Just a short note on what’s going on.
Yes, I am on vacation but how can you resist a request like this from a fellow Canadian blogger? 🙂
To say that people are concerned about the debt crisis and the Euro is an understatement.
It is by far, the MAIN TOPIC of discussion in every little visit, chat, on the TVs and in all the cafes.
A lot of people here in Portugal speak French (they work in France and visit Portugal in the summer with their family), and from meeting people, you get introduced to their family and so on and so on.
UPDATE: For the rest of the readers — I will also note that these are mostly taken as comments from people I met there. It may have been a small subset of people, yes, but these are THEIR opinions.
There is no way I could have come up with all of this on my own if someone hadn’t been telling me this and translating it.
So I will kindly ask you to keep your personally insulting comments to yourself, or find some way to express them candidly without being rude.
Here’s the breakdown from what I’m hearing so far in Portugal:
COST OF LIVING HAS SKYROCKETED BUT SALARIES HAVE STAGNATED
They used to be able to buy food for pretty cheap, but once the EUR was introduced, their salaries were converted accordingly, but the cost of living was not.
So if you paid $1 escudo (their former currency), stores just changed the currency from escudo to EUR without doing the proper conversion by taking into account that 1 escudo is really 0.005 EUR.
As a result, prices have gone up astronomically, but their wages have not.
In Spain and Portugal, a normal wage is about 500 EUR a month unless you have a better job, but when 8 slices of decent presunto costs 22 EUR in the grocery store, you can see how the gap has increased between salaries and cost of living.
THEY ARE ALL CUTTING BACK ON SPENDING
A very good income here is about 1500 EUR a month, assuming you don’t have a mortgage, you already own a car and it’s just to cover utilities and basic living.
(1500 EUR used to be $300,722.99 ESC)
Most people, earn about 500 EUR a month (minimum wage), and they are barely scraping by.
I wouldn’t say that having a car or insurance is expensive compared to Canada, but when you now earn 500 EUR and it costs 10 EUR for 4kg of grapes and 1.2kg of peaches, you can see how it’s getting expensive.
Here’s an example of a receipt:
Everything used to cost a lot less than this.
Look at the coffee at almost 4 EUR for a jar. It’s about $5.60 CAD, but they used to pay less than a EUR.
In Spain, we tried to order sangrias and in the past it used to be a real shot of fruit-soaked wine, but now it’s a splash with 3/4 of the jar filled with ice cubes for 3 EUR per glass.
A single capirinha (limes, ice, sugar and this sugar cane alcohol) is 7 EUR.
7 EUR!!!
That’s $9.80 CAD for a single glass of alcohol that only has a small splash of wine, a quarter of an orange and is 3/4 full of ice cubes!
You can buy the sugar cane alcohol for about 10 EUR for a LARGE bottle in the store, a basket of limes for 6 EUR, some sugar, some ice cubes and do it yourself at home. With one bottle of sugar cane alcohol you can make about 12 decent drinks with a lot of lime, sugar and alcohol.
12 x 7 EUR = 84 EUR, and it only costs 18 EUR (max!) to do the same amount at home. You can see why no one drinks like they used to.
I know these may not be crazy prices for some places in North America, but we are talking about small cities where people earn around 500 EUR a month.
They all drink one beer each and nurse it for 3 hours. More telling are the parks and empty spaces in Spain. They are FILLED with people who have brought their own alcohol from grocery stores, sitting on the ground at night and drinking with a little joint or two.
The Chinese have become even more enterprising in Madrid, and they’ve purchased a lot of beer beforehand in the grocery stores to sell to these people.
In one instance, the Chinese have about 5-6 people per family in Madrid who help run one convenience store.
They have runners who put beer and alcohol in those fridges to cool them down, and when it comes time to sell, they load up the cooler backpacks and walk around (illegally) selling beer at 1EUR apiece.
7EUR for a drink in a proper bar versus 1EUR sitting in the same park as the bar (or even beside it)? People are not idiots.
At the end of the night, all the trashcans are overflowing with cans of alcohol sold by the Chinese in the streets. Cops patrol and the minute they catch a whiff of a cop, they all scatter into alleyways with their cold beers.
People aren’t eating and partying the way they used to. It’s all cheap food and cheap barely-there drinks.
THEY’RE ANGRY AT THE COUNTRY AND THEIR COUNTRYMEN
Since the crisis hit, the number of people leaving their cities has increased.
There is now a direct route from Portugal to Spain, because there are more jobs in Spain than in Portugal and people are leaving in droves.
The people who are able to leave, and are enterprising, hardworking and ambitious has left.
The few hard workers who have stayed (no choice, or they are still making a decent living), are annoyed that only the lazy bums are left in their cities — the ones who sponge off the government, who don’t work and basically laze around.
You can spot these lazy people from a mile away, and there’s a lot of them (not just in Portugal, apparently!)
In one village, apparently 50% of the people have left in the last year. Considering the village was only 26,000 people, you can understand how it’s a big deal that 13,000 people are now gone.
They say that there are 4 million Portuguese in the world. 50%, or 2 million live abroad, which is a staggering number of people.
In their eyes, taxes are being raised on the remaining few to cover the lazy people who have stayed, the corrupt politicians who’ve stolen and the good, efficient ones who have left.
In Spain, people who actually work hard in the offices or in buildings are pissed at the ones who have stayed but aren’t doing much.
Someone we met who was brought over by the company from France says that they get into work at 7 a.m., mingle, then go for breakfast at 8 a.m. (outside!), come back around 10 a.m., do a little work, and then break for a 2 hour lunch. Then they come back after lunch, do a little work, mingle, and go home.
He estimates they work perhaps 1 hour a day, if that. He says that working in France, he thought THEY were lazy but compared to the workers in Spain, the French are superstar workers.
Of course, this is just one account, but the ones who immigrate to Spain are pretty annoyed with the general laissez-faire atmosphere.
Also I should note that while we were there, there was another riot where 7 people were injured in Madrid.
They were protesting against the government (again) and it seems like the city is crawling with police officers standing around and watching people (not a good sign of a calm or peaceful country).
EVERYTHING IS FOR RENT OR FOR SALE
Everywhere I go, I see: Vende-se or Aluga-se which means for sale or for rent.
People are dying to try and get rid of their property or houses so they can leave…. but sometimes they’re unrealistic. They ask for 150,000 EUR for a home when in this day and time, people might pay 30,000 EUR because of its location and lack of actual owned land.
It’s partly sellers’ faults too.
A store about to close because business is really bad.
STORES ARE CLOSING LEFT AND RIGHT
Lots of stores are going out of business. All that is staying are the big chains like Lidl (grocery store) owned by the Germans, or French supermarkets.
Know who else is doing business? The Brazilian folks and the Chinese.
Everywhere I go, there’s a Chinese loja (store).
They sell all the cheap crap from China.
A pair of fake Crocs costs 4 EUR, when I am sure it costs 0.10 EUR to make in the Chinese yuan currency, plus shipping.. maybe 0.50 EUR in the end for those fake Crocs (“Crooks” I call them).
They’re making a decent living here.
In the same village of 13,000 people, I am told there are no less than 4 Chinese-owned stores. If you consider that there are only 2 supermarkets and 4 bars, you can see how having 4 Chinese-owned stores in such a city is a lot.
They sell everything but food, and they’re expanding.
THEY ARE STEALING FROM FIELDS AND LOCKING PRODUCTS
It’s gotten so bad that people are now stealing from farmers because they simply don’t have the money to eat.
I should note that in many villages, there’s a lot of free food to be had by the roads — apples, pears, blackberries, and olives… but it isn’t enough for a meal. It’s not enough to live on.
In Spain, they’re stealing from grocery stores, which is why all the employees are always staring at people in the stores (not just that we look like tourists), but they’re watching to see if we steal cans of pop.
Never in my life have I seen a 5 EUR bottle of wine, or 4.75 EUR of cheese being LOCKED UP in plastic boxes or with security tags on it.
Even some ham at 4 EUR was padlocked in a box in the fridge with a security tag.
These are not high end products, nor are they specialty items. They are normal, everyday items that people steal the most, so they have to be tagged to stop all this shoplifting.
THEY ARE EATING OLIVE OIL, POTATOES AND BEANS
Meat is a luxury. If you buy meat, you’re rich.
In stores, you can see people stock up on beans and potatoes. Why they buy pre-soaked beans in jars rather than dried beans by the kilogram, is beyond me… but nevertheless, they are all eating potatoes and beans. It is the only way to survive.
People are stocking up on cheap stuff these days.
People in Spain eat tapas that have apparently dropped in quality from what others are telling me. Everything is covered in oil or deep fried for calories (hmm, memories of China floating back), and their calories come from oil.
It now costs 5 EUR for 3 shrimp on a barbecued stick with some sauce on it. When you go to a grocery store, you can buy prawns (huge versions of shrimp) for 10 EUR a pound.
It’s just ridiculous how much these bars and eateries are ripping people off.
I saw a small little rice bowl of so-called authentic paella selling for 3.5o EUR, but it was JUST RICE with a few vegetables chopped in!!
To top it off, it isn’t even real saffron. They use turmeric or colorant to give it the colour, but not the taste. They’re really crooks these days, trying to squeeze every penny out of anyone they can find.
(Only clueless tourists bought paella in Madrid, because if you make it yourself the way BF does, you don’t pay that kind of money for imitation paella.)
Side Note: Real saffron here is pretty cheap — it costs 2.50 EUR ($3.50 CAD) for 0.5 grams. It may not sound cheap to you, but consider that we paid $15 CAD for 0.5 grams in Canada and your tune will change.
Even with saffron being as cheap as it is, you only need HALF of it to make a huge pan of paella, so perhaps 1.25 EUR for a huge pan that can yield maybe 25 of those little bowls of paella, at a cost of 0.05 EUR per bowl.
With meat, vegetables and the cost of rice and cooking taken into account, they could sell the real thing and still make a healthy profit of about 3 EUR or just under.
Instead, they sell it with fake saffron (turmeric or colorant) to save that extra 0.05 EUR.
It’s seriously unbelievable how much they rip you off. NO ONE would pay almost $5 in North America for a bowl of coloured rice with slivers of vegetables, but that’s what they’re trying to sell in Spain to tourists and the clueless.
BF says it wasn’t like that before. There was real sangria and real paella for a decent price. Now, it’s outrageous.
EVERYONE WALKS
To get downtown, people used to drive. Now? They walk.
An old lady who lives by the road told us that these days, she’s seeing a heck of a lot more people walking downtown rather than driving. Something she’s never seen before.
People are now storing their cars to wait until the recession is over to bring it out and drive.
NO ONE HAS MONEY FOR MUCH
Their old entertainment used to be going to the bars or cafes at night to have ice-cream, coffee, tea or drinks. Now? They don’t go at all, or they go to the cafe once a week rather than every night, and they don’t take the expensive stuff.
When you go to buy ice cream, they’re pretty much sold out of everything because trucks don’t come regularly to refill the shelves as they used to, and they only buy a small inventory of each flavour.
In Spain, no one ate ice cream except for tourists, and even then, I rarely saw people eat ice cream. At 2 EUR a bar, it’s a luxury many cannot afford. Same goes for drinks or anything you can imagine.
THEY ARE ALL ANGRY AT THE EURO
A sandwich in the train station cost 7.50 EUR.
In the escudo, it’s $1500, and a sandwich would cost maybe $150 escudos.
Can you imagine that? The price of a sandwich has gone up from $150 escudos to $1500 escudos.
That’s just one specific example, but in general, everything has doubled or quadrupled in price just with the change to the EUR.
Now they’re saying they’re going to have an “expensive” EUR and a “cheap” EUR. It’s kind of ridiculous that nothing was converted properly in the first place when they wanted to switch to a common currency, which is what caused a lot of problems to begin with.
(See above: Cost of living skyrockets but salaries stay the same)
YOU CAN’T EVEN FIND FRESH BREAD
In some grocery stores, they don’t even make fresh bread any more.
If you don’t think this is a big deal, consider that many Europeans eat bread like the Chinese eat rice.
It is a basic staple for them, and for them to go to a grocery store where they can’t find fresh bread, it’s simply unthinkable.
THEY ARE ANNOYED WITH THE 3.5% TAX HIKE
Temporary they say. The Portuguese who work are snorting at this “temporary” tax (did you know sales taxes were also supposed to be temporary at one point in time?)
They know that the 3.5% will go to the debt and they aren’t mad about that, they’re more wary that this special tax will ever disappear once the government gets used to having that extra flow of cash.
WHAT THEY THINK
- The ones who stayed to work, feel punished
- They’re about to levy a “temporary” (*SNORT*) tax on people to clear the debt
- That the U.S. has a better chance of recovering than they do, and it’s still a great country
- They are under a misconception that China is amazing and more advanced than they are (not true!)
- They think about leaving to go work in Spain or the U.S. if they can
- There’s a divide between the ‘locals’ and ‘immigrants’; immigrants being the Portuguese who left for other countries
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about 
What ridiculous and short-sighted analysis. I agree with the majority of everyone else’s comments and recommend you stick to your regular topics and not delve into micro (or macro) economics. Being such a worldly person as you are, I find it hard to believe you would take the word of some random people at face value and post such nonsense without having done your homework.Â
Taking the opinions and exaggerations of some down on their luck locals and publishing it as the “Crisis Climate in Europe: Portugal” shows a naive, misguided, and arrogant view of a very complicated situation.
Being completely immersed in Portuguese culture as I have been the last few years (and having married a Portuguese citizen) my wife and I found this blog posting laughable, especially the comment about fresh bread and driving. (You don’t mention anything about all the Audis zipping around in Portugal either). Audis aren’t cheap even if you live in Europe.
Additionally, they are right – economically it is much more feasible for the American economy to improve than the European economy at this point simply because the United States is a sovereign nation, not a confederation (even if it doesnt always seem that way) and the sheer size of its GDP/GNP.Â
Instead of generalizing, you could (read “could” as “should”) have written “the locals are by and large displeased with the Euro” or something like that.Â
PS Potatoes, beans, and olive oil is a Portuguese staple in some parts of the country. My wife’s family eats it all the time and they are not poor.
PPS FYI – canned beans have more fiber than dried beans. I read that in Men’s Health. Canned tomatoes have more antioxidants than fresh tomatoes.
Well thank you for being so unnecessarily rude. There’s a way to be frank and candid without insulting and I think you haven’t learned that yet.
For the rest of the readers — I will also note that these are mostly taken as comments from people I met there. It may have been a small subset of people, yes, but these are THEIR opinions. There is no way I could have come up with all of this on my own if someone hadn’t been telling me this and translating it.
This is the most absurd, idiot review about Portugal i’ve ever seen. Total nonsense and wrong information. People don’t eat meat?? More jobs in Spain??? The unnemployment rate in Spain is over 20%, much higher than Portugal. No, Portuguese do not flee to Spain to find jobs!! Portuguese don’t drive??? What a stupid remark. People walk because Lisbon, for instance, is a very small city with only 82km2, besides beeing a beautiful place to walk around. I could go on and on, but I would be loosing my time trying to explain something to such a short sighted person. You should read more, get some true education. Portugal in an ancient Nation, almost 1.000 years old, I understand this may be difficult to understand for people that are from the “200 yrs or so” Nations in North America.
Dear Fabulously Broke,
Interesting comments on Portugal, but I don’t agree with some of your conclusions. The ´Portuguese situation is much more complicated and requires, in my opinion, a somewhat differentiated approach. Despite the fact that salaries in Portugal are way under the European average, the 500€ average salary is not true, the referred 500€ is the so called minimum wage (smn=salario minimo nacional), whis is at the moment at €485 per month and, according to government stats, the average salary is at €1,040 per month (net). Still, around 750000 Portuguese workers have to live with the miserable minimum salary. Another factor influencing the salary is the area where you live, the same job will be much better paid in Porto, Coimbra, Lisbon or other cities, whereas the interior of Portugal continues to be very poor. By the way, did someone tell you that the minimum salary in Portugal was at around 360 Euros when the Euro was introduced and that the average salary rose at more than twice the rate of the inflation? The problem is, that the salaries didn’t rise for everybody at this rate and that the gap between rich and poor is growing. The problem in Portugal is that the middle class is very weak.
I’ve been wondering about certain things you mention:
Where were you in Portugal?
No fresh bread?
I’m sorry, but you must have been in “Cascos de Rolha”. No bread in the bakery? The hell would break loose!
Besides, this is not true, believe me I live in Portugal!
Who told you about the so called divide between the emigrants and those who stayed there?
The person is probably still living in the middle of the “PREC” somewhere in 75 or 76!
It’s not true that the people don’t work, I’m a production manager, and believe me, the people work hard. If you’re talking about state employees, than you might be right, but not in private companies. You are right however with the Chinese shops, but not because of the crisis this started already in the end 90s and in 2001 or 2002 it started to reach epidemic proportions.
The crisis has increase the number of people going abroad, above all to Spain, but this not primarly to the crisis, but due to the higher salaries abroad and due to the fact that Portugal now is member of the EU and therefore emigration is very easy.
A sandwich at the train station for 150 Escudos? Maybe in 1982, I’ve paid 950 Escudos back in 98 in Santa Apolonia. The prices at a train station or airport in Portugal (and everywhere in Europe) are for sure not the average prices. You have to go where the average Joe goes, e.g. the usual cheap meal in any cafe and restaurant for 4 to 5 Euros (in Lisbon or Porto) where the average employee eats for lunch and which includes a soup, traditional house made Portuguese food (more than enough), bread, a drink (non-alcoholic, sometimes even a beer), water, dessert and the obligatory espresso. Of course, if you are willing to pay 70 Euros or more for one meal, there are plenty of restaurants you can go, but those were expensive, even before the Euro.
To blame the Euro for the crisis, is very short sighted and a reflex of the average Portuguese to the crisis, fact is, that the price hikes are in line (as in the rest of Europe) with the historic statistic data before the introduction of the Euro. One of the price drivers however are the taxes which are much, much higher than back in 2000. The gas price is an typical example, almost 70% of the fuel price are taxes (you pay even taxes on taxes (gas price+tax on fuel and than on top of it the VAT). Clearly, there were excesses, above all in the weekly country markets (one of the most important grossery sources for the average Portuguese) and restaurants and cafes. It is simply not true that there was no proper calculation, there were even laws to avoid that people took advantage of the Euro when it was introduced and I know that these laws and regulations were largely controlled and enforced. In the weekly markets and above all in cafes, the control and enforcement of these rules and laws were much more difficult. The receipt shown in your blog, doesn’t correspond to a typical Portuguese grossery shopping, above all the prawns and the instant cafe, which were long time before the Euro was introduced already very expensive. The average Portuguese goes to Lidl or to the Continent for the grossery shopping and spends for sure less than you have spent. On the other side, people forget that with the introduction of the Euro, the interest rates felt to historical levels. I can tell you that my parents had to pay 22%/year interest rate for a mortgage in 1982. In 1995 the interest rates for a 25 year mortgage were still at 13%/year, the interest rate now for the same mortgage is at about 3.75%/year. In last 10 years the people bought houses like crazy, 70% of the Portuguese people owns a house (ok, the bank owns it!). The easy credit for the individuals and for government alike, is at the core of the Portuguese/European crisis,
Portugal has huge problems, and the most of them are old problems. The fact is that Portugal, was not able to solve the structural problems it carries since many decades, many of them existed already during the Salazar dictatorship (e.g. education and low productivity). But the biggest problem by far, is the deep rooted Portuguese tradition of blaming others, and above all the politicians, for all the problems in the world. But the truth is, that this situation was long time expected, but nobody wanted to listen, nobody wanted to live without the many subsidies and easy credit and nobody wants to pay taxes (though it is increasingly difficult to cheat on the taxes!). Portuguese people traditionally never trust their own politicians and think they steal and lie, but the sad truth is, if a politician comes up and really for once says the truth the people won’t elect him.
At the end, maybe you already are aware of it, but Portuguese will never tell you that everything is ok. Meet a friend, say “Ola, como está?” (Hi, how’re you doing) and after 5min you’ll start to cry. Which doesn’t mean that Portugal is doing well and the people have no reason to complain. Portugal has lots of problems, but not because of the Euro, above all because Portugal didn’t solve them when they had the chance and time for it.
Sorry for my lengthy reply, but it seems important to me to put some things straight.
Thank you so much for your long and very detailed comment.
It has cleared up a few things but I am not going to go into detail about how I got my information.
I do know that there is a Portuguese tradition of blaming others, but for me the most telling sign is that half of your countrymen are living abroad in other countries rather than living in Portugal itself. That is just incredible compared to other countries (excluding India and China, as there are a TON of people there).
http://www.diariocritico.com/imagenesPieza/cartel_euro.jpg
Dear Fabulously Broke…
May I suggest you stick to your usual content?… I gladly follow your blogs, but somehow I feel this is treating a complex situation in a very superficial way… and all things people tell you on a trip need to  be taken with a pinch of salt and put into historical, sociopolitical and economic contexts and I don’t think you have the whole picture clear… in a way it feels a little bit patronising, particularly to a reader like me who belongs to this side of the pond and can have a completely different perspective.Â
I agree completely with this comment. I usually enjoy very much your posts, but this one tries to draw conclusions about really complex matters… falling in terrible inaccuracies and mere opinion.
Actually, after reading again some of the comments and the post itself, I’m still shocked by some of the statements like “you can’t even find fresh bread”… ridiculous, honestly.
What Marcy Hino said, every single country complains about the Euro making everything more expensive – even though research indeed shows that price increases have gone up at the same rate. It’s just that the introduction of the Euro is easy to blame all the inflation on. Other things that cause inflation are more abstract and less clear-cut to single out, but the Euro (it’s the coins and notes in your wallet you see almost every day!) is a more concrete “thing” to blame.
I don’t think you can find a single country in the Euro-zone where there have not been complaints about the Euro making everything more expensive. Even in the Netherlands, where the economy is not in such a disastrous state as elsewhere in Europe, there have been complaints for years about the Euro making everything more expensive.I don’t think that’s true though and I personally am quite happy with the Euro. I remember family roadtrips to like Italy and you would need at least 3 foreign kinds of money (e.g., NL-Belgium-France-Italy) so you would be able to pay for accommodation, food, etc. I also remember how at first you could only get the Dutch coins and slowly German, Belgian, etc. coins were finding their way into your hands. It’s also much easier to compare prices abroad and to know when you’re getting cheated or not.
I do hope though the whole “system” gets fixed. I don’t know enough to really comment upon it, but I just hope for the best!
Marlo Brando and PRT have already covered the main issues. I would like to pinpoint some important ideas that may give you a clue about the causes (at least in Spain).
– Most Spaniards devoted huge amounts of money to real estate speculation. Almost everybody dreamed of making a fortune buying and selling properties instead of working. House and commercial surfaces prices increased exponentially and this affected the whole economy: Very high rents made companies demand extreme prices for their products/services.
– For many services, there is no real competition between companies (prices are agreed behind the scenes). Due to this lack of competition, many companies did not see the point in investing in R&D. Why if customers would keep buying their products?
– It’s true that at work, we tend to spend more time talking to colleages and so on. But as the other comments point, one has to work longer to complete the working hours per day. We say that in spain, “We don’t work. We just stay at the office.” The reason is what Marlo wrote: It is better to know the key people than to excel at the job. Good jobs are mostly offered to people having already the right contacts within the company. Therefore, working hard just guarantees that you will get more work load than the others. Education is not a differencing factor any more (and this jeopardises the whole country). This is particularly evident among the political class and the entrepreneurs.
– Tourism has been one the main sources of income for the country since the 1960s. As prices were significantly lower than in Central/Northern Europe, this branch boosted and prices raised over the years, but the touristic offer basically remained the same. Nowadays, prices are much higher and thus, not so competitive.
– There is in Spain an extreme aversion to sinking prices and commercial margins. Hence, companies prefer to sell less with higher prices than more with lower prices. I guess it has to do with the expensive fixed costs they have to face every month: rent, energy, services, …
Now, mix all this up with easy credit and you will have the perfect receipt for disaster.
Regarding “BotellĂłn”, as PRT mentions, it is a long time ago that this “fiesta” started. The reason is that as Mediterranians, we love the “fiesta”, meeting friends and drinking on the street (warm weather allows us to do so). But we don’t like paying 7-8 EUR for a drink that might poison you (some bars sell very low quality alcoholic drinks as if they were prime brands). With “botellĂłn”, at least you know what you are drinking. This leads to another problem: people seem not to be able to talk to each other if they have not a drink in their hand and alcoholism and drug consumption among the youth is rising.Â
To avoid paying excessive prices for bad tapas and sangrĂa, make friends with some local people and they will tell you what is worth paying and what is not.
Thanks for this useful post.
Regards to Marlo. I usually read him in some Internet forums.
Very relieved that your Iberian commentors rushed to put the situation straight – North Americans do have a tendency to believe what “poor” Europeans will tell them as “truth” (and forget about the failings of their own systems on occasion!), although I was a little surprised, as you are usually well-informed. You mustn’t forget the differences in culture and mentality, it all needs a pinch of salt and and I was pleased to read all the on-site information provided in the comments, a true view from the ground.Â
So basically, nothing’s new here in Europe!
I see that Marlo Brando has covered most of the points I was going to comment so I will try not to repeat.
1. The average wage in Portugal is €1,039 per month (net), and the minimum wage,
which is regulated by law, is €485 per month. In Spain, €1,523 per month (net), and the minimum wage, €641,40, again regulated by law.
You can see more information about this issue in the following document: http://www.langlophone.com/20100526_edition/20100526_EU27_data_table_flipped.pdf
2. Iberian ham, that it’s probably the most expensive “presunto” you can buy, cost approximately 50-120€ per kilogram if you look for the better quality, so unless those 8 slices where nearly half a Kg, you were being deceived.
3. “They all drink one beer each and nurse it for 3 hours. More telling are
the parks and empty spaces in Spain. They are FILLED with people who
have brought their own alcohol from grocery stores, sitting on the
ground at night and drinking with a little joint or two.”
Yeah, that’s call a “botellĂłn” and it has been done in Spain for along time. Nothing to do with the Euro or the situation of the country.
4. “Someone we met who was brought over by the company from France says
that they get into work at 7 a.m., mingle, then go for breakfast at 8
a.m. (outside!), come back around 10 a.m., do a little work, and then
break for a 2 hour lunch. Then they come back after lunch, do a little
work, mingle, and go home. He estimates they work perhaps 1 hour a day, if that. He says that
working in France, he thought THEY were lazy but compared to the workers
in Spain, the French are superstar workers.”
I will be fired for that, so I’m really don’t believe that’s possible. Even if the clichĂ© of the government employees do it, most of the time it’s just that, a clichĂ©. I have work with different people from other countries and it’s true that Spaniards and Portuguese have the tendency to spent time during work hours talking with their workmates that it’s not common for French or German people, but instead of leaving work at 5pm as in other countries of Europe (or sooner if you go to counties in the North), Spaniards and Portuguese tend to leave later in the day (mostly because the sun time in the south of Europe is higher than in the North and that lead to a more open and outgoing personality.
5. “(Only clueless tourists bought paella in Madrid, because if you make it
yourself the way BF does, you don’t pay that kind of money for imitation
paella.)”
Yeah, because paella is not from Madrid, it’s from Valencia. If you want a real paella go to Valencia. In Madrid: churros, tortilla de patata, callos or patatas bravas.
About Spain:
_” Debt crisis and the Euro It is by far, the MAIN TOPIC of discussion in every little visit, chat, on the TVs and in all the cafes”
Not in Spain. Spaniards are mainly concerned about unemployment and soccer players on strike. And not always in that order.
_”In Spain and Portugal, a normal wage is about 500 EUR a month unless you have a better job…”
Not in Spain. Normal wage in Spain is none, because the normal situation is unemployment, but if you get a Job of forty hours a week its rare that you earn less than 900 euros/month.
_”In Spain, we tried to order sangrias and in the past it used to be a real shot of fruit-soaked wine, but now it’s a splash with 3/4 of the jar filled with ice cubes for 3 EUR per glass.”
That is true. I don’t know why the foreigners have that huge fascination about sangria. In almost none bar or restaurant the Sangria is well done. Take the advice of a trustworthy local guy or keep yourself in wines and beers. Anyway, sangria is always done with cheap wine. Is sad that you came to a country that produces ones of the best wines in the whole world and punish your throat with infamous sangrias.
_”The Chinese have become even more enterprising in Madrid, and they’ve purchased a lot of beer beforehand in the grocery stores to sell to these people. In one instance, the Chinese have about 5-6 people per family in Madrid who help run one convenience store.”
Yes, and not only cans of beer, warm food too. And they store it inside the street trash bins, to hide it to cops. Here i left a link to a main spanish tv channel report about the chinese who sell food illegaly at the street: http://www.antena3.com/videos-online/programas/7dias-7noches/riesgos-consumir-comida-ilegal_2011020300036.html
Im sorry, its only in spanish, but if you go to minute 4:14 you can watch one chinese “cook” masturbating and jerking over the cans that they sells later to people at the streets. After the “sexy time” he hold on cooking noodles. No hand washing…
The program bought one portion of noodles and ordered a full analisys in a laboratory. The results was frightening, all kind of bacterias and fungus. Even in the plastic fork. ÂżCheap?, yes, and too unhealthy.
5-6 people families running little stores is not a kind of bussines, its just survival.Chineses are not behavior examples for us, they are VERY poor people who needs to go abroad to get a “semi-decent” life that his big, omnipotent and “workers paradise” country cant provide to them. They work 18 hours a day and live, eat and sleep at the back room of their business. May be its fair enough and far good if you grown up barefoot in a Cantonese suburb or village. But even for a spanish unemployed that’s thirth world level. I dont want that as the standard for Spain. I wonder if you want it for Canada. I don’t think so._”They’re angry at the country and their countrymen”
Yes, we are too.
_”There is now a direct route from Portugal to Spain, because there are more jobs in Spain than in Portugal and people are leaving in droves.”
Here in Spain we enjoy a 20% unemployment rate, so… if you are portuguese or from else where and come here seeking for a job i wish you good luck. You will need it.
_”They say that there are 4 million Portuguese in the world. 50%, or 2 million live abroad, which is a staggering number of people.”Â
In 2009 the Portugal population was about ten millions. But anyway… 2 millions abroad is still staggering.
_”In Spain, people who actually work hard in the offices or in buildings are pissed at the ones who have stayed but aren’t doing much. Someone we met who was brought over by the company from France says that they get into work at 7 a.m., mingle, then go for breakfast at 8 a.m. (outside!), come back around 10 a.m., do a little work, and then break for a 2 hour lunch. Then they come back after lunch, do a little work, mingle, and go home. He estimates they work perhaps 1 hour a day, if that. He says that working in France, he thought THEY were lazy but compared to the workers in Spain, the French are superstar workers.”
That’s an absolutely false generalization. I agree that spanish people “works for live” not “lives to work”, but i assure you that when we are at work we are just working. If i take two hours for lunch i know i must recover this time later in the afternoon. No tricks. Unless you are a official worker… but thats another history.
_”Of course, this is just one account, but the ones who immigrate to Spain are pretty annoyed with the general laissez-faire atmosphere.”
It is much more related to the incompetence of the direction staff than with the capacity of the workers. Hard to explain. In few words: in Spain the main way to promote in your job it’s not to be the best doing your stuff. It’s more clever to be well with your boss and know the key people that can boost you up in the business. Sad but true. Recently the germans has taken control of the company where i work. After a long study of the directors board structure they took one decision: all were fired.ÂżGuess what?… no difference in the work flow and a huge save in wages._”Also I should note that while we were there, there was another riot where 7 people were injured in Madrid. They were protesting against the government (again) and it seems like the city is crawling with police officers standing around and watching people (not a good sign of a calm or peaceful country).”Â
Its not a exclusive problem of Spain as you can see if you watch the news from United Kingdom or Greece. At least and so far there is no loots. The protests are mainly in a pacific way. Altough there is always people who takes this as an oportunity to throw bricks to the police…
_”In Spain, they’re stealing from grocery stores, which is why all the employees are always staring at people in the stores (not just that we look like tourists), but they’re watching to see if we steal cans of pop. Never in my life have I seen a 5 EUR bottle of wine, or 4.75 EUR of cheese being LOCKED UP in plastic boxes or with security tags on it. Even some ham at 4 EUR was padlocked in a box in the fridge with a security tag.These are not high end products, nor are they specialty items. They are normal, everyday items that people steal the most, so they have to be tagged to stop all this shoplifting.”
Yes, that is true and it ashamed me as Spaniard. Recently i went to Ireland in vacation and i was surprised to see that in the supermarket not a single product was alarmed. More surprising: the alcohol bottles are at the end of the store, just near the exit. No alarm arches. If you do it in Spain you got the shelves and the cashier empty in an hour. There is a perverted way of thinking about this in my country: “if you can get it for nothing just take it. The fault is of the business that not take anti-thiefs measures”. But do not misunderstand, people who shoplifting is not starving. Nobody starving in Spain, neither in Portugal. People steal becouse they thing is silly pay for something that you can get for free. Is a lack of education and something to be ashamed._”In stores, you can see people stock up on beans and potatoes. Why they buy pre-soaked beans in jars rather than dried beans by the kilogram, is beyond me… but nevertheless, they are all eating potatoes and beans. It is the only way to survive.”
People buy presoaked beans because is easy and quicker to made up a meal than if you have to cook dried beans. The mediterranean food is mainly based in legumes, potatos and vegetables. Nothing strange here._ “People in Spain eat tapas that have apparently dropped in quality from what others are telling me. Everything is covered in oil or deep fried for calories (hmm, memories of China floating back), and their calories come from oil. It now costs 5 EUR for 3 shrimp on a barbecued stick with some sauce on it. When you go to a grocery store, you can buy prawns (huge versions of shrimp) for 10 EUR a pound.It’s just ridiculous how much these bars and eateries are ripping people off. I saw a small little rice bowl of so-called authentic paella selling for 3.5o EUR, but it was JUST RICE with a few vegetables chopped in!!To top it off, it isn’t even real saffron. They use turmeric or colorant to give it the colour, but not the taste. They’re really crooks these days, trying to squeeze every penny out of anyone they can find.”That is the point, most people who run tapas-bars and restaurants see the tourists as non alarmed stuff in a shop: ready to be “lifted”.
_ “(Only clueless tourists bought paella in Madrid, because if you make it yourself the way BF does, you don’t pay that kind of money for imitation paella.)
BF says it wasn’t like that before. There was real sangria and real paella for a decent price. Now, it’s outrageous.”BF is right. But there are places where you can eat real paella for a decent price. You just need to know where.
_”Their old entertainment used to be going to the bars or cafes at night to have ice-cream, coffee, tea or drinks. Now? They don’t go at all, or they go to the cafe once a week rather than every night, and they don’t take the expensive stuff. In Spain, no one ate ice cream except for tourists, and even then, I rarely saw people eat ice cream. At 2 EURO a bar, it’s a luxury many cannot afford. Same goes for drinks or anything you can imagine.”
I assure you that bars and terraces are fully crowded, at least in Madrid. Spaniards love ice creams as the whole world do. That’s stupid.
_”In some grocery stores, they don’t even make fresh bread any more. If you don’t think this is a big deal, consider that many Europeans eat bread like the Chinese eat rice.It is a basic staple for them, and for them to go to a grocery store where they can’t find fresh bread, it’s simply unthinkable.”
Even the Chinese shops sells fresh bread in Spain.
That’s all. Sorry about my bungler English.If you come back to Spain let me know and i give you a few advices and a list of trustfully places to order a paella.Greetings from Madrid.
I’m from Portugal, and the situation is bad here,  I have a few corrections:
When the Euro first arrived, there was an increase of proced overnight, but it was generally of something that corst 100$ become 1€. That’s an increase to the double. Of course with the inflation things have progressively become more expensive, but that first increase was huge. The salaries remained the same, of course.
There are about 11 million Portuguese in the World, and over 1 million (not sure if it reaches 2 already) have left the country. I get the feeling that the number of Portuguese leaving the country is rising though.
Spellchecking fails on my previous comment
*but I have a few corrections
proced = prices
Ola Raquel,
As your fellow countryman, I’d like to make the following comment:
Portugal has a the moment 10.5 million and it is believed to be another 5 million Portuguese People around the world. Alone in France something between 900000 and 1 million. This is not primarily caused by the crisis, though the emigration is clearly on the rise, it’s connected to our history which was not so kind to Portugal in the last 350 years and produced waves of emigrants.
I am really interested where in Portugal and Spain you visited (no offense, really)? I grew up in Germany, lived in the UK and have been to most Euro countries. In every country, people complain that prices have gone up since the Euro has been introduced, and there are jokes in every country that prices were just converted from the previous currency to Euro by changing the symbol. This is absolutely not true. Price increases are due to inflation, which is absolutely normal (studies have shown that the increases from the early 90s to 2001 was about the same as between 2001 and 2010). Not doing work is simply not true, either, I know dozens of people in Portugal and Spain that work hard and long hours. Many things have acutally become cheaper – technology, communication, clothes (much of that thanks to China), travel, and rents in virtually all places but the ‘trendy’ big cities. Portuguese (and Spanish food to a lesser extent) is traditionally high in fat and calories, this is not related to the recession. Portugal, Spain, Greece and Ireland (except for Dublin) were relatively poor countries before the Euro, this is not something that the Euro did.
People in the UK complain about exactly the same and they don’t even have the Euro 🙂
Personally, I feel people are much happier and more content with their lives in Spain and Portugal than further north. If you think people are complaining there, listen to the French or Dutch for example!
You are right about Spain. Nobody wants to tell the truth, but we are in grave danger. These days there were big riots in Madrid, a million of people crowded Puerta del Sol to protest. They they were moved to an abandoned airport because the police didn’t want them to be seen by tourists. The local government staged a concert for the rioters so they would calm down. There was an old white-clad man that sang religious hymns all night long.
Here’s a picture of the rioters:
 http://lh6.ggpht.com/-GDeKcLDqezw/TlB_1CEZKqI/AAAAAAAABSY/9oH-xExcXtk/98%25255B6%25255D.jpg
There was a riot in Puerta del Sol to protest about the situation of the country and a a summary how the politicians are increasing the pressure in the lower and medium class and helping the higher class to maintain the status. The goverment never moved the people to an abandon airport. Last week, Madrid celebrate the World Youth Day with the Pope, and one of the masses celabrated was don in an airport of the Spanish Air Force. The photo you attached to your comment is from that night. There where other events and celebrations all around the city and it’s true that there were riots, because a some people thinks that in a secular country stated in its Constitution Act, taxes can not pay for the visit of the Catholic Church representative.
Next time, try to informe yourself before posting this comments.
Erm, PRT, I think you missed the humour on that one!!
What’s up with the condescending tone about China. It only means Chinese are more creative and be able to find opportunities when the locals can’t.
It’s easy to be more creative when you break laws and have no respect for intellectual property rights. If you go to another country (for work) and skirt laws to make a living you are not going to praised for that. I may admire them for their work ethic but that doesn’t excuse their lawless behavior. Â
Uhmm, Chinese stores in Italy often sell products which are not made according to the EU regulations = not safe. I admire Chinese people too, but their stuff is cheap for a reason.Â
Chinese are no creative. In fact they are very squared minded and with no ability at all for improvisation. Their advantage is just that their level of conformity about live standards is third world level. Tear down my country working conditions it’s not find opportunities when the locals cant.
Prices are very high here in Spain… Since the “euro” they have rise a lot. But a salary 500€?? That’s not true. They are low but not as much as it.
Normal wage after taxes and Social Security payment is about 900 – 1100 euros (about 1400US$) in low qualified jobs and 1100 – 1400 ( about 1800US$) in medium qualified jobs, in 14 payments/year.
But prices must fall here in Spain.
Francisco, Pamplona, Spain.
Facts and figures aside, this is a telling piece about the mental and emotional effects of the current economic state. I linked to this post from my facebook for this reason, with that caveat. This is what she’s hearing from people, whether they exaggerate the numbers or not.
The part of “… if you paid $1 escudo (their former currency), stores just changed the currency from escudo to EUR without doing the proper conversion by taking into account that 1 escudo is really 0.005 EUR.” is plainly not true (!) and actually it seems that they were fooling you (!!).Â
I live in Spain close to the border of Portugal. The 500€ as normal wage in Spain is wrong as well and even we have an expression (“mileurista”) referring to people that have to live with low wage of 1000€.All in all, the key thing is the cost of living vs the wages and, apart from the terrible rate of unemployment, most of people have a decent living standard.Honestly, to state that prices raised 200 times (which plainly did not) just because of the change to the euro falls in the clichĂ© of portuguese exaggeration 🙂
I’m curious. After having seen what’s going on in the country, do you still want to move there eventually? Do you think you’ll wind up moving somewhere else? Or do you think you’ll go back again to assess the economic landscape at a later time before deciding?
Cassie asked the question that I was thinking of as I read your post:Â Are you still thinking of moving here?
Wrong about normal wages in Spain. 500€!! you are nuts
Wrong about normal wages in Spain. 500€!! you are nuts