A group of sub-Saharan African men play bingo in a conference room in a hotel near the northern Spanish city of León.
They laugh and cheer when their numbers are called, but many of these asylum seekers have tragic stories.
Among them is Michael, who fled Ghana to escape a violent war that killed his sister and father. After walking to Morocco, he paid a smuggler to put him on an inflatable boat full of people that took him to the Canary Islands.
“I was very happy, because I knew all my problems, and the people who were trying to kill me were following me,” he said. “Because if you are in Spain you are safe.”
In Ghana he worked as a petrol pump attendant and shop assistant. He started studying Human Resource Management, and hopes that once he is settled he will be able to continue in Spain.
He says: “Spain is one of the most respected countries in the world.” “Being here is my chance.”
About 170 people seek asylum in this hotel, in the town of Villaquilambre, which has been turned into a migrant center.
They are among the many thousands of people who travel the sea route between the coast of Africa and Spain each year.
So far this year, more than 42,000 undocumented migrants have arrived in Spain, an increase of 59% by 2023, most of them in the Canary Islands.
The islands’ difficulty in managing these large numbers has contributed to a heated political debate about immigration, similar to that in many other European countries. In Spain the debate is mainly driven by the far-right Vox group, which often describes the practice as an “attack”.
However, the arrivals also underscored the huge potential source of labor in an economy facing severe demographic challenges.
Javier Díaz-Giménez, a professor of economics at the IESE business school and an expert on pensions, says that the baby boom that began in the mid-50s to the late 70s has created a generation of Spaniards heading towards retirement age, and the subsequent “baby crash” means there are not enough workers to cover their spaces.
“The next 20 years will be critical, because more and more people will retire,” he said. “According to the latest demographics, 14.1 million people will retire during that time.”
One way to deal with the labor shortage, he says, is to ape the kind of economic model used by Japan, which has a similarly low birth rate, by investing heavily in algorithms and machines. The obvious exception to that is immigration.
“If you want to increase GDP, if you want to pay pensions to all children who retire, you must increase GDP in a different way than the one we are increasing now, because there will not be many people, unless they bring in immigrants,” added Prof. Díaz-Giménez.
Spain’s central bank has put a figure on the unemployment rate. In a report published in April, it said the country will need about 25 million immigrants in the next 30 years.
Spain’s left-wing government has made an economic case for immigrants, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez describing them as representing his country’s “wealth, development and prosperity”, during a recent visit to Mauritania, Gambia and Senegal.
“The contribution of migrant workers to our economy is important, as is the sustainability of our social security system and pensions,” he said.
Mr Sánchez’s coalition hopes that a proposal to legally register up to 500,000 undocumented immigrants, mostly from Latin America, will pass parliament. Spain has seen nine such reforms during its democratic era, most recently in 2005 under the previous government led by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party.
However, the economic needs of the country are different from the way Spaniards perceive immigrants. A new survey shows that 41% of people are “very concerned” about the situation, making it their top five concern after inflation, housing, inequality and unemployment.
While only 9% of Spaniards associate immigrants with economic development, 30% associate them with insecurity, and 57% believe there are too many.
Villaquilambre, on the other hand, is an example of how undocumented immigrants can integrate with the workforce.
Asylum seekers here are allowed to work for six months after their arrival in Spain.
“Before they get the permit to start working, we insist that they learn Spanish, and we give them training courses and risk-avoidance classes,” said Dolores Queiro, of the San Juan de Dios Foundation, a non-governmental organization. manages the migrant center in Villaquilambre.
“When the day comes that they can start working, we contact different companies – and they contact us – and then we start looking for jobs.”
Companies are contacting each other, he says, “because they know we have people who want to work here.”
Makan, from Mali, recently started working for a local business, GraMaLeon, which makes walls, bathrooms and kitchen counters out of marble and granite. He travels the short distance from the hotel to the factory every day on an electric scooter.
“I’m happy to work,” he said, pausing in Spanish, after finishing a job searching for marble stones at the factory.
Ramiro Rodríguez Alaez, the owner of the business, which employs about 20 people, says that finding workers is not easy.
“We need a lot of workers in this sector. But it’s hard, it’s cold, you have to lift heavy weight, so it’s not a job many young people here want to do.
“There aren’t many companies in this sector here, but the ones that exist all need people. We all want local people and we can’t find them.”
He adds: “Migrants provide us with an important source of labor.”
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