New Europe: The life of a Spanish familyFor the Vega Méndez family in Barcelona, it is strong family ties that will see Spain through its severe recession
The Guardian
At 9.30pm on a Friday, Miguel and Purita's home in central Barcelona has all the bustle and hum of a hot summer fairground. Their children – Antón, 10, and Martiño, seven – are off to bed, having spent the past few hours in a tumult of cooking, drawing, TV-watching and playing Nintendo and the piano. Antón is the quieter of the two; he comes to ask Purita what the word "diagram" means (he's reading a Spanish translation of Harry Potter) and when she says the boys can eat dinner in front of the TV, he asks if he can read instead. His mother blushes with pride.
Martiño is cheekier, more assertive. He doesn't speak much English, but communicates well, bringing me a liquid-filled bouncing ball in which floats an eerie, bloodshot eyeball, and playing for laughs in a pair of sunglasses with flashing frames. He also hangs from the gymnastic rings that swing back and forth in the front room, in a vivid impression of a vampire bat.
As the boys head off, the visitors start arriving. Earlier in the day, Purita had read me the text message she'd sent some friends – inviting them for dinner with "a typical Spanish family". She then fell about laughing. Her friends seem to agree that Purita Méndez Suárez and Miguel Vega Lorenzo, both 43, are atypical, non-average Spaniards; Ines, an interpreter, originally from Uruguay, chuckles at the notion; Eva, a well-travelled Catalonian business consultant, seems equally amused. Nonetheless they're people from whom I can learn a lot about Spanish life, it's agreed, during my three-day stay in their home.
We settle down to a dinner prepared by Miguel, who does most of the cooking. When I ask Purita if the traditional idea of Spanish machismo persists, she immediately answers yes. (Miguel, from another room, yells: "No!")
"Couples still don't share the chores at home," says Purita. "I only know three or four couples who really share taking the kids to school, while he cooks and she does the laundry, or whatever." That's the system in their home, and when I first arrive Purita is instructing Antón and Martiño on how to fold their clothes and sort their socks. "But the rest of the people I know, no, they don't share the work. I remember a friend telling me: 'My husband expects me to bring him clean towels while he's taking a shower,' you know?" Her eyes roll enthusiastically.
We start with a small dish (tapa) known as fideua, which consists of short noodles, fried by Martiño (he's a keen cook and takes a regular class on a Saturday morning). These are then boiled in a fish broth, and baked in the oven, where they pop up like fresh blades of grass. To follow is a delicious black-ink paella, and then the traditional Catalonian dessert brought by Eva – almonds, hazelnuts, sultanas and dried figs. Miguel's best friend, Leo, a German writer and teacher, arrives as midnight approaches, and the group keep Spanish hours, drinking sweet wine and whisky into the night, and arguing over politics, in anticipation of a relaxed nine o'clock start the next morning.
The international spread of Miguel and Purita's friends is at least partly a result of their working lives. Both teach English. Miguel works at the University of Barcelona, at a centre where people can study languages, including Japanese and Swedish, alongside their degree. He was studying for his PhD at the university in 1994 when he was first employed by a director who was keen to take on young, innovative staff.
Purita teaches at a high school in a working-class suburb of Barcelona; she shows me a project her 11-year-olds have just completed, page upon page of beautifully illustrated family trees. She started working as a substitute teacher nine years ago, after Antón was born, and four years ago she passed the tough exam that established her as a permanent teacher and funcionario del estado (civil servant). "Passing the exam means you are in for ever," she says, "which is wonderful. The salary is not wonderful, but you have a job."
This is no small miracle. Last year it was reported that Spain may be facing the same financial devastation as Ireland and Greece, after the property bubble that had made it an economic marvel suddenly, catastrophically burst, and the banks were left with billions of euros in bad property loans. This crisis sparked genuine fear across Europe. The bailout of the Irish Republic had cost the EU, the IMF and the country itself €85bn (£74bn); to put the cost of a potential Spanish bailout in perspective, their economy is twice as large as those of Ireland, Greece and Portugal, combined.
Purita says there were rumours that the frantic international coverage of the situation was trumped up slightly, "especially in England. Talking about us meant that people weren't talking about the crisis in England or France, you see?"
But no one disputes the unemployment figures. Spain now has the highest rate of unemployment in the eurozone, with 20.2% of the population out of work, rising to 42.8% among people under 25. A guaranteed job is therefore highly prized. "Everybody knows a person who has lost their job," says Purita, "and of course it affects the whole family. You hear about it all the time, non-stop, on television, the radio, newspapers."
"It must be difficult for you guys to understand how Spain can have a 20% unemployment rate and not have rioting," says Miguel. (He spent some time working and squatting in London as a young man, so has a good understanding of the anarchic side of British culture. He uses the word "Bollocks!" accurately.)
"To understand why we can sustain the situation a bit longer than many other northern European countries," he continues, "you have to understand the concept of family support and solidarity, the idea that no matter how much you suffer, your extended family will be there for you, which creates this safety network, this idea of protection, which is important not only practically but psychologically, you know? The government has been using that quite cleverly, to pass the responsibility on to families."
Their family hasn't been untouched by the crisis; last year, civil servants across the country, including Purita, took a pay cut of 5%. At around the same time, Purita went on a number of protests, focusing on the conditions in high schools – the increasing class sizes and extra responsibilities for teachers, for instance – but became disillusioned. Each time she and the other teachers went on strike, all that seemed to happen was that their pay was docked, benefiting the government by hundreds of thousands of euros. There was also scant support from the private sector. "They just felt we should feel lucky to have a job," says Purita.
At the end of last September there was a general strike in which workers protested against austerity measures, including raised taxes, reduced welfare benefits and frozen pensions, but Purita had tired of the demonstrations, and sat it out. She wasn't alone. Although the unions described the demonstration as an "unquestionable success", a poll in the left-leaning newspaper El Pais (which Miguel and Purita buy every day) showed only 9% of the population planned to support the strike, down from 15% a few months before.
The couple both come from Galicia, in Spain's north-west corner, and have a strong sense of regional identity; living in Barcelona, which is part of Catalonia, they refer to themselves as immigrants. There are 17 distinct regions in Spain (15 on the mainland, plus the Balearic and Canary Islands), and these include "three old communities", Purita explains, "which each have their own languages. One is Catalonia, the other is the Basque Country, and the other is Galicia."
Under Francisco Franco's rule, regional identities were suppressed, but since his death in 1975, they've risen to the fore again. "It's quite natural," says Miguel, "that now, in a young democracy, regions would be searching for their identities, and expressing them. Politically it's obviously important that we learn to live with one another." The militant Basque separatist group, ETA, announced a ceasefire last year, which they all hope will prove permanent.
Miguel and Purita met while studying on the same English course in Santiago de Compostela, the Galician capital, and when they finished Miguel was offered a year's scholarship to study linguistics in the US. He wasn't keen on leaving Purita, but "he only had half a point more than I did," she says. "So when he said: 'I'm not going', I said: 'I'm next in line, and if you don't, I will.'" He made a list of 19 universities with top linguistics departments, before adding the University of Mississippi on a whim, because he loved the writing of William Faulkner, who had studied there for a year. Inevitably, that was where he was sent.
Purita moved to Barcelona to study linguistics, and found it hard at first, because life in the north-east corner of Spain is so different, culturally, to Galicia. "The people in Catalonia are, in general, extremely nice," she says, "but they are very closed, so it's hard to make friends. I arrived in September and at Christmas I said to my Mum: 'I'm coming home, I feel so lonely.'"
But she stuck it out. Miguel returned from Mississippi, and in 1994, after living together for two years, they were married in a civil ceremony in Barcelona. They were both brought up in the Catholic church, but they're "not practising Catholics", says Miguel, "and we never go to Mass or to church unless it's for a funeral or a wedding – and even at a wedding we tend to stay outside and go to the bar. In fact, more and more people of our generation are losing contact with the church. The church here is perceived as something obsolete, you know? The younger generation don't go to church, or if they do it's often because they're very radical rightwing people."
That same year they bought the first floor of the apartment they still live in, with help from their families. The place was an empty shell – Purita shows me photographs of bare brick walls – and the pair worked to make it habitable together.
Four years later, in 1998, they bought the floor above, and saved the money to knock through and combine the two into a four-bedroom apartment, with a roof terrace. They're not sure what the apartment would be worth now, but house prices in Spanish cities have fallen by up to 25% in the past three years. When we walk past an estate agent, Miguel points out a very grand three-bedroom apartment that he guesses would have been worth €600,000 a few years ago and is now on sale for around €430,000.
They seem very content in their day-to-day lives. In the morning Purita cycles half an hour to work, arriving at 8am, and teaching until 5pm most days – between 1.30pm and 3pm the kids at her school have a break, and the teachers often sneak away to the nearest, most comfortable cubby hole for a 20-minute siesta. Miguel takes Antón and Martiño to school for 9am, and then spends the morning preparing his lessons and marking, before teaching through the afternoon, finishing at 6pm on some days, 9.30pm on others.
The boys finish school at 5pm, but "they never come home then", says Purita. Antón has music lessons three days a week; Martiño sings in a prestigious local choir. Both are learning taekwondo, and also play basketball, the country's second most popular sport. Football is the most popular, and they would play that too, "but we don't have a pitch around the corner," says Purita, "so I would have to take them there and stay for an hour, and I said: 'No, I'm not that kind of mother. I'm not that wonderful.' I think for them to be happy, I have to be happy."
The children also attend a weekly art class, and the flat is filled with their drawings, most of them by Antón. An intricate line drawing of a ferocious tiger is dedicated to Miguel and Martiño; a beautifully shaded picture of a rhino chomping on leaves is dedicated to Purita.
"Children mean happiness, plus worry, for ever," says Purita, and there's no doubting how central they are to the family's life, and also to the life of the community. When I visit them, Purita and the boys are on a week-long break from school, and she has been sharing childcare duties with Eva, who has two boys of the same age – each mother has one day with the kids, the next for themselves. Purita says that while she doesn't have family in Catalonia, "we have friends, and the link with them is so strong that some of them are like brothers or sisters. If I'm ill, I know they're going to pick up my kids and take them to their houses." As we walk to an Italian restaurant 10 minutes from their flat, we bump into person after person that they know.
I ask what they think of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the prime minister and leader of the Socialist government, who was elected in 2004, just days after the 11 March Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people. He immediately pledged to bring Spanish troops home from Iraq. "That shocked the right completely," says Miguel, "and it was a mistake to do it so quickly, because George Bush wouldn't speak to him." "But he didn't care! It was wonderful!" says Purita. "I was actually quite proud," says Miguel.
Zapatero went on to champion gay marriage rights and women's rights, appointing eight men and eight women to his first government; the country's defence minister, Carme Chacon, had a baby while in post. Purita says the way he's opened up the debate surrounding an issue such as domestic violence has been brilliant. "Until now, people didn't talk about it, because who wants to say: 'My father hits me, or my father rapes me'? No one. But he's focused on addressing it through education, which I think is absolutely the point."
The overall impression seems to be that he's well meaning, but weak. Miguel says that while he likes Zapatero personally, "because he conveys this image of being an honest politician, and he tries his best, I also think he's pretty useless. He's a bit mediocre, not very charismatic."
Earlier this year it was announced that Spain was planning to partially nationalise its weakest savings banks, those buried by bad property loans, but Purita isn't impressed by the way Zapatero has handled the crisis. "He hasn't really confronted the banks," she says. "He hasn't confronted the very rich, you know? He doesn't have the balls. He's tried to introduce good social measures, but a lot of those have then had to go because of the recession."
With unemployment rates so high among the nation's young, I wonder whether they worry for Antón and Martiño? "I cross my fingers," says Purita. "I do the best I can at home to get them motivated." She says she recently had a devastating discussion with the father of a student who she'd been encouraging to work harder. "The father said: 'But what for? Doctors, architects, they don't have a job now, so why's it so important?' I didn't know what to say."
Along with the social safety net of the family, the other factor that keeps Spanish people relatively buoyant, they say, is its sporting success. "Our kids can't conceive of any Spanish team or player losing," says Miguel, "because over the last four years they've seen the national basketball team win the European Cup, and the football team win the European and the World Cup. Then there's Rafael Nadal, who's the No1 tennis player in the world, and Fernando Alonso in Formula One – he lost last year, but we always expect him to win. So our kids have started to like sports in this winning environment, which is funny, because we've never experienced that before in our lives, with sport.
"It's good that we're doing so well on that front, but it's also a kind of drug for people," he continues. "It means they can forget their daily lives, which means they don't really respond to the government in the way they should – demonstrating and putting pressure on them."
