Enjoy crystal clear beaches by day and unforgettable parties by night, eat in restaurants, take a boat ride, have chopitos and a few beers or just read a book in front of the sea with a margarita on the table… For many people this picture is paradise, but the overcrowding of some tourist areas of Spain means that many of those who make this beautiful stay possible have to work and live in very harsh conditions.
If we travel right now, in the middle of the summer season, to the Balearic Islands, specifically Ibiza, some of their seasonal workers are forced choose between paying exorbitant rents or living in cars, caravans or tents during the seasonal months. Juanan, a young man from the neighborhood who works at the school all year, tells us: “The rent here is unaffordable. In many cases, these workers do not have the numbers when they have to rent, because the room eats up a very important part of the salary.”
Searching the well-known rental websites, there is not a single room in Ibiza that costs less than 500 euros per month. The cheapest one you can find on these portals is worth it, followed by another one that already reaches 750 euros. Even There are many rooms that far exceed 1000 euros per month. If we are talking about salaries of 1300 euros or 1500 euros, is it really worth going to the island to work in the summer?
Faced with this unacceptable reality, There are people who are forced to live in places without a residence permit I can’t afford rentals and am even trying to rent an RV or RV so you can do the season.
Juanan continues: “When I came to work in Ibiza during my first year, I noticed that in a field near my school caravans started arriving campers and cars with tents about the month of March. Not knowing what it was, I decided to ask. It was at this point that they explained to me that they are tourist workers who live there for economic reasons and that they are concentrated in that place because it is a 15/20 minute walk from the tourist area.
Same He met a young woman who had to live on the beach, near his work, something the company didn’t know. “This girl had to live there because it wasn’t profitable for her. He washed in the public showers on the beach and when he had his shift, he took down the tent and put it in the hedge,” he explains.
The problem is to reach such a level that it even starts to be rented shift rooms, a practice known as hot beds against which the president of the API College of the Balearic Islands, José Miguel Artieda, has already warned, and it is no longer unusual to find advertisements of this type on the Internet.
This problem does not occur only in Ibiza, there are also other areas where renting for work reasons, especially in the high season, presents a rather complicated challenge. Andrea (a fictitious name to preserve her identity) lives all year on another of the Balearic Islands and tells Retina That is, the last year He had to take a roommate into his room. who works during the summer season but who lives on the peninsula.
A young woman says: “My colleague and friend come here to work in the high season. The first year he decided to come, he had trouble finding a room. When I called various ads for affordable prices, They told him he could only stay for very short stays. It just so happened that this friend stayed longer than the owners would let her, so that option was ruled out. Another time the exact opposite happened, they weren’t looking for a seasonal person, so he had to sleep at my place that year.’
A quick search reveals that yes, there are cheap rooms, but on a close reading of the ads, they state how Andrea assured that many are only rented for weeks, so they are automatically excluded for workers.
How could these situations be resolved? Ibiza Tenants Union member Daniel Moya emphasizes the importance of regulating the use of housing: “We need to regulate rental prices, control the industry and try to reduce because otherwise we can die of success“. In addition, it requires hotels to re-book spaces in their own buildings for workers. “Now there are hotels that rent out blocks of flats for their seasonal workers, and that causes other workers to be displaced,” he says.
In any case, the truth is that this summer, just like the previous one, the excess demand for employment caused by tourism will cover migrant workers in precarious situations.
*Alejandra de la Fuente is a journalist, author of “La España precaria” and responsible for various reports @MierdaJobs of which he exhibits examples of the most undignified and precarious employments he finds.