Hard times in Spain

I know the crisis has hit all parts of the world, but here in Spain, it is quite visible. As you walk through the countryside, there are hundreds of unfinished houses, apartment buildings, commercial buildings, hotels, etc. The crisis just stopped everything in its tracks. Unemployment is unbelievably high (I have met many unemployed or "pre-retired" Spaniards), and the recent forecast is that it will take 15 years for Spain to recover the employment levels that it had before the crisis. That of course means that there is a lost generation of young people who will be part of the fall-out. In Spain, there is a slang term for them -- the "nini generation" (the "neither nor" generation) -- ni estudia, ni trabaja (they neither study nor work). You can see these kids in every major town or city you walk through, sitting on the stairs or in plazas, almost always smoking cigarettes (which, at 4 euros a pack, seem like they would be out of their price range). It´s depressing to think that these kids will probably never get a shot at a productive life. The lucky ones have parents or family who can support them. The rest depend on Spain´s safety net, which is much more generous than ours (how hard could that be?). But though they may have income and social security handouts, they don´t have the dignity that comes from work, and that is very sad.

When I arrived in Madrid on May 16, the 15 May movement (15-M) had just begun in Madrid. Thousands of unemployed occupied the Puerta del Sol and they all sent email messages and twitter or whatever else sends messages far and wide, and soon, people in all sorts of Spanish cities were occupying the main plaza, agitating for work and new government policies.

 As I have been walking, I´ve seen people camped out in Segovia, Valladolid, and now Leon, all very respectful, but all trying to make the point that people need work. There are posters every where, one that particularly caught my attention read: "We´re not anti-system, the system is anti-us." The human price tag of all of this will be very high, I´m sure.