Tag Archives: challenges

SPAIN

Navigating Chaotic Roommate Experiences: Sharing Spaces and Diverse Lives

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“Girls wanted, preferably”. It was one of the phrases that Julián, a 25-year-old teacher, had to hear most frequently during his search for a flat in Córdoba.

At that time (from this story about four years ago), I shared an apartment in the Andalusian city with two other people (boy and girl) and they all wanted to move.

After several refusals and many headaches, he decided to ask one of the landlords the reason for that decision. The answer was emphatic: “They are cleaner, more orderly”.

Julián’s testimony is not anecdotal. There are several men who, when asked during the preparation of this article, have said that, when looking for a space in a shared apartment, they always have to lose.

The data supports his statements: according to figures from Idealista, in the community of Madrid, one of those with the most stressed rents in the entire country, there are 2.8 apartments exclusively for girls for every apartment only for boys, almost triple.

The trend extends to other provinces with similar housing problems, such as the Balearic Islands, Valencia, Barcelona or Malaga.

The latter has the highest percentage of flats only for girls of all those analysed, with almost a third of the offer dedicated solely to them, while the former is the most equal.

Even so, the houses inhabited only by women double those that are exclusively for men.

Although the most common thing in sharing ads is for the apartment to be mixed, there are times when there is a clear preference for girls.

In fact, it is not uncommon to find in these ads texts like the following, found among shared apartments in Barcelona:

“Hello! We are looking for a girl for our apartment […]. It is essential that the girl is working and is for a long term (minimum one year). We are two Spanish girls and three boys”.

This other advertisement, to live together in a family home in Alpedrete (Madrid), has the same structure: “A room for rent for one or two people […]. preferably female.

There is no problem if there is a minor […]. There are three people on the floor: my partner, my mother and I”.

In general, rental prices in Spain have skyrocketed since the end of the pandemic. Many are those who, once the university period is over, are forced to continue sharing a flat because their economic situation does not allow them another type of home.

Antonio Carroza, president of Alquiler Seguro, supports this argument and adds that it is evident that “the general rise in prices and a deterioration in the working conditions of the population have caused the age at which young people can go to live to be delayed alone”.

In Spain, young people emancipate themselves at the age of 30, on average, one of the latest ages in the countries of the European Union, according to Eurostat figures.

Added to the scarcity in the offer for the male gender are other no less important questions: What are those flats that men live in? Do they pay more or less than women? How many people live?

The characteristics vary considerably depending on the province in question. In the case of Madrid, the rooms for women have an average price of 418.4 euros, while for men they amount to 431.2.

Barcelona is the one that presents the greatest divergences in this sense, since they pay an average of 800 euros, while they do not even touch 500.

In other places, like Malaga, size is the jarring element. While the girls’ flats have an average surface area of 133.5 m², the boys’ flats remain at 102.1.

This is also the average size of the masculine houses in Valencia, while those of the opposite gender tend to be about 10 m² larger.

The Balearic Islands is the one with the least distance between the two genres because the prices are, in both cases, much higher than in the rest of the country.

With the statistical issue resolved and the data agreeing with the men who regret having fewer rental options, it remains to try to understand how these differences are achieved.

Do women avoid sharing a flat with men? Do men really have a hard time finding a flat? What role do landlords play in all this? Aren’t girls also problematic?

Carroza estimates that the main criteria when looking for a partner are common preferences and tastes:

“More than girls looking for other girls to live with, in our files we have ads that give more weight to criteria such as age or origin.

For example, there are student flats that come from the same place because that gives them some confidence. In the end, you want people to contribute something to you”.

However, other people believe that the difference between being a partner or a partner is the most important thing..

“The Boys (Straight): Sucks”

Claudia, 32, lives in Madrid and is looking for a partner to live with. She works in the technology sector and already spends eight hours a day in a team of ten people in which she is the only woman. So when she gets home, she prefers to indulge in a bit of “girly energy for a change.”.

For her, in addition, there is another important factor in her preference for girls to share a flat, which consists in avoiding the possibility of the relationship becoming sexualized:

“I have not exactly experienced this with a flatmate, but people from my close environment, such as roommates of my couples or work colleagues, have developed small crushes for me on some occasions, with a situation that even became unpleasant”.

Nor would she have any problems living with gay boys, with whom “she has never felt violated”.

The testimony of Marcos (fictitious name since he prefers not to identify himself), who has shared a house for several years in the capital, is no less surprising.

The young man, 25 years old, works in a magazine. A few years ago he had a “somewhat difficult” experience with a colleague.

After a rather tense situation that lasted over time, the girl ended up punching the other member of the household and threw a clothesline at Marcos himself.

After this, they did not see each other again.. Despite the seriousness of the facts, he acknowledges that this moment was no worse than the only time he had lived with a “straight man”, which he qualifies as “the worst of all.”.

Two months of suffering

At the other end of the spectrum was Fran, a 25-year-old worker in the technology sector who, after living in Seville for four years, decided to change her environment and find a new home:

“It took me two months to find something decent, because that everything that was available at a normal price was only for girls or students”.

It also points out that the mixed apartments were “in worse areas” or had a higher price.

Something similar happened to Manuel, 18, who a few weeks ago went to Granada with three friends looking for a flat to share in his first year of university.

They saw four without any success. The landlords refused because they “preferred girls over boys”. When they asked why, one of them dropped that “boys always mess up more”.

María, currently an occupational therapist, also had a similar experience during her university years. He shared a flat in Malaga with three girls until the third year of his degree, when a friend of his asked him to occupy the room that had been left free.

Although in this case they had no problem, their landlady was quite reticent, since she maintained that “a boy is not going to take care of the apartment because boys are not usually very clean.”. María clarifies that in the end they not only succeeded, but the following year they all repeated.

Refuse boys to take care of investment

Sometimes, the landlords themselves veto the boys, as happened to Manuel or María’s friend, for issues related to cleanliness or tranquility.

The president of Alquiler Seguro points out that some owners consider that male tenants may pose a “little point of risk”, since “men tend to have more parties or take less care of the furniture”.

Alfredo has a flat for rent in Arganzuela (Madrid) where a girl currently lives and is looking for someone to occupy the spare room. On another occasion, he would not care about the gender of the new tenant, but in this case he is looking for a woman:

“There is currently a very young Argentinian girl who has just arrived in Spain in the apartment and I thought that she would be more comfortable with someone of the same gender. […]. It has nothing to do with cleanliness, tranquility or customs. I just think that this way I can make life easier for the girl.”.

And what about women?

The short answer to the question Are women never the problem? is no and the case of Eva is a representative example. The young woman began to share a flat in Madrid almost a decade ago and clearly remembers her worst experiences, all with girls, which are now her “best stories when having a drink”.

The first case, that of a classmate from the residence hall where she had been the first year and who offered her to share a flat. Although she already knew that the girl was a disaster, she did not expect how far things could go:

“We had to clean up after her. There was a table in the living room where she used to study and cleaning I found a piece of toast attached to some notes from January. We were, at least, in April […] The thing is that I loved that girl a lot because she was a very good aunt, but to live… well bad “.

Helena, a 22-year-old student, also experienced unpleasant situations not long after, when she decided it was a good idea to go live with four other friends she had just met at her residence: “It was one of the most chaotic decisions I’ve ever made”.

Coexistence deteriorated over time due to the incompatibility of the tenants, to the point of creating two completely opposing sides (at the level of a pitched battle).

Helena herself acknowledges that “going to live with interests so different from yours and without really knowing them is very difficult”. Her landlord did not allow boys because “girls are usually cleaner”.

One of his last experiences, it was with a boy and he admits that, although living together was going well, “you could tell that he was a man, especially when it came to cleaning”, which makes him “a little angry”.

The apartment was located in Carabanchel, an area of Madrid where apartments exclusively for girls account for more than a third of the total offer.

The data reflects this trend in other districts on the periphery, such as Moratalaz, Vallecas, Hortaleza or Vicálvaro, where this figure shoots up to 40.7%..

The definitive statement that could settle all controversy is perhaps that of Laura, a media employee who, at 29, has finally stopped sharing a flat: “Since I live alone, I no longer want to live with anyone”.

However, the current situation does not seem to change the most popular way of life (by obligation) of the young and the not so young who, when they can no longer cope with their partner, can only roll the dice again and wait for have better luck.

SPAIN

Challenges and Frustrations: Ecuadorian Expats Navigate Turbulent Elections and Security Crisis

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Gladys had everything ready from the very first hour. Ecuadorian flags, drink, food and Internet connection. His compatriots were arriving at his house in the Hortaleza neighborhood (Madrid) throughout the morning. They all wanted to vote together in the general elections in Ecuador on August 20.

It is the first time that everything is done electronically and they feared that there would be an altercation. María has been trying to vote since nine in the morning, but the page does not stop giving her an error. Eight people are already sitting around a round table in the courtyard, each with their mobile phone.

Sonia is in charge of helping the elderly with difficulties to understand the process. “Come on, it’s my turn, let’s see if there’s any luck,” says Eduardo Plaza, 70 years old. Two hours later, there was none.. Voting is being an odyssey.

Ecuadorians residing in Madrid have experienced two parallel realities during the last two months: on the one hand, the anguish and impotence due to the security crisis that their country is going through from a distance.

On the other, the exhaustion of the infinite virtual steps to follow to be able to vote in the elections. To “change things”, says Sonia, you have to vote; But it is not so easy. “The information has not been very fluid, they have assumed that we knew how to use the tools,” continues Eduardo.

In order to exercise their right, Ecuadorians living in Spain had to register on the electoral roll at the National Electoral Council (CNE).. Those who had problems, like Mercedes, 68, had to go to the Consulate to register.. “The vote is from nine to seven,” explains Sonia. It is three in the afternoon and, for the moment, only four of those present have managed to finish the process. It’s a mess: start it, wait for an email with a code that usually ends up in spam, enter the national identification number, take a selfie, choose the candidate… “I got an error again!” exclaims María.

Around 94,000 voters registered in the CNE register in Spain to participate in these elections. More than 18,000 did so in the Community of Madrid, the European region with the most Ecuadorian immigration (37,000).

A turbulent campaign

As each engages in a personal battle against their mobile device, they share their stories and opinions out loud.. “I can’t even vote for myself, it doesn’t work!” says Aída Quinatoa between laughs and frustration.

This lawyer and anti-eviction activist presents herself as an assembly member abroad for the Pachakatuik party, in defense of public policies.

“I wanted to vote for Fernando Villavicencio, but…”, explains Gladys.

The candidate was assassinated on August 9 at the exit of a rally. Gladys’s brother, an economist and journalist by profession, was a classmate of the politician at university. That day he went to see him at the event in Quito: they hugged and promised to greet each other properly after the event. That final meeting never happened: he was shot dead.

“He was a good person”, thinks Gladys. This electoral campaign was marked mainly by the security crisis. The Fernando Villavicencio thing was just the tip of the iceberg of the problem that the country is going through.

The culmination of a phenomenon that has permeated Ecuadorian society for four years: the rates of violence are soaring in a nation that, in the eighties, was considered “the island of peace.”. Days after the assassination of the presidential candidate, a local leader close to former President Rafael Correa was also shot in the province of Esmeralda.

Now there is restlessness, fear and unpredictable days. In 2022, more than 4,500 deaths due to violence were registered and only so far this year, that figure exceeds 3,500. The numbers suggest that the record for blood murders will be broken.

Everyone fears for their relatives on the other side of the pond. “My brother-in-law was kidnapped for two days three months ago. He is traumatized. They took $2,000 from him and released him on the condition that he hand over another $16,000 the next day. He did so, if they didn’t kill him,” explains Eduardo.

Others confronted those known as “vaccinators.” Cruz Zhimay, 58, has not come to this meeting of locals because she is at the airport to pick up her daughter , but he shares his story with this newspaper: “My family opened a boutique in the center of Cuenca last year. They broke in to steal every week and the police did nothing. Then came the vaccinators, who charge you a fee per month in exchange for not being mugged,” he explains by phone. Finally, they closed the business.

Between chat and chat, the phone rings.

—Okay, now we make a video call and see it—, answers Sonia.

Ecuadorians who are having trouble voting try to seek help.

Those present at Gladys’ house are children of the massive migration to Europe and the United States between 1999 and the beginning of the two thousand. Ecuador was going through a strong economic crisis of an inflationary type —which especially impoverished the middle classes— which culminated, among other things, in the dollarization of Ecuador.

Beatriz Penagos, a resident of Móstoles, acknowledges how before “we boasted of being a peaceful place”, and now she fears for the safety of her daughter and her two granddaughters. She has nine years left to retire: “If things were better, I would leave now”.

How has this ancient haven of Latin American peace come to this situation? What underlies the shootings, threats and extortions is the increase in power that criminal gangs have acquired in recent years.. Although Ecuador was known as a kind of peaceful oasis in the middle of two conflicting nations —Peru and Colombia—, the reality is no longer the same.

The country also had criminal groups that had been operating in the region for decades, but things started to get worse when the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels gained power inside Ecuador’s borders.. The Albanian mafia was not far behind and also found a place in the country. Now, Ecuador is a major drug operations center.

“It is a failed democracy,” reflects Eduardo Plaza. Both he and Sonia declare that they voted for Guillermo Lasso —who dissolved the Assembly and called early elections— just to prevent correísmo from returning to power, but without being very convinced of his candidacy. “His government has been lousy,” he explains.

Plaza acknowledges that he was a faithful defender of Correa in his early days. Now, no one convinces him. Rafael Correa was the president of the Andean country from 2007 to 2017. During their terms, the ports were privatized. In those years, violence took off in prisons and spread outside the cells.

Local criminal groups—Los Lobos or Los Choneros—began to establish ties with Mexican and Albanian bigwigs and cross-border fighting broke out for control of the merchandise. A proxy war where Ecuadorians are in hand-to-hand combat.

All this has caused a certain feeling of boredom among the population of the Andean country. President Correa has been sentenced to eight years for corruption. The Prosecutor’s Office also requests preventive detention for bribery of his successor, Lenin Moreno.

And Guillermo Lasso’s supposed attempts to improve the situation backfired. The point is that those who have a passport from the Andean country admit to feeling “fear”. According to the Latinobarómetro 2023 Report: the democratic recession of Latin America, 87% of Ecuadorians are dissatisfied with their democracy. And only 37% support the implementation of a democratic system, while another 37% are “indifferent” to the type of regime.

The study shows that Ecuador has as many democrats as indifferent. A breeding ground for authoritarianism. “This is how he faces the political crisis of extraordinary elections in August 2023, with democratic weakness and a high contingent of citizens prone to populism. We understand the indifference to the type of regime and the preference for authoritarianism as fertile ground for populism,” the experts warn.

The call for early elections caught them by surprise. Residents in Spain understand that the vote is telematic because, in just three months, it was too hasty to organize face-to-face elections. But they hoped the system would work a little better.. Sonia acknowledges that she maintains the hope that her country will prosper. If not, “what do we have left?“, he wonders.

At seven in the evening the term closed. Only four of the eight people who came to Gladys’ house were able to vote. “I have received more than 10 calls in a row from outraged people. It just can’t be”. This Monday at 10 in the morning they will gather in front of the Madrid Consulate to protest the voting system.

HEALTH

Urgent Call for Action: Safeguarding Spain’s National Health System

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The evident inefficiencies of our National Health System (SNS) have jeopardized one of the vital pillars for social cohesion and the welfare state, dragging patients and professionals.

More than four million people on waiting lists, primary care collapsed, a system overwhelmed by the pandemic and a society that looks expectantly towards this ruling class far removed, at times, from the pain of the street.

At this hour, what more legitimate concern could our politicians have than the best possible healthcare?

The light has changed in this post-electoral scenario, in which the tension has swept away all paths of consensus and time seems to have stopped. It is a luxury that we cannot afford.

The problem is no longer what is happening, which is also happening, but what awaits us around the corner.

With the largest generation in history knocking on the doors of retirement, the challenge of chronic patients in Spain has just loomed – the current 20 million patients, to whose care three quarters of the health resources are allocated, represent already 80% of visits to the GP-.

And while the peak of the population pyramid gains weight, the base falls from our hands. Stopping the brain drain is another of the great challenges: we need to retain our professionals, who are so magnificently educated.

So much so that we run the risk of becoming a training center for the rest of Europe -although there are no official data, it is estimated that almost 30,000 Spanish doctors and nurses practice outside the country.

A strategy is urgently needed that grants flexibility and resources to a SNS that should focus on prevention and technology.

The public-private collaboration model, woven for more than 20 years of consensus and which has made Spain an international benchmark, requires attention and repair.

Our memory is so light that some have already forgotten the enormous effort made by private healthcare during the pandemic, thanks to which we were able, together, to face the Covid crisis.

On the brink of that abyss the big parties managed to find themselves. In recent months we have also heard one another agree on the diagnosis of an exhausted SNS -this was confirmed in one of the last Circle Debates held in May in Madrid, and on the call for a State Pact for the Health. There is no more delay.

It is time to work to reverse the degradation of the system and assume the challenge of shielding free and universal public health from ideological fluctuations. The moment demands vision and responsibility.

ECONOMY

Fluidra Emerges as Stock Market Leader Amidst Pool Industry Challenges

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At the height of the national swimming pool, its main reference in Spain, Fluidra, has taken over the leadership of the Stock Market this summer.

Its shares have shot up almost 50% within the Ibex 35 so far this year, making the Planes family company the most bullish on the market.

He does it after starring in a very complicated 2022, with large drops in his profit, largely because it was not easy to exceed the historical figures that were achieved as a result of the pandemic when half the world focused on renovating his home, swimming pool included, to make more bearable time at home in case another confinement arrived.

In fact, the Sabadell firm rose so much on the stock market due to what Covid meant that in 2021 it managed, for the first time in its history, to become part of the Ibex. However, its shares are at the highest levels of the last year, on the road to recovery.

Fluidra, the leader in swimming pools in Europe, is the second largest manufacturer in the sector in the United States, the world’s leading market, behind its competitor Pentair, whose stock market size exceeds 10,000 million euros, slightly more than double that of the Catalan company.

Its substantial leap in North America came after Fluidra took over the Zodiac company in 2018, and placed Bruce Brooks as CEO of the group.

Europe follows this ranking where countries such as France, Spain and Germany stand out for being those with the largest number of swimming pools.

In general terms, in these four countries the situation has improved after what was a black year in 2022, although the path is not clear.

For the moment, there will be no return to the Covid figures, but two problems that affect the entire sector and also Fluidra cannot be ignored either.

There is too much stock that has arrived late and is now collecting dust in the warehouses until they manage to release it. And where does that product come from?

From the unprecedented cut in the supply chain that occurred last year, and which also affected the construction of swimming pools.

The big question for 2023 is how the rise in financing costs will affect the sector because it should be remembered that many of the works carried out in homes are done by borrowing money from the bank.

To put the boom in having a pool that occurred after the pandemic in context, in the last three years the pool park has grown by more than a million in global terms and they are areas that will require maintenance, which is the main line Fluidra revenue.

The last time something similar was experienced was in the years immediately prior to the bursting of the real estate bubble, in 2008, when around half a million pools were built per year.. Now the situation would be normalizing below 400,000.

And this simply implies having to pick up the cable on the figures for 2021 and return to a normalized world.. On this transitory path, Fluidra presented its accounts for the first semester in line with what was expected of it, with a drop in sales of 18% and gross profit of 20%.

The Catalan earned 104 million euros from January to June, 37% less. The company itself acknowledged that, in addition to this normalization process, this year has also affected less favorable weather for swimming pools and an “economic situation, in general, weaker for the second half of the year” with the Eurozone and the United States. United in times of recession.

But it’s not all bad news. Tourism stars in a record summer and this has also been felt in the market. Behind Fluidra, the largest gains on the stock market go to firms such as IAG and Meliá Hotels, which have risen more than 30% so far this year.

The airline ticket manager, Amadeus, rises 29%, while Aena is the least bullish, with an advance of more than 20%.