#Almería province

[rabbitcruiser]

The island of San Andrés was declared a natural monument by the Junta de Andalucía on October 1, 2003. 

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

mentally i'm here

[probablyasocialecologist]

In Almería lies the world's largest concentration of commercial greenhouses, often referred to as ‘the sea of plastic’. This vast expanse of polytunnels, housing millions of kilos of fruits and vegetables mainly destined for export, stretches for hundreds of kilometers, a white panorama until the horizon. Also within this sea of plastic dwell the migrant workers who work to ensure Europe's supermarkets are stocked year-round. While they perform the vital task of ensuring Europe's all-season access to fresh produce, these workers often live in a state of physical and institutional vulnerability. This state of affairs remained largely hidden, until recent shocks like the Covid-19 pandemic and armed conflicts exposed the fragility of our food supply chains. Spain issues approximately 150,000 permits annually for seasonal laborers (European Parliament 2021). However, within just the province of Almería, there are more than 100,000 migrants working in greenhouses, 80% of them holding undocumented status in the country. This lack of legal recognition leaves the workers off official records, denying them universal rights such as labour rights and access to formal rental contracts. It is a dire situation that forces many to call the shanty towns surrounding the greenhouses their homes. During my research, I often heard how some workers pay up to 6,000 euros annually to greenhouse managers for the working contracts necessary to seek legal status in the country, turning the quest for legalization into a profitable business.  Almería serves as a primary entry point for migrants traveling from West and North African countries to Europe. For those who cross the Mediterranean without visas - the majority of greenhouse laborers - this work is virtually the only option for income generation on arrival. While informal greenhouse jobs provide financial support to workers and their families back in their home countries, they also perpetuate vulnerability in livelihoods and employment, highlighting and embedding a stark contrast between EU citizens enjoying affordable food and the undocumented migrant workers compelled to work in precarious conditions to provide it.

[nobodylikety]

hello nyúl, am here to request a foreigner (spanish) reader who is in Korea for Uni and starts dating school president dahyun but a year into a relationship reader starts missing home and dahyun ends up calling readers parents to help her make all of readers hometown food or foods from there childhood and when reader gets home they are surprised by this gestured by ends up loving it of course, then you can make it even fluffier by dahyun giving YN 2 tickets back to Spain for the summer holiday as a surprise present

Hey! How are you doing? <3

You always send me good ideas and request for fics, thank you very much 🥺🩷 I know I still have some of your requests pending, and I'm slowly working on it! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this (⁠ ⁠◜⁠‿⁠◝⁠ ⁠)⁠♡

There is no place like home

School president! Dahyun x Spanish exchange student! reader 

tags: College AU! fluff.

notes: fem pronouns used!

For someone born and raised in Mojácar, a small city in the province of Almería, embarking on the exciting experience of studying in Korea, particularly in the vibrant and enormous Seoul, was practically a dream.

So shortly after your arrival, the immensity of said culture immersed you in an absolutely unknown world, where the main difficulty had been from the beginning the language barrier (because let's be honest, at the beginning you couldn't pronounce annyeonghaseyo correctly not even to save your life), although soon, between classes and new faces, you caught the attention of Dahyun, the class president.

And well, how could you not catch her attention? You always seemed like a lost puppy hanging around the hallways, speaking a language practically unknown to her, and for god's sake, it surprisingly made you look adorable doing it.

But again, and just as from the beginning, the language barrier presented itself as a challenge, so the interactions between you and her were mostly simple greetings and smiles. Because you couldn't speak Korean to save your life, nor could she speak Spanish. However, as the days went by, the spark overcame problems as earthly as a linguistic obstacle, through patience and friendly gestures, dissolving the difficulty of her first encounters.

Because beyond that, you and Dahyun had learned to communicate through gestures, shared laughter, and genuine expressions. The connection grew day by day, turning their friendship into something deeper and more meaningful. And of course, over time you learned one or another Korean expression or sentence, purely through the process of adapting to the environment, but it was no longer crucial. You told each other everything, without saying a word.

And as your friendship intensified, excitedly sharing your Spanish roots with Dahyun, as well as the tenderness of discovering Korean traditions together, the sum of each and every one of those experiences strengthened their connection.

Which wreaked new havoc on you.

So after some time, you felt trapped in a whirlwind of emotions. The attraction grew, and every moment with Dahyun was a rollercoaster of sensations: you felt fascinated by Dahyun's vibrant energy, her infectious joy, and the way she lit up any place with her presence; You felt anticipation for her text messages, or you got giggles and butterflies in your stomach when you looked at each other.

All of that was, according to you, the worst and at the same time the best that could happen to you. You loved being by her side, but you also feared the always possible probability of a one-sided love.

Except it wasn't a one-sided love.

Although you didn't know it yet.

Because the turning point came on a starry night, during one of the now routine night walks through Seoul, when Dahyun, with a special shine in her eyes and her heart beating strongly against her ribs, confessed her feelings for you. It was a moment full of nervousness, because the words were different, they were another language, but the sparkle in your eyes revealed those same passionate feelings and finally, love resonated clearly.

//

But after a year of shared laughter, walks around the city, and mutual support, you began to experience a quiet melancholy. You were nostalgic for your home in Spain, longing for the familiar streets of Mojácar, as well as the aromas of your mamá 's cooking and the comforting meals she prepared in your childhood, remembering how she used to say that 'the cuisine of Mojácar is the best exponent of the gastronomic tradition of the Costa de Almería'.

And for Dahyun, who never took her eyes off you (because deep in her heart, she still associated you with the image of the adorable lost puppy wandering the college hallways, which was what she saw when she met you for the first time), she clearly observed the melancholy in your eyes and didn't need to ask anything about it. Sje just knew it.

And with ingenuity and determination, Dahyun decided to take action. So while she was slowly laying out a plan that she hoped would cheer you up, one day while you two were sharing a quiet walk around campus, Dahyun took your phone with a mischievous smile.

“Would you mind if I took your emergency number? You never know when we might need it,” Dahyun said, playfully.

Without even thinking and with a giggle, you gave her the phone number she had asked for. Anyway, you thought it was always good to have someone other than yourself have your emergency contact, just as a precaution. You never know, right?

And of course, what you didn't know on that occasion was that Dahyun was planning something special. That night after Uni, Dahyun discreetly left to make an international call.

"Hola, es esta la casa de reader? Uhm, soy Dahyun y, uh, su hija y yo hemos estado saliendo por un año y poco más. Llamé porque me gustaría conversar una situación con ustedes" Dahyun explained respectfully, using the Spanish she had learned.

So, after a pleasant conversation (and less difficult than Dahyun expected, given her little knowledge of Spanish), she shared her idea with your parents. Together, they created a plan to transform your dorm room into a piece of Spain. Your parents' help was very useful for Dahyun, being able to recover numerous family recipes, details about your home, and anecdotes that only your true friends could know.

So with information in hand, Dahyun gave free rein to her efforts for the surprise. Since you and Dahyun did not coincide in all classes, since academically you had different interests, consequently you two had different class dismissal times. And that day, after the end of her classes, Dahyun had run to your dorm room while you would still be engrossed in your studies for about two more hours.

You had a kitchen in your small dorm room, but you didn't usually use it, since you had little or practically no time to cook something decent, and therefore, you tended to eat with Dahyun outside or heat up microwave dinners; so at that moment, Dahyun had your entire kitchen to herself and she was ready to get to work.

The first task that Dahyun set himself was to prepare Ajo Colorao, a typical dish in almost the entire province of Almería, including Mojácar, your hometown, and which you had stated more than once that you loved to eat. So in the kitchen, and with the ingredients scattered all over the counter, Dahyun immersed herself in the process. First she prepared Ajo Colorao, a dish that, according to your parents had explained to her during the phone call, is made up of a puree that has the consistency of a salmorejo and where cooked potatoes are combined with desalted cod, chorizo pepper, garlic, tomato and cumin, and that you particularly liked to accompany with bollo de panizo, a typical bread from Almería.

Then, the second masterpiece on her gastronomic list was Patatas in ajopollo, a dish that reminded you of Sunday lunches, characterized by family reunion and togetherness, as well as shared laughter. Dahyun remembered that your parents had told her that the trick for this recipe was to first brown the bread, almonds and garlic in a frying pan with oil at low temperature until it turned golden brown, and then mash everything in a mortar until it was obtained a a soft, but thick mixture. Soon she understood that this pasty mixture was 'ajopollo', and that it accompanied the potatoes.

The aroma that filled the kitchen while Dahyun prepared your favorite dishes evoked the homely memories of your childhood in Mojácar and while now she was cooking the papaviejos —a typical dessert from Almería, preferred by the little ones, and whose ingredients simply consisted of potatoes, milk , flour and sugar—, she reflected on the connection she had built with you since you two had been dating, more than a year ago. Dahyun had the feeling that with each ingredient that fell into the pan it not only seemed to carry with it the very essence of your hometown, but also your happiness. She had noticed how homesick you had been lately, and this surprise was intended to do just that.

Make you happy. 

Because if Dahyun loved something about you dearly, it was your smile.

With that in mind, Dahyun checked the clock, taking note that it was almost time for you to return to your room after classes. And it was just in time, because a few minutes later, she heard the slight struggle while you inserted the key, and then a 'click' when removing the lock. You paused for a moment, noticing a familiar scent hanging in the air.

And then, as you opened the door, the sight of the unfolding in front of you, left you speechless. Dahyun had transformed your modest room into a corner of Mojácar in the heart of Korea.

Dahyun, with a nervous and anticipatory smile, was waiting for you standing next to the table. Her eyes shone with a mixture of excitement and anxiety, while she held an apron that revealed her as the author of this surprise feast.

"Welcome home!" Dahyun exclaimed happily when you entered. Your eyes met and the knowing glow between them conveyed the affection and dedication she had invested in this surprise.

Your heart skipped a beat when you saw the incredible surprise Dahyun had prepared for you. In turn, your face lit up with a mixture of surprise and excitement, and your eyes shone as you recognized every detail that evoked your distant home.

"Dahyun, how...?" You murmured, not finding the right words to express your gratitude.

The table was decorated with details reminiscent of Mojácar, from small flags to photos of local landscapes. Dahyun had learned a lot about your culture and wanted you to feel a piece of home in that moment.

"Do you like it?" Dahyun asked, her eyes shining with hope while pointing to the plates.

You nodded, unable to contain your excitement. You approached the table and looked at each dish in awe, and Dahyun, with her apron on, began to describe each dish excitedly, revealing how she had contacted your parents for authentic recipes and cooking tips.

The table was full of delicacies, from succulent Patatas en ajopollo to the Ajo Colorao that you remembered with nostalgia. There were even papaviejos, your favorite childhood dessert, perfectly golden and sprinkled with sugar.

And as you ate each dish, you felt your eyes filled with tears of gratitude. Every bite reminded you of home, your mother's kitchen, and the family meals you had missed so much. Dahyun, carefully observing your every reaction, was satisfied to see that her surprise was achieving the desired effect.

But just when Dahyun couldn't feel happier and prouder of her small achievement, and after finishing dinner, you got up to hug her tightly.

“I can’t believe you did all this for me,” you said, your voice filled with emotion. "You're amazing, Dahyun."

Dahyun reciprocated the hug, feeling your heartbeat. “Your happiness is mine,” Dahyun whispered. "And even though we are far from Mojácar, I want you to feel like you have a home here with me."

But the surprise didn't end there! There was more!

Because while Dahyun shared with you a handful of churros, which she had personally gone to buy at a Spanish place in the area, she handed you an envelope containing tickets back to Spain for the summer vacation.

"I want you to have the opportunity to hug your family and enjoy meals from home in person," Dahyun expressed, her eyes shining. She then came up to kiss you gently on the forehead, on the nose, on the cheeks. She practically drew a map of kisses on your face, and you let her do it.

And so, between traditional dishes and affectionate gestures, another chapter of your story with Dahyun was woven, a story that transcended borders and demonstrated that home is not always in a physical place, but in the shared heart.

Dahyun was your home.

And that being the case, there is no place like home.

[schizophrenichippie]

ÍNDAL꩜⠀┅⠀ Indalo . « Indal Eccius » , in the Iberian language ; it means a great , strong , powerful & protective god . , For centuries it has been considered a symbol of good luck & a god totem , & the inhabitants of Mojácar have painted it on their houses to protect them from storms & the evil eye . 🪬

Legend has it that the Indalo was a ghost that could hold and carry a rainbow in it’ s hands {{ thus the arch over the head of the man }} ,, Some people also believe that the story behind the symbol is about a man who escapes in a cave to get away from the rain , then when the rain stops , out comes a rainbow & when the man walks away from the wall of the cave, the image is left there , 🌈 、

The Indalo has an origin in the The Levante , Spain and dates back to 2500 BC , Neolithic times . The Indalo has been adopted as the official symbol in the province of Almería , Spain , .

[friendswithclay]

Tabernas, Almería province, Spain. c.1962

By: Carlos Pérez Siquier

[ericalto]

Renting 'becomes a luxury' in Spain's Andalucia as costs rise 10.5%: These are the most expensive places

LAST YEAR was one of pain for many people in Andalucia as rental costs increased by 10.5% in every 12 months to 11.8 per square meter. Prices increased in all Andalusian provinces in 2024, with Malaga seeing the highest increase of 10.2% – entering €15.2 sqm. Granada (9.9%), Seville (9.2%), Huelva (8.5%), and Almería (8.1%) all also shot up, while moderate increases were recorded in Córdoba…

[caracolcondiarrea]

I’m so glad there is representation of my city In heart stopper, thank you Alice Oseman for choosing Almería out of all of Spain.

it will always be weird to me bc it’s like the most forgotten province of Spain and Andalusia and then, one of the most famous shows/books lately decided to put the grandparents of the protagonist from there. THANK YOU

When my mother and I watched the show for the first time and we saw they mentioned Almería we paused to burst out laughing bc we didn’t expect it and ran to my father to tell him. but why did she choose Almería? She must have family from here or something like that. We will never know…

anyway thank you Alice Oseman for choosing the best thing in all of Spain

[ichhabeeinekleinepapagai]

Yes the US dropped a nuclear bomb in Spain yet this map forgets to remember two very important facts about why it was not a tragedy:

-The bombs didnt explode (at least the nuclear part didnt)

-It was dropped in Almería province which wouldnt have meant a lost of human or animal life not even plant life cuz there is nothing remarkable in Almeria,

Countries on which the US 🇺🇸 has dropped a nuclear bomb.

by amazing__maps

[lizseyi]

Another Excellent Reason To Book A Trip To Andalucia: A Record Number Of Blue Flag Beaches, Marinas And Boats - Simply Shuttles

Such are the strengths of the Spanish region of Andalucia as a magnet for tourists – including its reliably warm, Mediterranean climate, as well as its picturesque scenery and fascinating cultural heritage and diversity – you might not imagine that many would-be visitors would require even more reason to arrange a holiday break here. 

Indeed, the marinas, beaches and boats further add to the attraction of this part of southern Spain – and now, tourists might have been given even greater justification for arranging a spot of sightseeing in Andalucia. 

Specifically – as reported by The Olive Press – Andalucia has been awarded 148 Blue Flags in 2023. This exceeds the region’s previous record, with three more flags having been gained this year than was the case in 2022. 

This landmark achievement means that only one region in the whole of Spain – Valencia – now has more Blue Flags than Andalucia, which is ahead of Catalonia and Galicia on this measure. 

What is the Blue Flag scheme, anyway? 

If you have considered doing some sightseeing in Andalucia – or have done so in the past – you might have come across mentions of “Blue Flag beaches” or similar, and wondered what these references meant. 

The short answer to this question, is that Blue Flags are voluntary awards for beaches, marinas, and sustainable tourism boats around the world. 

However, it isn’t easy for such a facility to earn this sought-after ecolabel; in order for a Blue Flag to be granted, various strict environmental, educational, safety, and accessibility criteria must be satisfied, with this compliance being maintained over time. 

The grand idea behind the Blue Flag programme – which was first established in 1985 – is to help connect the public with their surroundings, and to encourage them to find out more about their environment. 

So, for a given site to qualify for a Blue Flag, it must make available environmental education opportunities, as well as a permanent display of information that is relevant to the site’s biodiversity, ecosystems, and environmental phenomena. 

As a visitor, then, knowing that a particular amenity in one of the above categories has been awarded a Blue Flag, means you can treat this as an indicator of its quality and suitability as a tourist attraction. 

Andalucia’s Blue Flag credentials are getting stronger and stronger 

If there is one Spanish region – even by the usual high standards of Spanish regions – that is especially committed to complying with environmental legislation and improving the quality of its beaches, it is surely Andalucia. 

Such commitment is demonstrated by the fact that while the region had some 96 Blue Flags in 2019, this number has expanded to an even more impressive 148 this year. 

Of those 148 Blue Flags, 127 were granted to beaches, which is five more than last year’s number. Andalucia’s marinas, meanwhile, attracted 19 Blue Flags, and two Blue Flags were awarded to sustainable boats. 

On a province-by-province level, it was Málaga that attracted the most Blue Flags of the Andalucia region – 47, to be exact, with 39 for beaches, six for ports, and two for sustainable boats. Such parts of the autonomous community as Cádiz (37 flags), Almería (33 flags), and Huelva (17 flags) also fared strongly in the rundown. 

Given such numbers, it can hardly be surprising that Spain as a whole boasts the highest number of Blue Flag beaches in the world, with a total of 729, which is six more than in 2022. 

So, whether you come to Andalucia’s beaches with a view to catching some rays, trying out some water sports, spending quality time with the rest of your travelling group, or something else entirely, you can be confident of having a quality experience. 

Call the Simply Shuttles team today on +34 951 279 117, or send us an email, and we will be pleased to arrange the excellent-value airport and private hire transfers that could help you get even more out of your next visit to the Costa del Sol. 

[rabbitcruiser]

The title of a city was granted to Dalías by King Alfonso XIII on February 12, 1920.  

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

just came across this map, i think it's quite interesting! it shows the identity sentiment of pertenance to a province / autonomous community by province, in brown-ish you have those provinces where the feeling is strongest, and in blue-ish those where the feeling is lowest.

the conclusions i can get while looking at it are

galicians, catalonians, basques and canarians are the ones with the highest regional identity. that should be no surprise, it makes a lot of sense as their cultures are the most distinct

all of castile has the lowest regional identity, which also kinda make sense i guess.

you can clearly see the two largest autonomic disputes in the country: guadalajara not feeling manchego (in fact i found this map on a tweet from someone from guadalajara demanding they secede from la mancha) and the old kingdom of león (león, zamora and salamanca) not feeling castilian.

andalusia is also quite interesting to me because you can clearly see the split between western and eastern andalusia. the west feels very andalusian, while the east not so much, especially almería.

the 'neutral' ones are the most interesting to me i think. i understand why madrid is like that, and i sorta get the balearic islands as well (people there tend to identify with their island and not the autonomy?), as well as murcia (people from cartagena would rather have a province of their own) but i have no clue about most of these

feel free to add your thoughts !!!

[kammartinez]

In 1956 Juan Goytisolo, one of Spain’s most influential contemporary writers, took a bus to the eastern part of Almería, a province in Andalusia. Under Franco, this was one of the country’s most impoverished regions, exploited by mining companies and neglected by the government. Goytisolo had come to tell the stories of the people who lived in its slums. “I remember clearly the impression of poverty and violence provoked so dramatically by Almería when I first took route 340 into the province a few years ago,” he wrote in Níjar Country, which was published in 1960 and subsequently banned, like many of his books. At the time he was living in Paris; three decades later he moved to Marrakech. He never again lived in his place of birth.

I read his book on a terrace with a view of the Alcazaba Moorish fortress one warm Saturday morning this April. I too had arrived in Almería by bus. I had come from Málaga and traveled along the southern coast, passing through lush fields and stunning scenery overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. As green valleys gave way to rocky land, especially dry this year, I could see why locals so often call Almería the “door to the desert.” Spaghetti Westerns were shot here.

As you get closer to Almería, you leave behind the olive and almond trees and enter an expanse of plastic greenhouses. According to governmental data, Almería yields about 54 percent of Andalusia’s fruit and vegetable exports—chiefly tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers—amounting to €3.7 billion in sales last year. They boost the country’s economy and allow Europeans to eat fresh salads year-round. Satellite images show a sea of plastic that extends from the foot of the mountains to the shores of the sea.

Níjar is a small, sleepy town perched on a green hill by the Huebro Valley, overlooking the farm country. On a breezy weekend, tourists walked along the quiet streets, visiting the Memory of Water Museum—a showcase of the centuries-long struggle to find and preserve water in this region—and eating ice cream at a helateria on the town’s main square. When Goytisolo wrote Níjar Country, Almería had yet to be known for its national parks and beaches, some of the most beautiful in Spain. (Tourism has grown in recent decades, although the region sees many fewer visitors than the Costa del Sol to the west.) Instead the book evokes “settlements of a dozen isolated hovels” where Goytisolo saw families living in extreme poverty, hoping to leave this dry, overexploited land for places of greater opportunity.

In the 1950s and 1960s the state implemented the Plan General de Colonización—plan of settlement—to attract people from neighboring areas.1 It gave families land and, with the promise of industrial agriculture, the prospect of profit. Many farms in the region are still owned by the descendants of these settlers. The first landowners worked the fields themselves, but by the 1980s and 1990s farms were seeking foreign laborers to produce on a larger scale.

Migration to the region has been increasing ever since. African workers first arrived in El Ejido, a town on the other side of Almería. As intensive farming grew exponentially, the region transformed. Today shantytowns adjacent to the fields house thousands of migrants from North and West Africa, most of them undocumented. They provide cheap labor for the companies, small and large, that sustain the region’s economy and generate a huge portion of the country’s economic growth. Agriculture’s share of Spain’s GDP is one of the highest in Western Europe.

*

According to a recent report by the Jesuit Migrant Service, which provides Spanish lessons and legal support to undocumented migrants, greenhouses cover 32,827 hectares of the land in the province of Almería. They produce more than 3.5 million tons of fruit and vegetables, about 75 to 80 percent of which are exported. While it’s hard to find reliable data, the report estimates that 69 percent of agricultural workers are foreigners, half of them Moroccan.

Most of the laborers I spoke to told me they earn four or five euros an hour, considerably less than the legal minimum wage. They work in the sweltering heat under the greenhouses’ plastic coverings. Sometimes they put in full days, but often they are only needed for a couple of hours, if at all. Workers advertise their services by painting notes on the white plastic that covers the greenhouses—blanqueo (painting the plastic white to maximize light exposure and retain heat) or montaje (assembling the structure)—along with a phone number. Farm owners have absolute power and control over hiring and firing: several labor unions and rights groups allege that they can pay workers for fewer hours than they worked, simply let them go without compensation, and avoid responsibility if they get injured. (The company Grupo Godoy, one of Níjar’s large agricultural producers, did not respond to questions about the allegations that their treatment of foreign workers violates labor laws.)

Over the last two decades, the migrant population has increased but the availability of housing has not. Workers told me that renting in the city and villages surrounding the field is nearly impossible, either because housing is too expensive or because landlords refuse to rent to them. At night they sleep in chabolas, simple dwellings made of wood, plastic, or whatever else they can find. Some use small solar panels or plug illegally into the grid and tap local water sources, but most lack electricity and running water. Blue pesticide containers are recycled into water tanks. In some of the camps I visited, people charge their phones at shops in the nearest village and walk or bike the many kilometers home carrying big bottles of water. The chabolas are unbearably hot in the summer and cold during winter. The slums can barely be seen from the main roads; it is common, however, to see workers on bikes or scooters emerging from them early in the morning or disappearing into them at the end of a workday.

Pablo Pumares directs the Center of Migration Studies at the University of Almería, where he has lived for more than thirty-five years. He estimates that the majority of workers in the region are documented but that for the most part those who live in the shantytowns aren’t. Spain, he says, cannot offer them an easier path to residency within the terms of the European Union’s restrictive migration policy. “It’s quite complicated,” he said. Most services, such as public transportation and healthcare, don’t reach Níjar’s undocumented workers, but they prefer to stay close to the greenhouses because it increases their odds of finding work each day. Even documented workers, Pumares adds, have to contend with a nationwide housing shortage: “They could afford the rent, but there is no housing available. It’s an immense problem.”

These low-paid workers dynamize the region’s economy, but many Spaniards resent their presence. In late January the Níjar City Council oversaw the destruction of a camp called El Walili, which housed hundreds of agricultural migrants. The council said they were doing so for humanitarian reasons. The former mayor of Níjar, Esperanza Pérez, defended the decision by claiming that it was the first time there was any proactive effort to address the unsanitary conditions under which so many migrants lived. Labor rights groups have speculated that the socialists then in power wanted to appeal to populist sentiment by showing that they were taking a tough line on illegal settlements. In place of the chabolas, the city provided temporary housing: 140 bunk beds inside an industrial warehouse, with outdoor showers and bathrooms. Only about fifty migrants from El Walili accepted the invitation to move in.

In April Pérez announced that the government planned to demolish all the region’s shantytowns. She insisted that the eviction would be “professional, firm,” and that they would offer new apartments to those displaced. Yet hundreds of people in the remaining shantytowns have not been approached with housing alternatives. In last month’s regional elections the socialists won ten of the city council’s twenty-one seats; ten more went to the center-right Popular Party and one to the far-right Vox. Last week Vox and the Popular Party formed an alliance to gain a majority on the council. Spain’s general elections are approaching in late July, and Vox has been gaining ground both in the region and in the country. Whoever is in power, the migrant workers in Níjar’s remaining shantytowns live in fear that their camps will be demolished next.

*

In Almería I found people who were tired of the media, politicians, and nongovernmental workers. They were fed up with repeating the same stories about their wretched conditions without seeing anything change. But I was there during Ramadan, and many migrants still opened their homes to me and shared their stories. The few women I met were Moroccan. They had first come to the Huelva province, in the western part of Andalusia, to work on strawberry farms.2 I met Laila, a forty-one-year-old from Beni Mellal, in the hour before she broke her fast one day in April. (Some names in this article have been changed, and many of the workers I spoke to didn’t share a last name out of fear of the Spanish authorities.) We were in Don Domingo de Arriba, a camp built on an abandoned farm near Atochares, just south of Níjar. Several people told me it was likely to be the next demolished.

Laila moved to Spain five years ago for a temporary job, but after ten days of arduous work on a farm in Almonte, she couldn’t do it anymore. More experienced women were working faster, the jefe—the boss, one of the first words workers learn in Spanish—was unkind to her, and she felt ill and couldn’t stand the heat, so she ran away with six other women. She lived for a time in the El Walili camp but left before its demolition. A fire in the unsafe dwellings destroyed everything she owned. Houseguests woke her up at 4 AM; they evacuated in their pajamas, barefoot.

Now she lives with her cousin, who had arrived eight months earlier after surviving the treacherous crossing through the waters of the Canary Islands. They share what looked like a living room and a bedroom under a large plastic tent. That day, Laila was preparing fresh juice for Iftar, the meal to break the fast after sunset during Ramadan. She told me about her three children, who live in Morocco: “Even when I make €50, I send it to my daughters,” she said. She can’t afford a trip home to visit them. “I just hope I see them again,” she said. “I could beg just to have them next to me.”

*

Some days earlier I had gone to see the El Walili camp, or what remained of it: a clay oven and some trash in a bare field. The camp had been around for a couple of decades. It lay on property that belongs to a few small landowners, who were not involved in the establishment of the settlement. Many told me that it had been by far the most visible migrant camp, since it was right on the road that tourists take from Níjar to San José, the main sea resort in the Cabo de Gata National Park. (Its prominence might have been one reason the authorities were so keen to get rid of it.) Witnesses reported that hours of chaos followed the legal decision to demolish the camp. People carrying their microwaves, tables, and clothes watched their homes razed to the ground. The Interior Ministry runs the police force that oversaw the dismantlement of the camp, but a spokesperson told me to talk to the Ministry of Migration, which declined to comment.

I tried to enter the warehouse where some migrants were being sheltered by the government, but I wasn’t allowed in. Two Romanian guards stood in front—Eastern Europeans often get better treatment and better jobs here—waiting for a food delivery that comes a few times a day. The migrants from El Walili were only supposed to stay fifteen days, then only two months. Some blocks away, the permanent apartments the government promised them aren’t ready yet.

In the months leading up to the destruction of the camp, the city council delivered several eviction notices; eventually a judge issued orders of expulsion. Local union activists protested, demanding that the authorities respect due process by notifying people individually or providing alternative housing before the demolition. A worker with the Union of Agricultural and Rural Workers of Andalusia (SOC-SAT), who didn’t want me to use his name or initials to avoid jeopardizing his current job search, has worked tirelessly to stop the evictions. “There are serious problems of human rights and noncompliance with labor laws and rights,” he said. “For example, when a migrant worker says he doesn’t want to work on a holiday, he loses his job.”

In February the European Coordination Via Campesina, a confederation of peasant farmers and agricultural workers, joined with eight other rights groups to issue a press release drawing attention to the destruction of El Walili and the living conditions of migrant workers in Níjar.  They also highlighted the environmental impact of intensive farming, including “plastic contamination on a large scale.” The dispossession of the region’s migrant workers, they write, “is a shame for Spain, a shame for Andalucia, a shame for an agricultural system based on the exploitation of migrants.”

*

About a year and a half ago Father Daniel Izuzquiza, a Jesuit priest, moved to Almería to help the nationwide Jesuit Migrant Service expand its operations there. He considers it morally impossible to reconcile Spain’s lack of concern for the wellbeing of African workers with its economic reliance on their cheap labor. “They only want workers, not persons or families,” he told me. Locals seem to understand little about the ordeals workers undergo in the valley. “People do not know, do not want to know, do not really care.”

Father Daniel took me on a tour to meet with some of the people his organization helps. At a camp just outside a town called El Barranquete we met people who had moved from El Walili. Three young Moroccan men hadn’t found work that day. One of them told us that it was incredibly hard to do so without the right connections, often facilitated by shared nationality. Most arrived here on their own, and so they often find work through someone who knows a farm owner or manager well.

n Don Domingo de Arriba, on the abandoned farm, residents live in crumbling buildings or homes made out of plastic sheeting. There is a makeshift mosque, and on some days women sell clothes by one of its entrances. After fires destroyed some of the neighborhood a couple years ago, people rebuilt their chabolas with concrete, cement, and bricks. Father Daniel teaches a Spanish lesson here under a plastic tarp, writing basic words on a whiteboard: poco, mas, mucho, tan simpatico. At tan guapo (“so handsome”) the classroom fell into laughter.

Down a dirt road I met two brothers, Omar, twenty-six, and Yassine, twenty-eight. They shared one of the nicest chabolas in the camp, a one-bedroom cement home their father had bought for €1,200. It has a bathroom and a shower, a fully equipped kitchen, a new fridge and appliances, and a small couch and chairs. Back in Morocco, Omar had worked in retail. Yassine was in the army. Their father had come to Spain in 2005, and for five years sent money home to the family. He learned some Spanish but didn’t fully integrate; now he likes to split his time between Morocco and Spain.

Yassine joined the army mainly because he had few other prospects. After spending five years enlisted in the desert, he couldn’t take it anymore and longed for retirement. Two and a half years ago he asked a psychiatrist for a note saying that the state of his mental health would be in jeopardy if he kept working for the army, and so he was excused from the force. “I felt that I was wasting my life,” he told me. He loved his country but decided he had to pursue better opportunities. “You look for a life with dignity.”

Yassine had initially tried to enter Spain legally, but his visa application was denied. Omar’s savings were depleted by scammers who had promised a crossing by boat. It was Yassine’s plan that eventually got them to the EU by way of Turkey and Hungary, traveling by plane, train, car, and foot. Once in Spain, Yassine told me, he felt suffocated inside the greenhouses and quickly stopped working. He jokes about his hipster look—he wears glasses and a beard—and tells me not to be fooled by appearances. His army life taught him how to survive anywhere.

The brothers insisted that I have Iftar with them that day. Omar made spiced chicken and onions and soup with shrimp. Their father was watching a soccer game on TV and proudly served me his version of Moroccan green mint tea. I can appreciate how hard it is to get it right—I never do. Yassine is learning Spanish and trying to get a certificate that would allow him to work in restaurants. He and his brother hope to move to Germany. They dislike living in Spain. “They hate us,” Omar tells me while cutting fruit, which he covers with yogurt and sugar for dessert.

*

Adama Sangare Diarra, fifty, is from Daloa, in the Ivory Coast. In 1995 he became one of the first West African migrants to make it to Andalusia to work in the fields, and he watched as more arrived after him. In many cases, he told me in his living room in Almería one Sunday afternoon, the Guardia Civil, one of Spain’s national police forces, sent migrants to Spain after intercepting them in Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish enclaves in North Africa. To Sangare Diarra and several people I interviewed, there is little doubt that the authorities were keen on using undocumented migrants to fill the need for cheap agricultural labor. “It was catastrophic,” he said. “It is not Europe as we imagined it. There are no rights.” A picture of him protesting Spanish labor conditions hangs on the wall in the home he shares with his wife, whom he met in the Ivory Coast twenty-five years ago, and four children.

Sangare Diarra is a rare success story. He studied Islamic Law in Rabat, Morocco’s capital, but felt that his work prospects were limited; back home he could become either an imam or a teacher in a madrassa. His father, an imam who had worked in agriculture back in the Ivory Coast, had spent €300 a month for his son’s education, but Diarra left without completing his schooling. After arriving in Almería by boat he settled in El Ejido and started working in tomato, pepper, and eggplant fields during the day and taking Spanish lessons at night.

He learned Spanish quickly and speaks many other languages, including Arabic, French, and a few West African dialects. Soon he was serving as a translator for organizations that worked with migrants. He became a legal resident in 1997, and eventually a citizen. In the last two decades he’s worked for Almería Acoge, an association partly funded by the Spanish state that helps migrants obtain residency and provides them with food, shelter, and other support.

Sangare Diarra says he tries to soothe the lives of others who, like him, only came to the country to give themselves a chance at a better life. It is challenging work. There is, he tells me, a strong political will to harass and intimidate migrants, and the destruction of El Walili confirmed for him that their community is constantly vulnerable. “Migrants are not integrated…. Many as a result have huge psychological issues,” he said. “Sometimes worse conditions than in Africa. It is not easy to see people live like this.”

*

Back in Don Domingo de Arriba I met Ahmed, twenty-two, from Kelaat Sraghna, near Marrakech, my hometown. He left two and a half years ago and traveled by sea; he had to sell his car to fund the $2,000 trip. Finally he made it to the Canary Islands. It wasn’t his first attempt. On a previous crossing he had almost drowned and was rescued by the Moroccan Royal Marines.

“When I left I had prepared myself for everything…. I lived better in Morocco but also I had no health care. Some aspects of life were just too hard,” he told me after cooking me my second Iftar of the day. We were in his current home, which belonged to a friend who had left to pick strawberries in Huelva. “When you decide to go into the water, you know there is a 90 percent chance you will drown,” he said. “I was ready for it.”

Ahmed learned to speak Spanish well. He sends money home whenever he can and hopes one day to move back and marry a Moroccan woman. Meanwhile, he is about to get his Spanish residency. In a notebook he keeps under his pillow, he writes his thoughts in Spanish, a way to practice the language but also to write down unfiltered meditations. “Mom, I left home and I didn’t tell you I was going to cross the sea,” he wrote on one page. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know where I was going.” The note ends with an emotional wish. “I will be back one day if God wants,” it reads. “I know it’s not possible now but there is nothing I long for more than hugging you.”

[kamreadsandrecs]

In 1956 Juan Goytisolo, one of Spain’s most influential contemporary writers, took a bus to the eastern part of Almería, a province in Andalusia. Under Franco, this was one of the country’s most impoverished regions, exploited by mining companies and neglected by the government. Goytisolo had come to tell the stories of the people who lived in its slums. “I remember clearly the impression of poverty and violence provoked so dramatically by Almería when I first took route 340 into the province a few years ago,” he wrote in Níjar Country, which was published in 1960 and subsequently banned, like many of his books. At the time he was living in Paris; three decades later he moved to Marrakech. He never again lived in his place of birth.

I read his book on a terrace with a view of the Alcazaba Moorish fortress one warm Saturday morning this April. I too had arrived in Almería by bus. I had come from Málaga and traveled along the southern coast, passing through lush fields and stunning scenery overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. As green valleys gave way to rocky land, especially dry this year, I could see why locals so often call Almería the “door to the desert.” Spaghetti Westerns were shot here.

As you get closer to Almería, you leave behind the olive and almond trees and enter an expanse of plastic greenhouses. According to governmental data, Almería yields about 54 percent of Andalusia’s fruit and vegetable exports—chiefly tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers—amounting to €3.7 billion in sales last year. They boost the country’s economy and allow Europeans to eat fresh salads year-round. Satellite images show a sea of plastic that extends from the foot of the mountains to the shores of the sea.

Níjar is a small, sleepy town perched on a green hill by the Huebro Valley, overlooking the farm country. On a breezy weekend, tourists walked along the quiet streets, visiting the Memory of Water Museum—a showcase of the centuries-long struggle to find and preserve water in this region—and eating ice cream at a helateria on the town’s main square. When Goytisolo wrote Níjar Country, Almería had yet to be known for its national parks and beaches, some of the most beautiful in Spain. (Tourism has grown in recent decades, although the region sees many fewer visitors than the Costa del Sol to the west.) Instead the book evokes “settlements of a dozen isolated hovels” where Goytisolo saw families living in extreme poverty, hoping to leave this dry, overexploited land for places of greater opportunity.

In the 1950s and 1960s the state implemented the Plan General de Colonización—plan of settlement—to attract people from neighboring areas.1 It gave families land and, with the promise of industrial agriculture, the prospect of profit. Many farms in the region are still owned by the descendants of these settlers. The first landowners worked the fields themselves, but by the 1980s and 1990s farms were seeking foreign laborers to produce on a larger scale.

Migration to the region has been increasing ever since. African workers first arrived in El Ejido, a town on the other side of Almería. As intensive farming grew exponentially, the region transformed. Today shantytowns adjacent to the fields house thousands of migrants from North and West Africa, most of them undocumented. They provide cheap labor for the companies, small and large, that sustain the region’s economy and generate a huge portion of the country’s economic growth. Agriculture’s share of Spain’s GDP is one of the highest in Western Europe.

*

According to a recent report by the Jesuit Migrant Service, which provides Spanish lessons and legal support to undocumented migrants, greenhouses cover 32,827 hectares of the land in the province of Almería. They produce more than 3.5 million tons of fruit and vegetables, about 75 to 80 percent of which are exported. While it’s hard to find reliable data, the report estimates that 69 percent of agricultural workers are foreigners, half of them Moroccan.

Most of the laborers I spoke to told me they earn four or five euros an hour, considerably less than the legal minimum wage. They work in the sweltering heat under the greenhouses’ plastic coverings. Sometimes they put in full days, but often they are only needed for a couple of hours, if at all. Workers advertise their services by painting notes on the white plastic that covers the greenhouses—blanqueo (painting the plastic white to maximize light exposure and retain heat) or montaje (assembling the structure)—along with a phone number. Farm owners have absolute power and control over hiring and firing: several labor unions and rights groups allege that they can pay workers for fewer hours than they worked, simply let them go without compensation, and avoid responsibility if they get injured. (The company Grupo Godoy, one of Níjar’s large agricultural producers, did not respond to questions about the allegations that their treatment of foreign workers violates labor laws.)

Over the last two decades, the migrant population has increased but the availability of housing has not. Workers told me that renting in the city and villages surrounding the field is nearly impossible, either because housing is too expensive or because landlords refuse to rent to them. At night they sleep in chabolas, simple dwellings made of wood, plastic, or whatever else they can find. Some use small solar panels or plug illegally into the grid and tap local water sources, but most lack electricity and running water. Blue pesticide containers are recycled into water tanks. In some of the camps I visited, people charge their phones at shops in the nearest village and walk or bike the many kilometers home carrying big bottles of water. The chabolas are unbearably hot in the summer and cold during winter. The slums can barely be seen from the main roads; it is common, however, to see workers on bikes or scooters emerging from them early in the morning or disappearing into them at the end of a workday.

Pablo Pumares directs the Center of Migration Studies at the University of Almería, where he has lived for more than thirty-five years. He estimates that the majority of workers in the region are documented but that for the most part those who live in the shantytowns aren’t. Spain, he says, cannot offer them an easier path to residency within the terms of the European Union’s restrictive migration policy. “It’s quite complicated,” he said. Most services, such as public transportation and healthcare, don’t reach Níjar’s undocumented workers, but they prefer to stay close to the greenhouses because it increases their odds of finding work each day. Even documented workers, Pumares adds, have to contend with a nationwide housing shortage: “They could afford the rent, but there is no housing available. It’s an immense problem.”

These low-paid workers dynamize the region’s economy, but many Spaniards resent their presence. In late January the Níjar City Council oversaw the destruction of a camp called El Walili, which housed hundreds of agricultural migrants. The council said they were doing so for humanitarian reasons. The former mayor of Níjar, Esperanza Pérez, defended the decision by claiming that it was the first time there was any proactive effort to address the unsanitary conditions under which so many migrants lived. Labor rights groups have speculated that the socialists then in power wanted to appeal to populist sentiment by showing that they were taking a tough line on illegal settlements. In place of the chabolas, the city provided temporary housing: 140 bunk beds inside an industrial warehouse, with outdoor showers and bathrooms. Only about fifty migrants from El Walili accepted the invitation to move in.

In April Pérez announced that the government planned to demolish all the region’s shantytowns. She insisted that the eviction would be “professional, firm,” and that they would offer new apartments to those displaced. Yet hundreds of people in the remaining shantytowns have not been approached with housing alternatives. In last month’s regional elections the socialists won ten of the city council’s twenty-one seats; ten more went to the center-right Popular Party and one to the far-right Vox. Last week Vox and the Popular Party formed an alliance to gain a majority on the council. Spain’s general elections are approaching in late July, and Vox has been gaining ground both in the region and in the country. Whoever is in power, the migrant workers in Níjar’s remaining shantytowns live in fear that their camps will be demolished next.

*

In Almería I found people who were tired of the media, politicians, and nongovernmental workers. They were fed up with repeating the same stories about their wretched conditions without seeing anything change. But I was there during Ramadan, and many migrants still opened their homes to me and shared their stories. The few women I met were Moroccan. They had first come to the Huelva province, in the western part of Andalusia, to work on strawberry farms.2 I met Laila, a forty-one-year-old from Beni Mellal, in the hour before she broke her fast one day in April. (Some names in this article have been changed, and many of the workers I spoke to didn’t share a last name out of fear of the Spanish authorities.) We were in Don Domingo de Arriba, a camp built on an abandoned farm near Atochares, just south of Níjar. Several people told me it was likely to be the next demolished.

Laila moved to Spain five years ago for a temporary job, but after ten days of arduous work on a farm in Almonte, she couldn’t do it anymore. More experienced women were working faster, the jefe—the boss, one of the first words workers learn in Spanish—was unkind to her, and she felt ill and couldn’t stand the heat, so she ran away with six other women. She lived for a time in the El Walili camp but left before its demolition. A fire in the unsafe dwellings destroyed everything she owned. Houseguests woke her up at 4 AM; they evacuated in their pajamas, barefoot.

Now she lives with her cousin, who had arrived eight months earlier after surviving the treacherous crossing through the waters of the Canary Islands. They share what looked like a living room and a bedroom under a large plastic tent. That day, Laila was preparing fresh juice for Iftar, the meal to break the fast after sunset during Ramadan. She told me about her three children, who live in Morocco: “Even when I make €50, I send it to my daughters,” she said. She can’t afford a trip home to visit them. “I just hope I see them again,” she said. “I could beg just to have them next to me.”

*

Some days earlier I had gone to see the El Walili camp, or what remained of it: a clay oven and some trash in a bare field. The camp had been around for a couple of decades. It lay on property that belongs to a few small landowners, who were not involved in the establishment of the settlement. Many told me that it had been by far the most visible migrant camp, since it was right on the road that tourists take from Níjar to San José, the main sea resort in the Cabo de Gata National Park. (Its prominence might have been one reason the authorities were so keen to get rid of it.) Witnesses reported that hours of chaos followed the legal decision to demolish the camp. People carrying their microwaves, tables, and clothes watched their homes razed to the ground. The Interior Ministry runs the police force that oversaw the dismantlement of the camp, but a spokesperson told me to talk to the Ministry of Migration, which declined to comment.

I tried to enter the warehouse where some migrants were being sheltered by the government, but I wasn’t allowed in. Two Romanian guards stood in front—Eastern Europeans often get better treatment and better jobs here—waiting for a food delivery that comes a few times a day. The migrants from El Walili were only supposed to stay fifteen days, then only two months. Some blocks away, the permanent apartments the government promised them aren’t ready yet.

In the months leading up to the destruction of the camp, the city council delivered several eviction notices; eventually a judge issued orders of expulsion. Local union activists protested, demanding that the authorities respect due process by notifying people individually or providing alternative housing before the demolition. A worker with the Union of Agricultural and Rural Workers of Andalusia (SOC-SAT), who didn’t want me to use his name or initials to avoid jeopardizing his current job search, has worked tirelessly to stop the evictions. “There are serious problems of human rights and noncompliance with labor laws and rights,” he said. “For example, when a migrant worker says he doesn’t want to work on a holiday, he loses his job.”

In February the European Coordination Via Campesina, a confederation of peasant farmers and agricultural workers, joined with eight other rights groups to issue a press release drawing attention to the destruction of El Walili and the living conditions of migrant workers in Níjar.  They also highlighted the environmental impact of intensive farming, including “plastic contamination on a large scale.” The dispossession of the region’s migrant workers, they write, “is a shame for Spain, a shame for Andalucia, a shame for an agricultural system based on the exploitation of migrants.”

*

About a year and a half ago Father Daniel Izuzquiza, a Jesuit priest, moved to Almería to help the nationwide Jesuit Migrant Service expand its operations there. He considers it morally impossible to reconcile Spain’s lack of concern for the wellbeing of African workers with its economic reliance on their cheap labor. “They only want workers, not persons or families,” he told me. Locals seem to understand little about the ordeals workers undergo in the valley. “People do not know, do not want to know, do not really care.”

Father Daniel took me on a tour to meet with some of the people his organization helps. At a camp just outside a town called El Barranquete we met people who had moved from El Walili. Three young Moroccan men hadn’t found work that day. One of them told us that it was incredibly hard to do so without the right connections, often facilitated by shared nationality. Most arrived here on their own, and so they often find work through someone who knows a farm owner or manager well.

n Don Domingo de Arriba, on the abandoned farm, residents live in crumbling buildings or homes made out of plastic sheeting. There is a makeshift mosque, and on some days women sell clothes by one of its entrances. After fires destroyed some of the neighborhood a couple years ago, people rebuilt their chabolas with concrete, cement, and bricks. Father Daniel teaches a Spanish lesson here under a plastic tarp, writing basic words on a whiteboard: poco, mas, mucho, tan simpatico. At tan guapo (“so handsome”) the classroom fell into laughter.

Down a dirt road I met two brothers, Omar, twenty-six, and Yassine, twenty-eight. They shared one of the nicest chabolas in the camp, a one-bedroom cement home their father had bought for €1,200. It has a bathroom and a shower, a fully equipped kitchen, a new fridge and appliances, and a small couch and chairs. Back in Morocco, Omar had worked in retail. Yassine was in the army. Their father had come to Spain in 2005, and for five years sent money home to the family. He learned some Spanish but didn’t fully integrate; now he likes to split his time between Morocco and Spain.

Yassine joined the army mainly because he had few other prospects. After spending five years enlisted in the desert, he couldn’t take it anymore and longed for retirement. Two and a half years ago he asked a psychiatrist for a note saying that the state of his mental health would be in jeopardy if he kept working for the army, and so he was excused from the force. “I felt that I was wasting my life,” he told me. He loved his country but decided he had to pursue better opportunities. “You look for a life with dignity.”

Yassine had initially tried to enter Spain legally, but his visa application was denied. Omar’s savings were depleted by scammers who had promised a crossing by boat. It was Yassine’s plan that eventually got them to the EU by way of Turkey and Hungary, traveling by plane, train, car, and foot. Once in Spain, Yassine told me, he felt suffocated inside the greenhouses and quickly stopped working. He jokes about his hipster look—he wears glasses and a beard—and tells me not to be fooled by appearances. His army life taught him how to survive anywhere.

The brothers insisted that I have Iftar with them that day. Omar made spiced chicken and onions and soup with shrimp. Their father was watching a soccer game on TV and proudly served me his version of Moroccan green mint tea. I can appreciate how hard it is to get it right—I never do. Yassine is learning Spanish and trying to get a certificate that would allow him to work in restaurants. He and his brother hope to move to Germany. They dislike living in Spain. “They hate us,” Omar tells me while cutting fruit, which he covers with yogurt and sugar for dessert.

*

Adama Sangare Diarra, fifty, is from Daloa, in the Ivory Coast. In 1995 he became one of the first West African migrants to make it to Andalusia to work in the fields, and he watched as more arrived after him. In many cases, he told me in his living room in Almería one Sunday afternoon, the Guardia Civil, one of Spain’s national police forces, sent migrants to Spain after intercepting them in Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish enclaves in North Africa. To Sangare Diarra and several people I interviewed, there is little doubt that the authorities were keen on using undocumented migrants to fill the need for cheap agricultural labor. “It was catastrophic,” he said. “It is not Europe as we imagined it. There are no rights.” A picture of him protesting Spanish labor conditions hangs on the wall in the home he shares with his wife, whom he met in the Ivory Coast twenty-five years ago, and four children.

Sangare Diarra is a rare success story. He studied Islamic Law in Rabat, Morocco’s capital, but felt that his work prospects were limited; back home he could become either an imam or a teacher in a madrassa. His father, an imam who had worked in agriculture back in the Ivory Coast, had spent €300 a month for his son’s education, but Diarra left without completing his schooling. After arriving in Almería by boat he settled in El Ejido and started working in tomato, pepper, and eggplant fields during the day and taking Spanish lessons at night.

He learned Spanish quickly and speaks many other languages, including Arabic, French, and a few West African dialects. Soon he was serving as a translator for organizations that worked with migrants. He became a legal resident in 1997, and eventually a citizen. In the last two decades he’s worked for Almería Acoge, an association partly funded by the Spanish state that helps migrants obtain residency and provides them with food, shelter, and other support.

Sangare Diarra says he tries to soothe the lives of others who, like him, only came to the country to give themselves a chance at a better life. It is challenging work. There is, he tells me, a strong political will to harass and intimidate migrants, and the destruction of El Walili confirmed for him that their community is constantly vulnerable. “Migrants are not integrated…. Many as a result have huge psychological issues,” he said. “Sometimes worse conditions than in Africa. It is not easy to see people live like this.”

*

Back in Don Domingo de Arriba I met Ahmed, twenty-two, from Kelaat Sraghna, near Marrakech, my hometown. He left two and a half years ago and traveled by sea; he had to sell his car to fund the $2,000 trip. Finally he made it to the Canary Islands. It wasn’t his first attempt. On a previous crossing he had almost drowned and was rescued by the Moroccan Royal Marines.

“When I left I had prepared myself for everything…. I lived better in Morocco but also I had no health care. Some aspects of life were just too hard,” he told me after cooking me my second Iftar of the day. We were in his current home, which belonged to a friend who had left to pick strawberries in Huelva. “When you decide to go into the water, you know there is a 90 percent chance you will drown,” he said. “I was ready for it.”

Ahmed learned to speak Spanish well. He sends money home whenever he can and hopes one day to move back and marry a Moroccan woman. Meanwhile, he is about to get his Spanish residency. In a notebook he keeps under his pillow, he writes his thoughts in Spanish, a way to practice the language but also to write down unfiltered meditations. “Mom, I left home and I didn’t tell you I was going to cross the sea,” he wrote on one page. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know where I was going.” The note ends with an emotional wish. “I will be back one day if God wants,” it reads. “I know it’s not possible now but there is nothing I long for more than hugging you.”



[treebreadcares]

Chronic Care Model For People With Heart Failure And COPD

Background Chronic diseases account for nearly 60% of deaths around the world. The extent of this silent epidemic has not met determined responses in governments, policies or professionals in order to transform old Health Care Systems, configured for acute diseases. There is a large list of research about alternative models for people with chronic conditions, many of them with an advanced practice nurse as a key provider, as case management. But some methodological concerns raise, above all, the design of the intervention (intensity, frequency, components, etc). Methods/Design Objectives: General: To develop the first and second phases (theorization and modeling) for designing a multifaceted case-management intervention in people with chronic conditions (COPD and heart failure) and their caregivers. Specific aims: 1) To identify key events in people living with chronic disease and their relation with the Health Care System, from their point of view. 2) To know the coping mechanisms developed by patients and their caregivers along the story with the disease. 3) To know the information processing and its utilization in their interactions with health care providers. 4) To detect potential unmet needs and the ways deployed by patients and their caregivers to resolve them. 5) To obtain a description from patients and caregivers, about their itineraries along the Health Care System, in terms of continuity, accessibility and comprehensiveness of care. 6) To build up a list of promising case-management interventions in patients with Heart Failure and COPD with this information in order to frame it into theoretical models for its reproducibility and conceptualization. 7) To undergo this list to expert judgment to assess its feasibility and pertinence in the Andalusian Health Care. Design: Qualitative research with two phases: For the first five objectives, a qualitative technique with biographic stories will be developed and, for the remaining objectives, an expert consensus through Delphi technique, on the possible interventions yielded from the first phase. The study will be developed in the provinces of Almería, Málaga and Granada in the Southern Spain, from patients included in the Andalusian Health Care Service database with the diagnosis of COPD or Heart Failure, with the collaboration of case manager nurses and general practitioners for the assessment of their suitability to inclusion criteria. Patients and caregivers will be interviewed in their homes or their Health Centers, with their family or their case manager nurse as mediator. Discussion First of a series of studies intended to design a case-management service for people with heart failure and COPD, in the Andalusian Health Care System, where case management has been implemented since 2002. Accordingly with the steps of a theoretical model for complex interventions, in this study, theorization and intervention modeling phases will be developed. Read the full article