Word: vigo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...limited opportunities casual positions offer. Not only are there fewer jobs available - Spain lost 620,000 positions in 2008; 124,000 joined the ranks of the unemployed in March alone - but those that remain are earning even less. "People here wish they were mileuristas," says Iolanda Velasco, a Vigo city councilwoman. "They're 800-euroists." Velasco, who oversees the city's youth programs notes another change. "The cutoff age for our workshops and training sessions was 30. But because the age [people leave home] keeps rising, we just changed...
Blue-Collar Blues The crisis has hurt 20-somethings without college degrees even more. In Vigo's unemployment office, people of all ages and backgrounds come by to get the stamp that allows them to receive unemployment payments, but it's hard not to miss the heavy predominance of blue-collar workers under 30. Manuel Bao, 24, has worked as an electrician since he was 18 - his contracts were never permanent but there was enough work to keep him busy. Now that the construction industry has gone bust, he's out of work - and about to run out of unemployment...
...only unemployment that disillusions Spain's young. Ivan, who does not want his last name used, actually has a job: he starts his days at 4 a.m. on Vigo's docks, hauling fish for his parents' wholesale business. But these days, he and his family have a hard time getting to the end of the month. Which is why, he says, he now trafficks drugs. That's not so unusual in a port known as a major point of entry for cocaine, but there is something about the nonchalance with which Ivan confesses it that underscores his despair. Asked...
...Vigo, the local government has attempted to make it easier for young people to start lives of their own by building subsidized housing. Located at the side of the freeway, the Navía development consists of brightly colored high-rises, many of them still under construction. There are a few shops and cafés, and lots of families with young children to fill the new playground. One restaurant, sensitive to financial constrictions, offers meals - three courses, plus wine and coffee...
That, in turn, fuels the profound sense of frustration and hopelessness shared by millions of young Europeans as the recession tightens. In some ways, the good years have made things worse. Lorena Domínguez, the unemployed automobile worker in Vigo, never had a permanent contract at Citroën, but there were years when she was earning good money, and she expected that the firm would offer her a permanent contract one day. The future seemed full of promise and rising living standards. Now she spends her time looking for work waiting tables, selling insurance, cleaning offices. "My generation...