Granada, El Ejído...
Scattered reflections from the South.
posted by mr. p @ 4:23 PM
Convivencia
An appraisal of Spain´s recent policy of regularization for immigrants -- within the context of EU constitutional crumpling, kaleidoscopic population flows, ethnic violence, "warehouse" detention centers and human rights abuses, Spain´s construction boom, labor demand, an aging Spain, and the vanishing townships of yesteryear.
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I just want to jot down some hearsay from recent days here...
"In Granada, the city sets the rhythm to the people, and the people and the earth obey." - rough translation from conversation with waiter, 6/25
"And this English veteran of the first World War moved to the Alpujarras. And the region was still so isolated that many people had no idea that there´d been a World War at all. So when he said he´d been at war, they all assumed it was against the Muselman." - P. conversation 6/26. In reference to book "South of Granada" by Gerald Brena.
"There is a big difference between the Subsaharan Africans and the Moroccans. You´d hire a Central or Subsaharan african before a Moroccan. Because the Moroccans, especially from the North, don´t like to do hard work. They are a trading people. So they set up businesses. But there are a million challenges they face, and many end up in the black market."
J.M. Conversation 6/26
"When I first decided to stay in Spain, I found a job as a waiter at a Moroccan restaurant on the beach. And at first it was a good set-up -- they offered me my own room, food, and about forty dollars a day.
But the next week, they moved me out of my room into a room with a Moroccan family. And within two weeks I went from working 8 hours to 11 hours a day. And finally they just stopped paying me. But it´s hard, because really what are you going to do? If you quit, they throw you out of the house, and there´s no time to look for another job if you want to keep the one you have." Conversation P. 6/26
(I spoke today 4.7 with M., an Andalucian native who worked near Dusseldorf for ten years during the 70´s and 80´s., then returned to Spain. His German is still very fluent, though clearly with little formal training. I can´t quote him directly but a few of my observations.
-- absolute contempt for the Gitanos and a guarded prejudice against Morocco.
-- an insistence that Andalucia had very little in the way of common heritage with Morocco. His one concession was that Flamenco music may have an Arabic influence - but definitely not a Gitano heritage.
-- An insistence that his experience as an immigrant laborer in Germany for 10 years in no way resembled the experience of immigrants to Spain today. His example was the black market, which he said no Spanish worker in Germany before the fall of Franco ever participated in.
From a conversation with a similar Spaniard, who spent 31 years working in Germany. He saw more similarities between the situation of his generation of Andulusian emmigrant workers and the immigrants currently battling at Spain´s gates. The only distinction he made was with regards to language: He learned German, and claims now that he speaks German better than Spanish. He conceded, however, that he learned German as part of a government-funded program.
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