[Anonymous]

It’s bad and getting worse. Many of the immigrants sucked in by the construction boom are now out of work, and, unlike the UK, here you can’t live well off the state. This article gives you a good idea of how tough it is for them:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/09/europe/spain.php

Also, I’m hearing some very worrying stories about how tough life is getting for many middle-class Brits stuck in Spain. Many have lost their jobs, others have seen their fixed income get hammered by inflation and the falling pound, rising mortgage rates, and the moribund property market makes it hard to sell up and go home…..any stories out there?

Mark

[Anonymous]

A lot of inmigrants havent done their homework. They should have invested their wages in the boom period in a property in their origin countries.

For example, last year I was in Ecuador for a holiday and there you could buy a beautiful big flat in the best places for just 50.000 euros or even less.

As I know a lot of ecuadorian has instead bought a property in spain so now they are struggling with the payments and no job.

The more intelligent ones have made money and returned to their countries where they have now started their own business.

[Anonymous]

peterparra wrote:

A lot of inmigrants havent done their homework. They should have invested their wages in the boom period in a property in their origin countries.

For example, last year I was in Ecuador for a holiday and there you could buy a beautiful big flat in the best places for just 50.000 euros or even less.

As I know a lot of ecuadorian has instead bought a property in spain so now they are struggling with the payments and no job.

The more intelligent ones have made money and returned to their countries where they have now started their own business.

Peter you should remember that these people in the majority of cases are semi literate at best, Spain encouraged them to come purely for cheap labour purposes, they have little or no knowledge of financial matters and were encouraged to buy property rather than rent, adverts such as “Why pay rent when the property can be yours for the same cost”. Remember supposedly sophisticated Northern European investors were taken in with the same rubbish. Returning to the immigrants it was never pointed out what would happen if interest rates shot up or there was a slump and they were unemployed.

It is a tragedy, in the main most of the immigrants in Spain are hard working, I know lots of men and woman here on their own who have n´t seen their family for 4-5 years. Many have handed back the keys of the property they mortgaged, many took out loans to buy cars at 25%interest rates. It is very easy to criticise them for doing this but they thought they were in Heaven and did n´t know the Utopia could end. They have little education and none in financial matters.

It is a human trajedy.

[Anonymous]

In my visit to Ecuador I spent some days with a local familly of the upper/middle class there.

In those countries life with some money in your account is very easy. The land is very cheap so you can have huge crop plantations of coffee, bananas, etc… and the labour workers earn about just 5 dollars a day (the most).

Daily menues from just 1 or 2 dollards can be an example of how much savings can mean in those countries.

What most impressed me in that country was the difference of the rich with the poor. There was a lot of good 4×4 cards of the last generation drived by beautiful young people. But in the other side there was a lot of missery and unsecurity in the country.

Is my thought that the upper class in that countries try to avoid the poor to study and be able to climb the ladder what is really a pity.

[Paul]

Mark, I really think that UK pensioners are particularly finding things tough now with the current exchange rates but not only in Spain, I know it’s bad for those that live In France as their property market makes the UK’s look buoyant in comparison so no-one is buying their homes, but anywhere for Brits in Eurozone has to be tough now.

As for Spain, with all the construction lay-offs, will this lead to more crime if they can’t get State help?

[logan]

Ecuador on Friday defaulted on huge interest payments on loans in billions of Euros to the ECB.
The country is bankrupt and investments there are likely to crash.

[Anonymous]

Just think that in these countries a great part of the GDP is from emigrants who work in EU, UK, USA.

Now that there is no job there you can imagine who will happens to the families there that depends of the monthly deliveries of money from their expats members.

[katy]

Maybe so, bit off topic though 🙄

Also, I’m hearing some very worrying stories about how tough life is getting for many middle-class Brits stuck in Spain. Many have lost their jobs, others have seen their fixed income get hammered by inflation and the falling pound, rising mortgage rates, and the moribund property market makes it hard to sell up and go home…..any stories out there?

Mark

[Author]

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