Anger at austerity replaces ‘la crisis’ revolt
“I live in an apartment near Plaça de Lesseps in the Gràcia district of Barcelona. I lost my job about six months ago. I had been working for the last 40 years. I’m a salesman. I sold kitchen furniture. I’ve worked for five different companies during my career.
“I used to work for a basic salary of €1,100 a month plus commission. On average, I used to get about €600 commission a month; perhaps €200 one month, then €1,000 commission the next month. It depended.
“It became very difficult to sell to people over the last three or four years. Nobody has money to buy things like furniture. My old company started leaking money as the work dried up. They had to let me go.
“The unemployment money I get now every month is not enough to support myself and my wife and our son, who is 20 and studying in university. We have a daughter, too. She’s 27. She lives in Zaragoza. She’s also unemployed.
“It’s very difficult in this country at the moment.”
“I studied philosophy at the University of Barcelona. Now I’m studying music in Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya.
“Last year I was getting employment benefit of €420 a month for 10 months because I had worked for four years so I had built up welfare credits. Now I will get €399 for six months as part of Plan Prepara. They help you to take courses to get a job.
“I live in the Eixample neighbourhood in Barcelona with my parents. It would be too expensive to get a place of my own; to rent a room in an apartment in Barcelona costs about €300 a month.
“More than 50% of my friends were out of work. None of them have employment benefits payments. They work part-time jobs for dinero negro. They sell wrist bands on the street or drugs or work for, say, four hours in a bar every now and again.
“In Spain, the anger has passed about “la crisis”. We don’t care so much about the bankers and property developers, about who caused the problems. What young people are angry about now is the new politics of austerity. We’re angry with our politicians. Instead of injecting money into the economy, they’re taking money from the people — money people don’t have.
“I own a ladies boutique, Nunita, in a district called El Born in Barcelona. Before moving to Barcelona I used to have a business selling vintage furniture in New Jersey, America.
“I opened Nunita in Oct 2008, a month after the global financial crisis started in earnest. The timing couldn’t have been worse.
“Local people in Barcelona are not buying. We had to change the concept of Nunita to target tourists. They’re about our only hope. A couple of years ago, we used to sell 50/50 to locals and tourists. Now locals account for maybe 5%.
“We don’t want locals in the store because they don’t want to buy. Like yesterday, there was this old lady. She said, “Oh, this is beautiful. It’s perfect. The price is right,” and this is what she said, what all the locals say when they leave: “I’m going to think about it.”
“We have cut our expenses a lot. We looked at everything this year. We even changed phone operator to save €10 on our monthly phone bill.
“Our insurance for our stock was very pricey. Since our merchandise is very cheap this year, our insurance is 10% of what it used to be.
“Our two biggest expenses are staff and rent. Now my husband and I work full-time in the store. We had to let a sales assistant go in February. Her monthly wage was €900, but we had to pay an extra €400 a month to the government to cover her social security.
“We re-negotiated our rent this year so it has dropped by 10%, but we still pay a lot — €2,500 a month, plus an extra €500 to the government.
“On our street in El Born, 60% of the stores have closed since we opened Nunita four years ago, and the ratio of closures would be worse in most other shopping streets.
Since we’ve been on this street, I’ve seen shops that have changed owners or businesses three or four times.
“This past five months was good because of all the changes we’ve made. I have no idea what’s going to happen.
“Because we changed the business, it looks as if it will survive but now that the winter is coming and the tourists are not going to come we don’t know.
“If we sell, we buy and if we don’t sell, we don’t buy. If we survive, we’re going to have a very stable business.”
“I’m an actress, the only one to do Molly Bloom in Catalan in Barcelona. My last job was a couple of years ago at the National Theatre in Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba alongside Núria Espert.
“Now it’s difficult to get work. I don’t have time to look. My father has passed away and my mother has been in a nursing home for the last year. There are problems with her health almost every day. I have one sister. She works at the natural science museum.
“It costs more than €2,200 a month to keep my mother in the nursing home. She has a pension and a widow’s pension but it’s not enough to cover the costs.
“I pay €250 a month rent. I’m lucky — I’ve had a contract with my landlord forever. I’ve been living there for almost 30 years. If I was to look for the same apartment today in Gràcia, my neighbourhood, it would cost €600 a month at least.
“I have a little bit of money that an aunt left me and I get €400 a month unemployment benefits, but that is finishing soon. I don’t know what will happen, but I have done many things in my life. I’ve worked in bars and restaurants, as a market researcher, as a real estate agent, as a biology teacher, as a teacher of dance and movement. I take things day by day.”
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