Don't come to live in Spain if...

Hola amigos, Stuart here from Spain speaks with another vlog today today we're going to look at some of the reasons not to come to Spain and I was scouring the internet looking for possible things to talk about and I came across a blog post from 2007 and in this blog post the person listed a number of reasons why you shouldn't come to Spain or don't come to Spain if you don't like certain things so I'm going to talk about some of those things today on my way to work so let's go now the first thing I'm going to say is that in general I like Spain I like living in Spain I've been here for 20 years I'm used to living in Spain so I don't agree with all of the things on the list there were things like don't come to Spain if you don't like hot weather obviously don't come to Spain if you don't like immigration we could talk about that don't come to Spain if you don't like foreigners so some of the things were a little bit tongue-in-cheek but there were three points specifically that were mentioned that I think we should talk about and these are things that you should keep in mind if you're deciding to come to this country now I'm gonna separate coming to Spain to work or coming to Spain in your working years when you're actively working I'm gonna talk about coming to Spain when you're retired now firstly if you are retired I can only see pros about living in this country especially if you're coming from a northern European country where the weather's not too good and if you're able to kick back on your Northern European pension you're gonna have a fantastic quality of life in this country however if you are coming here to work three of the points are related to that or at least two of the points are related to that topic so topic number one don't come to Spain if you're looking for job security and a good salary the only people in Spain that have job security are civil servants and you can only be a civil servant if you're Spanish I don't know whether that'll change in the future I think there maybe is some type of agreement that you can come from another European country if you're a civil servant and work in the Spanish Civil Service but I don't think it's easy but if you are going to work in the Spanish labor market as I have spoken about many times before job security and high salaries are not one of the positive things the job market in this country sucks I'll say it like that it is no good and it doesn't seem to get better just seems to get worse even people that have had a job in the private sector for 20 years don't feel secure in their jobs a lot of the time and that's one of the things that you know you really have to consider should you be planning to come to Spain and work low salaries are also part of the deal here in Spain Spanish government loves to take tax loves to take your social security contributions and okay you do get health care you do get a pension when you retire but geez I'll tell you it is not easy to save money especially when you have kids suppose it's like that everywhere but here it seems particularly bad and salaries have been stagnant now for a long time I think they're starting to get a little bit better because theoretically we aren't in a crisis anymore but rumors are that another crisis is just around the corner so we'll see what happens with regard to salaries in the near future and apparently the crisis that is going to come is going to be one of those ones that does affect the job market so we might be going to experience an increase in unemployment levels in the coming months which is a shame because Spanish unemployment levels at the moment are around 13 or 14 percent in Madrid even higher and some of the other areas in Spain so it's not going to be good if unemployment does start to rise again the second point this person makes is that don't come to Spain if you're not prepared to learn Spanish and that's sort of related to the job market point there now of course you can come here teach English and live in your bubble or you can go and live down there on the Costa del Sol or Alicante or somewhere like that with this big expat communities and you don't have to learn Spanish although I recommend that you do learn Spanish because I think you can integrate and feel more comfortable here if you do decide to learn the language but you don't have to but if you want to work in the labour market here in Spain a very high level of Spanish is going to be fundamental you're going to have to have a fluent level in Spanish because you are competing with Spanish people for those jobs if you teach English like me Spanish is not a hundred percent necessary but you will need basic Spanish or an intermediate level Spanish to be able to communicate to the students you have in your class because a lot of the times they are looking for that explanation in their language especially if their lower level students so learning Spanish is going to be one of the things that you're going to have to do now I see this as a positive because learning another language for me I think is it's it's you know it's it's something that you do to to grow learning another language whether it's Spanish whether it's Portuguese whether it's German whether it's an Italian to be able to communicate with people in another language is great and it's something that I do not regret having done I learned Spanish a long time ago and it has helped me in this country on the day today because you know when you do need to communicate with people when you do need to get things done you can't be relying on people to speak English because in a majority of the country people either don't have a good English level or they don't have any English language skills at all which is completely understandable you go to Australia for example the only people that speak other languages are people that come from non-english speaking backgrounds very few people learn languages so I see it as a plus to be able to learn the language and it will help you the better you become the more opportunities you will have in the job market that's a bit of a contradiction because the job market is not very good but the scarce opportunities that do exist will be enhanced if you are able to be Spanish so that is something that you will need to do so don't come to Spain if you're not prepared to learn Spanish and the third point that this person mentions that I do agree with is that don't come to Spain if you don't want to experience mafia style corruption now I've often thought about this that you know Spain in Italy similar countries in Italy we've got the Mafia we know that the Mafia exists I mean at least they're upfront we know that Italy has a mafia we know that the Cosa Nostra is there we know that you know if you go to Naples there's going to be mafia activity but here in Spain there's no recognized mafia so sometimes I ask myself the question who are the Mafia in Spain or where is the Mafia here in this country and basically it's in the political system it has to be it's in the business and the political system that's where the Mafia is here in Spain there's a big black economy there's lots of players in this black economy and politicians basically as we have seen over the years operate basically like the Italian mafia do or the way Tony Soprano does in The Sopranos that's that mafia style that you get here like I said it's not transparent you don't actually know who these people are but there is that mafia style corruption here and it can affect you so when Spain went through its five or six year crisis and all of these corruption scandals were popping up the mafia style corruption became evident and if you talk to people around the place they say yeah well the you know the scandals in five years times are the ones that are happening now you don't know that they're happening but they will come out in the years to come now here I am at my destination so I'll start to sign this vlog off questions or comments please leave them in the section below give the video a thumbs up if you liked it if you've got any other reasons why you shouldn't come to Spain or if you think that all of the things that I've just mentioned a rubbish please leave your comments in the section below hasta luego

Channel: Spain Speaks

Views: 540,372

Rating: 4.6794128 out of 5

Keywords: living in spain, don't live in spain if, moving to spain, expat spain, working in spain, spain job market

Id: bviwE5OgESU

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 23 2019