Being an Immigrant…
I am often described as a Cheerleader. The most positive person in the room. It’s a coping skill, really, and I learned it decades ago for my own sanity in hard times. Being negative does not help anyone - and least of all, yourself. Negativity begets negativity, and it always snowballs down a hill once it gains momentum, so I like to head it off long before that happens. But yannow what? Sometimes being an immigrant just fucking sucks.
Yeah I said it - in print, too. But it’s true!
No amount of “I diD mY rEseArcH” prepares you for half of it. You show up and it’s like the best vacation of your life for a month or two, but then it’s time to get to work on more administrative processing than you ever thought possible. No matter how much of the language you learned, you’re confused by your local dialect, and doing everything in it. You won’t know right away about every single tax, fee, and process you have to pay for (ITV, IVTM, IBI, IRPF, modelos and tasas for every day of the week). When you find out about the fees, you can’t figure out where to pay them - the city website? The provincial one? The national one?? At every turn you need a “cita previa” and you spend hours and hours reloading the websites to get each one. You brought the wrong form to this one so you have to come back another time. You conquer an appointment in your second language and feel so triumphant, but then at a restaurant after it, someone pretends not to understand your Spanish because you have an accent. The delivery guy hoists a case of wine up and over your front gate because you had the nerve to go out to lunch today when he showed up, and half the bottles break. You go to renew your ID card and find out they only do that when it’s already expired, so you have to spend 2 months with an expired ID because you can’t get an appointment until then. Your bank locks your account in the meantime, because your ID expired and they don’t know about the “only renewable after expiration” rule and they don’t care that there were no appointments for 2 months. None of the offices you use talk to any of the other offices you use, so you take the same documents to every one like it’s Groundhog’s Day. The bureaucracy combines the latest technology with that of the 1980’s - you can pay your taxes on a mobile app, but your town hall needs you to appear in person with a big stack of paper documents just to register your address there (which is required by law, and is somehow the only way they can know how many residents your town has). Are you self-employed? Buckle up, Buttercup. Free Healthcare is far from free (though I am a BIG fan, it is just not an accurate description and they should stop calling it that - it’s SOCIALLY FUNDED healthcare). Tack on €350-€600 every month for social security, mandatory quarterly taxes to the tune of 30% or so, and a yearly declaration as well… you’re filing and paying something 5 times a year just for the chance to be able to work your self-employed job. Then you have to figure out the VAT and IVA and who pays what and how do you invoice it now - and that’s all before even getting to the daily operations of your business. You wake up and are exhausted from it before you have put in one hour of doing your actual job.
But here’s the thing… MOVE HERE ANYWAY.
Zero of the whining above (and more that I didn’t list) is more than a blip on my shit-o-meter, in the grand scheme of things. Because Spain is fucking amazing. For every 1 disgruntled weirdo making fun of your accent, there are 300 encouraging Spaniards clapping for your efforts to speak their language. The Spanish are overwhelmingly warm, welcoming, and if you’re here and you’re truly down with their culture and language - they’ll show you the ropes! You’ll get invited to all of the celebrations, and you must SAY YES TO EVERYTHING! There’s so much magic here, and it happens in the gatherings. Around the tables. At the ferias and festivals. At the parades and the holidays. AND THE HOLIDAYS… there are more Holidays in Spain than you ever expected. Local holidays, patron saint holidays, regular national holidays… every one comes with a cultural tradition you’ve never heard of... Fiestas del Carmen? You’re hanging in the ocean. San Juan? They’re lighting fires on the beaches. La Tomatina? IT IS A TOMATO FOOD FIGHT. Las Fallas… fires and fireworks everywhere, parades of gigantic whimsical figures, and it lasts for a week. I could write 25 pages about the festivals alone. Some of the worlds’ best beaches are in Spain. The fruits and vegetables grown in the country are some of the best in the whole world. They have a pretty amazing rail system, commuter trains around the cities and longer distance trains between them. In the north you have lush greenery along with stunning beaches and coastline. In the south you have vacation oasis beaches on the coast and the most fascinating history and stunning architecture across the whole region. Ancient castles and incredible ancient cathedrals sit in every town and city, as part of the backdrop while you’re at the grocery store. I’ve been in the same little city for 3 years and I still say at least once a week, when picking up fruit or meat from the market next to our little castle… “I can’t believe I get to live here.”
Immigration is shitty. But it’s a drop in the bucket when it gives you the ability to melt into this incredible country’s embrace. Think about it in the context of lifting weights and/or working out - it’s hard when you’re doing it, but the benefits it gives you afterward are great enough that you keep doing the hard part to enjoy the results… Similarly, we get through the hard stuff in order to enjoy the land it earned us the chance to be a part of. But it’s OK to admit that it’s hard.
