La Voz de Galicia – June 11, 2021 →
The truth is that even though in some things we are doing better than previous generations, it seems as if we are doing worse in other things. If one stops to think about Spain’s youth unemployment rate, which according to Eurostat (the European office of statistics) is around 38% among those under twenty-five, it is difficult to imagine the feelings of all those who thought that their future could be similar (or better) than life in their home countries.
In that 38% there must be countless stories, countless social and cultural realities, and it is not fitting to try to talk about a specific profile when this data affects so many different people. And even though those under twenty-five have already lived through two great crises (the one in 2008 and the current one), no one prepared them, no one prepared them or us, to accept the consequences of such a hopeless life.
It is also difficult to think that in this Europe of which we are a part there is such a great difference among the unemployment rates in the countries which comprise it. From Germany’s 6%, to Ireland’s 15% and Portugal’s 23%, it is as if the fact that being part of a whole is not helping us learn a little more from each other. According to the European Union’s page, one of the UE’s objectives is “to promote sustainable development based on balanced economic growth (…) in a highly competitive economic market with high employment and social progress.” It is clear that we are doing something wrong because there is an abyss between our 38% and Germany’s 6%, but I want to think that even though there is this difference there is perhaps also hope because if they can, why can’t we? Or are we not a part of that utopia?
