TIMES ONLINE: The food bank in Vic, 40 miles north of Barcelona, occupies an old bakery in a side street. Each day hundreds of unemployed stream in to collect handouts of bread, milk, pasta and other necessities. The overwhelming majority are immigrants, predominantly Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans who flocked to Vic in the past few years to work on building sites or in the huge pig farms and meat factories that surround the town and give it its distinctive smell.
At least 10,000 came, swelling Vic’s population by a quarter. They did the hard, dirty work and were welcomed. Not any more. Half lost their jobs when Spain’s construction bubble burst in 2008 and brought the good times to an abrupt end.
A deeply unpopular €15 billion (£12.7 billion) austerity package rushed through parliament yesterday will make life even harder. On top of that, the immigrants are now the target of Platform for Catalonia, Spain’s equivalent of the BNP, which is based in Vic. “Control immigration — stop the crisis,” its leaflets proclaim.
“They insult us. They say maybe we’re the cause of the crisis, that we take their jobs. It’s not fair and it’s not nice,” said Mercy Omoroagbon, 30, as she collected her handout. She arrived from Nigeria in 2002, lost both her cleaning jobs last year and now lives off the charity of friends.
“They say the Spanish can’t work because of the immigrants. It’s not true. We did the work the Spanish didn’t want or wouldn’t do,” said Joy Ekechukwu, 33, another Nigerian who came to Spain 11 years ago, lost her factory job and now struggles to support her two young children. Read on and comment >>> Martin Fletcher | Friday, May 28, 2010
