The Return of Migrants: A Tale of Hope and Hardship
Ah, the Spaniards and their love affair with migration! It’s like watching a soap opera: A mix of drama, tragedy, and the occasional moments of heartwarming comedy—think EastEnders meets Survivor.
The Journey of Mauricio Tabares
Meet Mauricio Tabares, a man whose idea of a vacation took a wrong turn. After nearly two years in Spain, the only thing lousier than his accommodation was his wallet—short of 250 euros and a stable roof over his head, he decided to roll out. Literally. He traded a hotel room for a skateboard and a half-empty suitcase. Not exactly the glamorous escape he might have envisioned.
And let’s not forget this piece of brilliance: Mauricio chose to live in skateparks. I mean, who needs a proper bed when you’ve got a flat surface and a bunch of teenagers willing to toss you a sandwich because they loved your sick tricks? You’ve heard of street art—this is street survival!
The Harsh Reality of Migration
It’s all fun and games until you realize that flying the Colombian flag with pride in Spain isn’t enough for a smooth ride into job security. Tabares, along with a staggering 239,400 Colombian migrants this past year, learned that the hard way. It’s like a football match where you show up, but the opposing team is the “job market,” and they’ve got a better score.
The beauty of this tale is marred by a painful truth. Many have emigrated in search of fortunes, only to find themselves in a maze of bureaucracy and insufficient opportunities. And while young Latinos dream of the ‘good life’ in Spain, seasoned migrants reminisce about the days of ‘hidden employment’ back when euros flowed like wine and life was a bit more forgiving.
The Exodus Continues
But here’s the kicker: while thousands are arriving, a good chunk are packing their bags and heading back. Yes, indeed! This year alone, Colombians were caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, with over 9,200 opting out of Spain. Think of it like an exclusive club where the ‘No Thanks’ list is growing faster than the waiting list!
Life After Spain: The Rebirth
Ricardo Andrés Bolaños, another migrant, saw his imminent demise at the hands of FARC while in Colombia. He fled with just 900 euros in his pocket—turns out, bad guys don’t come with refunds! After scratching, clawing, and resorting to some very shaky identity tactics, he represents the resilience echoing through immigrant stories everywhere.
The Misleading Mirage of Social Media
Oh, social media is a tricky pickle, isn’t it? Mayerli Bejarano learned this the hard way. She came to Spain, fueled by friends’ photos of sangria-sipping, sunbathing bliss, only to realize that life as a migrant was less ‘fiesta’ and more ‘fiasco.’ The gap between Instagram reality and the cold, hard truth of scrubbing floors for a living is wider than the Atlantic Ocean!
Return Projects: A Beacon of Hope
Despite the setbacks, there’s a glimmer of solidarity at the heart of these hardships. Thanks to the International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s voluntary return plan, individuals like Tabares are receiving a shot at dignity, launch funds, and perhaps even their shot at providing better for their families. It’s less about ‘what’s next’ and more about ‘what now?’—a true statement to the journey of migration.
Conclusion: The Complex Dance of Migration
The story of Mauricio, Ricardo, and Mayerli teaches us that the immigrant experience is both a comedy and a tragedy rolled into one. A divine bunch of characters navigating the absurdity of life in a new land while trying to hold onto threads of hope. It’s not just about being in a new country; it’s about finding your place in a world that can often feel indifferent. So, here’s to resilience. And might I say, whatever you do, don’t forget your skateboard!
The day Mauricio Tabares completed his departure from Spain, he had been a migrant for almost two years and was homeless for more than 10 months.
The last room, for which he paid 250 euros in Seville, was given up because he did not have the money to pay for it. He never got a job.
Without a home, he began his pilgrimage with the only thing he had left: a board of ‘skate’ and a half-empty 25 kilo suitcase, with blankets “for when I had to sleep on the street.”
With the luggage on top of the board, he rolled through the streets of Seville, Valencia, the Basque Country and, finally, Madrid. He lived in the ‘skateparks’, where he learned to encourage the charity of young people to survive.
“They liked how I skated, I told them my story and they brought me food,” says this 41-year-old ex-military man, in a taxi heading to the Madrid airport, minutes before taking the plane that will return him to his native Colombia. He returned on February 9, after urgently participating in the voluntary return plan of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
More than 17,400 Colombians have emigrated from Spain this year, a situation that is also shared by thousands of Venezuelans, Peruvians and Argentines.according to the population census of the National Statistics Institute (INE).
“It’s not like before,” is heard among the most experienced Latinos who arrived in the times of the peseta, when there was more “submerged” employment—for migrants without permission—because the sanctions on companies were not so strict.
Four of the five nationalities that are growing the most in Spain are Latin American. In the lead, by far, are the Colombians: 239,400 migrants between January 1, 2023 and July 1, 2024. After Morocco147,900, continues Venezuela with 142,200 trips in the same period. The fourth is Peruwhich has added 98,100 compatriots to the census and fifth Argentina con 81.300.
These nations not only lead the entries into the country, but also the exits.
This year’s emigration registry shows that Colombians have moved to second place, previously occupied by Romanians, with 9,200 emigrations in the last quarter.
Meanwhile, 4,600 Venezuelans, 3,700 Peruvians and 3,100 Argentines have left their habitual residence in Spain. The number of Latinos leaving the country has not stopped growing since the second quarter of 2023.
Migrants usually invest a large part of their capital to cross to the other side of the Atlantic, sometimes they spend all their assets and they even acquire loans that drag on for years. Hence, insolvency is one of the biggest obstacles to return, a situation that encouraged the IOM to launch a pioneering voluntary return project in its field and active since 2003 with funds from the Spanish Ministry of Inclusion.
This year they hope to support 500 people, 80 of them will also benefit from “reintegration aid”, that is, seed capital to start a business as soon as they arrive in the country.
Tabares, for example, will set up a grocery store, he says, while he watches the latest postcards of Madrid pass by the taxi window.
Accompanying him in the vehicle, sitting as co-pilot, is Ricardo Andrés Bolaños, 39, a Colombian who landed in Madrid on April 27, 2022.
“I left because my physical integrity was in danger,” highlights this migrant who left his mother, wife, and children, after suffering extortion by FARC dissidents. They asked him for an initial fee of four million pesos ($965,000) and a monthly payment of 400,000 pesos ($96) for allowing him to operate his fruit pulp company. He didn’t accept it.
Months later, a guerrilla truck hit the motorcycle he was riding on. “Do you believe them now?” asked an unknown voice behind the phone, two hours after the attack.
He fled with 900 euros in his pocket, which he obtained from the sale of the freezers and the motorcycle, little more than two months’ rent for a modest room in any Spanish capital. I try in the construction sector and then in agriculture.
He got a job with the documents of a Venezuelan who rented his identity to him for one hundred euros a month. Thus, he cut broccoli in the Region of Murcia, before picking mandarin and lemon.
He applied for asylum, but was denied. like nearly 50,000 Colombians who requested it in 2023. Only 245 accepted, according to data from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior.
Ricardo Bolaños asks a question during the IOM voluntary return course in February 2024. © Juan José Martínez
One morning at the beginning of February, a dozen migrants begin to occupy the chairs at the colossal meeting table at the IOM headquarters in Madrid. An employee of the entity encourages attendees to eat the juices, croissants and coffee displayed on the table.
Another official distributes the documents that the program participants will have to sign, including a commitment of no return to Spain for the next eight years.
The hardness of migrating and the mirage of social networks
Many arrive with suitcases from other regions of Spain to take the course that will give them a return ticket. This is the case of Mayerli Bejarano, a 25-year-old nursing assistant who lives in Barcelona with her husband Jefferson and their two children.
The couple made the decision to migrate “because the economic situation became complicated,” she summarizes. They ruled out going to the US. “I didn’t want us to go through ‘El Hollow’, because it was very dangerous for my children,” explains the woman in reference.
‘The gap’. That euphemism so popular in Latin America to refer to the clandestine passages between Mexico and the United States, in which 686 migrants lost their lives in 2022, according to IOM figuresmaking it the most dangerous land route in the world.
Bejarano did not want to confront his eight- and four-year-old children with this naughty girl, so he suggested that Jefferson move to Spain, where Colombians can enter without a visa, since 2015, thanks to an agreement with the EU, which opened the Schengen area to Colombians and Peruvians.
The decision had been made: “We sold everything to come, that is, a motorcycle, a car and the furniture in the house.”
When you are an immigrant you become aware that you are not going to earn like a normal person.
The odyssey replaced the adventure as soon as they stepped foot in Badajoz, a border city near Portugal, where they discovered that work is more of a privilege than a right when you do not have a residence permit. After a few months, they tried their luck in Barcelona, but things did not improve. Jefferson was still unemployed and the family had to survive on less than the minimum wage that Bejarano received for caring for an elderly woman. I worked 8 hours a day, 12 hours on Saturdays and one Sunday a month. He charged between 700 and 800 euros. “When you are an immigrant you become aware that you are not going to win like a normal person,” he laments.
Now, in retrospect, he considers that he thought naively: “They tell you: ‘come here, you can get a flat and a job’, but until you arrive you don’t realize that it’s a stupid mess.” For Bejarano, Social networks are a mirage that attracts thousands of migrants abroad with the projection of a misleading reality. He feels that he was a victim of that chimera, fueled by the publications of his acquaintances in colorful places in Spain.
However, she herself perpetuates this contradiction in her networks, where she projects a alter ego comfortable and smiling digital, oblivious to the worries that govern his head. “
The photos that I upload are the story that I do makeup in Colombia. I have never posted that I sleep in a room or eat in the parks. You upload a photo with your children and people think ‘look at these people walking’, but in reality, the person who used to be a nurse now has to clean and sweep,” says Bejarano during a break in the course.
Cover of the business plan of the restaurant ‘To eat better’, by Mayerli Bejarano. © Juan José Martínez
Colombians, Senegalese and Hondurans are those who request the return the mostsays André Lascoutx, coordinator of the IOM project in Madrid. The 38-year-old Guatemalan highlights that “Last year, Peru took a huge leap” in search of return, which corresponds to the emigration figures from the INE.
The IOM project provides participants with 450 euros in cash per person — if it is a couple, for example, it will be 900 euros — and tickets to the nearest airport of the final destination.
Gemma Mateos, head of the entity’s mobility department, points out: “What the return tries to do is ensure that they travel in conditions of dignity and safety. Applicants present a business plan, the IOM evaluates it and, if applicable, makes some adjustments to reach the final seed capital budget.”
The requirements to enter the program are to have been in Spain for at least six continuous months, to be from outside the EU (foreigner to the EU), to provide a social report that demonstrates the lack of solvency to pay for the trip and to have no criminal record. Those who are seeking asylum or international protection must renounce the application.
Lascoutx details that “the process takes an average of two months,” but in the most urgent cases “it can last only two weeks,” such as victims of human trafficking or those experiencing homelessness, such as Bolaños or Tabares.
Mauricio Tabares shows how he toured several cities in Spain after becoming homeless. © Juan José Martínez
Return: “How to live again”
Eight months after his departure from Madrid, Ricardo’s normality returns to flow through the streets of Valle del Cauca.
At the airport he was greeted by his parents, his wife and his son, who as soon as he saw him started jumping on his toes, as can be seen in the video recorded by one of those present.
“I wasn’t having a good time and the family knew,” he recalls by phone. The first month in Colombia, he worked on setting up the establishment and sent invoices to the IOM headquarters in Bogotá.
“Thank God it has gone very well for us,” he says. It sells natural fruit pulps, flavor combinations, and recently inaugurated a line of green pulps. At the same time, he works in a company to adjust cash.
He affirms that having arrived in Colombia “is like living again,” although that does not mean he remembers his time in Spain as a defeat: “There I learned to manage money better. You become wiser, you are clearer, you have your feet on the ground,” he reflects.
When the foreigner stops being the chimera where dreams come true, many return to their homeland to wake up from a nightmare.
