle and bustle don't worry it's still there and we're not talking about all bars not all bars are closing not all bars have queues not all bars or things so one of the things we've always known about Spain or always heard is that it is just it has the perfect climate it's the place you want to go because it's healthy you're outside you're loving the sun it's still true in a lot of ways but it is changing what is the current temperature outside Yoli can you check what temperature we have in the oven right now 37 degrees this is a shift that's that's happening that that I we experience right it's obviously in the news with climate change it's just getting hotter uh throughout the world but you notice that in a place like Madrid when the Summers have always been very hot anyway but also what I'm seeing is that you know for the first time people who are looking at coming here as tourists are getting a little nervous I got a few emails from people saying oh my God I'm going to be in Madrid in August am I going to die they're looking at the news that feeling of like just you know getting out of your house and just being hit by this massive heat um wasn't there I wasn't there when I was growing up but you know one thing I always talk to people about is like Spain's climate is not just one thing there are many uh climates within this very very country right and so the north is very different interestingly enough at Northern Spain are of course I just linked through this whole heat issue is becoming a really popular destination uh for tourists and you can understand I mean I see this in well first our experience a week and a half after filming this video we're going to Galicia for uh they're nice and cool for yeah for a whole month because it's cooler up there in Northern Spain it's Greener it's cooler it rains more it's still hotter than it used to be but if right now for example it's 38 Madrid the place we're going to is possibly going to be about well why don't you have a look but I'm going to say 26. 36 I say 26. phew 27. 27 is that what I said you guys be the judge you know what I said hey real quick so when you're traveling overseas or even if you're using your phone or computer outside your home are you using a VPN because if you're not you're going to want to hear about today's sponsor expressvpn a service that I use imagine you're in a busy restaurant in Madrid and you're using your phone and you're connected to the the restaurant's public Wi-Fi it's kind of like swimming in shark infested waters so you see all your personal data passwords and banking info are all potentially exposed and hackers can make thousands of dollars selling your info to unscrupulous customers so what expressvpn does is it creates a secure tunnel between your device and the internet so that hackers can't get in there so for example on the recent video I Shot about traveling around on Spanish fast trains whenever I connected to to the Train's Wi-Fi and all the trains had Wi-Fi I always used expressvpn so I opened the app I just tapped connect and I was protected all my data was protected okay so why not start protecting your online sensitive data today with expressvpn and get an extra three months for free by going to expressvpn.com Spain revealed okay so I have a question for you Yoli the year you were born 1983 how many non-spain-born residents lived in Spain I'm gonna say as a percentage sorry as a percentage ah percentage three percent half a percent wow half a percent so in 1983 one half a percent of people in Spain were like me right they were residents here but they were wondering yeah they were residents here but they weren't born here but you know Spain traditionally has always been up until more recent times a country of immigration a country people you know and I'm you know look I'm talking about say the 20th century right a country that people left yeah so after the the Civil War there was a there was a lot of you know Republicans those who were fighting against Franco went into Exile and then later in the 20th century between 1959 and 1973 more than a million people left Spain uh to move to Europe looking for work the economy was really tough yeah you know and I know you have personal experience with this well my granddad I was one of those uh million people uh that went to he went to Germany uh to you know get a better life a better salary and send money me back home but now this is a country of immigrants so right now or in 2022 the number of residents in Spain who were born outside the country is almost 16 of the population so just think about that in 1993 it was half a percent and now it's 16 when you grew up like there was half a percent of people from outside the country what were you weren't used to seeing Oh my God no like immigrants right the first time that I ever had a classmate who was black and that was when I was like about 16 years old oh really yeah yeah when you first moved to a country you don't set up a business right you don't open a restaurant you just kind of find your feet and things like that so it's almost like what we're starting to see now and going from half percent in 83 to now having 16 is people who are you know have been living here for a period of time and they're having the confidence or the wherewithal to start a business to start a Chinese restaurant a Mexican restaurant or or whatever it may be and so we're seeing more options I mean just in the dining is one obvious choice and two people totally independently said that it is much easier now in Spain wherever they live to find Asian ingredients yeah compared to you know say 10 years ago I think what I kind of made me feel is that when we talk about oh my God Tupper spots are closing it can feel like a crisis but I guess you can reflect on it as well and say well Spain is inside yeah it's got more variety now you can still get Tapas but there's there's from this the fact that there's more immigrants here it means it's it's a more varied country which makes it a more interesting country uh but it's understandable when you come as a tourists it's what we make videos about yeah well exactly drumroll please yolly because we're going to get into the serious stuff I mean it's all been pretty serious but politics and people say they often want me to talk about politics and other people say they don't want me to talk about politics but today we're going to give you the fact here come the ins and the outs uh we're four days out at the time of recording this recording us the 19th of July four days out from national elections in the country and so we don't know what's going to happen in those elections you will be watching this video after the election so it's a bit of a funny old moment to be recording this okay like it and read it and like I feel very nervous about it so I know a lot of people in this audience and I see people in the move to play Master Class who are concerned about the rise of far-right politics particularly the Vox party in Spain so since democracy uh came to Spain in the late 70s more or less there was 30 years more or less and this is a generalization of really a two-party system I mean constitutionally Spain is as a democratic countries always have multi-party system but it's really two parties the pesoi on the left and the Pepe the partio popular on the right and they just kind of went back and forth but that'll change but that all changed dramatically in 2008 uh we had a huge economic crisis in Spain as you know in the world as well uh plus a well a lot of corruption uh cases that were discovered in the following years this huge economic crisis translated into the right of uh far-right um parties in countries in Europe right but what happened in Spain is that the power actually shifted to the left instead of to the right in 2014 uh podemos which is this new left-wing party that was created became a the third viable political party um at the polls interesting at the same time that podemos was formed more or less uh sort of just in 2013 to begin in 2014 another party was formed and that is Vox was formed at the end of 2013. Vox was just like this tiny party like I have I have the data here that it went in 2015 Vox got .23 of the vote in the 2015 election while there was you know far-right parties gaining power in Europe people in Spain would say no we're immune to that in Spain because of the experience of the dictatorship and the Civil War what I think is interesting and this is kind of what we wanted to talk about is you know why this party kind of appeared out of nowhere in the polls later than in some other places and after a big surge to the left as well and I was reading about different political analysts and they were giving different reasons and they kind of boiled it down to to three real things right one is that kind of we have a generation well we totally have a generation of people now in Spain who do not remember the Civil War sure who don't remember Franco and so that whole idea that uh we're immune to the far-right because we have had that experience is well that's not in a lot of people's memories anymore so it's kind of not relevant to them right the second one that came up you mentioned corruption and so there was a lot of Voters for the pp that just got frustrated with the level of corruption in their party and so we're looking for an alternative and and there hadn't been an alternative until Vox came about but what I think is most interesting is that you know going from such a small percentage in 2015 Vox you know 0.23 to you know 15 in 2019 what happened in there and the real huge thing that people point to was the attempt at Independence and all the stuff that went on there in Catalunya and that was really uh leveraged by Vox uh to to draw voters right there's a famous saying about from a from a Spanish philosopher which is medulla espanol Espana meduele and it's like Spain pains me and I think the experience for what kind of ores Spaniards has been that this is a country that has always had this big struggle between left and right so what we're living through now although it has a different face and it feels more dangerous in a lot of ways is a part of this history right there's a part of the history and it's nothing no it's not coming out of a vacuum exactly it's not actually unexpected it is not it is and so I think maybe because Spain in recent years particularly around gay rights and you know gay marriage for example and and other different laws have been passed that has under understandable perceptions being a very Progressive liberal country which it is in a lot of ways but there's always this tension in Spain and that is a part of Spain in another area where there has been huge change is in feminism and the rights of women uh I mean throughout my lifetime uh really uh when I was growing up feminism wasn't I mean it was a thing but it was quite Niche and that was the 80s right yeah yeah this was the 80s and and he was just kind of regarded as something that like you know like a punk rockers and like people that really were kind of edgy and they were also feminists you know I mean I'm exaggerating but it was a little bit like that you know and and nowadays I would say that feminism is quite uh mainstream right women's roles have changed uh dramatically my mom uh didn't go to university none of my aunties went to University either but nowadays however I mean my friends they're all professionals they've all gone through uh University and they're not expected to to be stay at home moms and what about the legal side like I know there's been different laws that have passed and uh so there's been uh yeah huge advances in terms of uh the rates of women uh there's been large passes um to protect women uh from domestic or gender uh violence uh new reproductive laws and and rights about abortion and so on and there's also uh the parental leave that is now four months for both uh women and uh men feminism nowadays is mainstream you won't find a political party that um says that they're not feminists even Vox says that they're feminist um I mean you know they do deny the existence of domestic violence uh did you say that it's Family Violence right it's not specific I could kind of go both ways yeah yeah specific to to women that's what they say also recently uh there was some poll that said that 20 of young Spanish men think that domestic violence isn't real so yeah over the last few decades there's been huge advances for women uh but again we're living a moment of change perhaps so this may change in the future we'll see uh but yeah we just wanted to give you an update on feminism in Spain too I would love to know we would love to know you know do you like this format great to have Yoli back in the chair great to be back in the chair what topics would you like us to talk about you know sitting here in our Lounge about Spanish society and culture because we'd love to share more with you but let us know in the comments below I know I just stuck my tongue out but anyway we better go we're gonna go and pick up our daughter and the babysitters all right oh and just quick thing that we forgot to say that if you're new here and you want to watch more videos of us me and Yoli talking about Spain culture Etc then I've made a playlist for you it'll be appearing in one of these corners and we'll see you over there in a moment ciao

Channel: Spain Revealed

Views: 121,498

Keywords: james black spain, james blake spain, yoly james, spain revealed, yoly spain, spain couple, spain guide, yolly james, yoli james

Id: NnF3mELUSBI

Length: 19min 6sec (1146 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2023