Moving to Barcelona might mean dropping a few rungs on the career ladder - even if you speak some Spanish. Actually I am being nice. Chances are you might fall right off the old ladder you were on - and find yourself climbing a new ladder all together. But that could be good!
It might not even be a ladder. It might more like a step ladder! With just 2 steps! Not much money at the top of a short litte ladder like that, but on the other hand - not so many rats racing up it either!
And isn't that why so many people come to Barcelona? To leave the rat race and the scarily high and slippery career ladders behind.
It's quite common in Barcelona and Spain to find foreigners, who are highly qualified. They could be lawyers, accountants and business people - you name it. But that was in another country, another time and another life.
Now they are in Barcelona and the reality is often that unless you are completely fluent in Spanish, you have to take whatever work you can find, while you find your feet and learn the Spanish language.
So don't waste time and energy moaning about how much you were making in London and Berlin. That was then - this is now.
If you had really wanted to stay in the old job - in the rat race - long commutes - long hours - lots of money but no time to spend it - then you probably would have stayed right where you were.
You didn't, so forget the past and concentrate on why you came here - to find a different lifestyle and that means a new job in Barcelona.
For many native English speakers the first step might be to teach English in Barcelona. Many nationals from other European countries will often a first job as a help desk operator. There are many international call centres in Barcelona.
Other possibilities are to work as free-lancers in their own field, but this often requires having customers in your home country that you can continue working for and perhaps coupled with the ability to do your job online.
The bottom line is that you have to hustle quite a bit to get started in a new country and if you want to stay in Barcelona and Spain, you have to do whatever it takes to get an income during the first few years, while you find your feet.
Chances are that you will have to work for salaries, that are substantially lower than you are used to, but you can take comfort in the knowledge that even if you had found work in your old field here in Spain, it’s likely that your salary would have been much lower than your old salary anyway.
For many the average salary in Barcelona is around 1000 euros a month. There is even a term for people who make that kind of salary in Spain: "mileuristas".
Finding jobs that bring in double or triple that amount is like learning Spanish - harder than you think!
Initially it can all be quite a shock. Many new residents of Barcelona find themselves getting even more stressed by the difficulties of the “laid-back” Spanish lifestyle, than they were back home in the 9-9 office madhouse. "But at least we were making money back then!"
It’s an question of adjustment. If you came here for a change of pace or to work less, then you should come to terms with the fact that your work will be more trivial and you might be making less money. But isn’t that one of the reasons why you came here? Less work = stress?
The good news is you are out of the rat-race and into the sun! No more daily grind of a 10 hour working days in a highly competitive and tough environment. No more weeks of a grey rainy days followed by grey drizzly days following by a grey summer and so on. No more train queues and transport delays. No more overtime or weekends spent in the office.
That’s all gone. Yes and the money´s gone too. You might think longingly of old pay checks, but when you finally had a chance to cash them, perhaps you were too exhausted to do anything, but stay home. Or did you do what many do in the rat-race? Spend it all on retail therapy which just meant that you had to work even harder to keep up the payments on credit cards and mortgages? Or where you busy keeping up with your colleagues buying expensive watches and holidays in a lifestyle that came with the salary and went with it to?
What's to miss? Forget the rat-race. And even if you had been able to get a similar job in a high profile Spanish company in Barcelona, you might not have liked it. The 2 hour Spanish lunch break, that Barcelona also enjoys, means that you would probably be working longer hours here than you did back home. But for considerably less money.
So. Be happy, be positive, think ahead and enjoy the advantages of a laid-back lifestyle. Let old doors stay closed and look for the new ones opening here. Life in Spain can be much simpler and more rewarding both in the short term and the long term. You just have to adapt to it. Relajate hombre!!...
The type of temporary jobs that you will probably get here have the advantage, that you have more time to yourself. You can enjoy your free time, meet new people and learn Spanish. Working in Barcelona means that you will probably earn less money than you ever have before in your life, but then again, you will need much less money to live here happily too.
For a start the weather in Barcelona is much better , so you will be outdoors a lot more. This means that you really don’t need or miss the latest gizmos gadget toys like play stations, x-boxes, wide screen TVs and whatever else Sony, Nintendo, Disney and Microsoft dream up to keep us attached to a screen 12 hours a day.
Being home less also means you can adjust to living in a smaller space. Basically you won’t have so much “crap” to store because you don’t buy so much “crap.” This means a lower rent.
Then there is retail therapy. Much less of that here. I used to buy a pile of clothes, CD’s, DVD’s a week simply to alleviate the boredom of a stressed working week. Because of the distinct lack of free time you need lots of new things to distract you and relax you at the weekend. That's why it's called Retail therapy.
Here you don’t need all that. A huge saving! You barely even need a TV. Most newcomers to Barcelona either don’t bother with one, or they watch the old TV with push buttons and no remote that came with the flat.
Spanish television is hardly worth the remote control anyway. No matter which channel you switch to, there is mixture of sport (football) and entertainment in the form of “tele-basura,” ( tele-rubbish ), which rarely changes. Mostly imported soap operas from South America and Mexico, called tele-novelas.
They are followed and preceded by a dramatic talk-show, featuring a seemingly endless array of one time, has-been or never-was A-Z list of celebrities, who sit across from each other and then hurl their accusations across the screen at ex’s, family and friends and whoever else is guilty of anything from insults to incest and cross dressing to bad taste.
It’s difficult to know who exactly did what because most of the time, they are crying too. So a television is nice to practise your Spanish and occasionally it’s fun to watch a DVD, but there are so many things to do in this city, so you probably will not spend much time in front of the TV.
Then there is furniture. In the north of Europe the climate is so much harsher, so people spend a much higher percentage of their time at home. This article was written on 5th December 2006 and the author was outside today in a T-shirt.
If you live in northern Europe, you will spend 90% of your life indoors, so why spend money to be a bit more comfortable! It even seems like the colder it gets, the more time you stay in and the more you spend on even more stylish furniture.
Just go to Sweden, Norway and Finland, if you want to see designer homes! I am not sure what went wrong in Scotland, but they do have ample supplies of excellent scotch up there, which probably affects their taste buds in furniture.
In Spain people spend most of the time outdoors. It’s an outdoor lifestyle. Most socialising is done in bars and restaurants. No-one bothers that much with their homes, because who is going to see it anyway? Catalans are not exactly famed for inviting people to inside homes and they will certainly not expect or accept an invitation to see the inside of yours. So why spend money on home furnishings if you are never home?
A car? If you live in the city, you don’t need a car. Public transport is very cheap, safe and efficient. If you want to get out of the city for a weekend there are plenty of very cheap flights, cheap trains and great car rental deals in Barcelona. If you need a cheap form of transport here to get to work, buy a scooter. Cheap to run, cheap to buy, free parking! Again. Less money needed.
Gardens are not an expense here either, so forget buying gardens tools too. And because most of your friends here will be happily semi-broke alongside you, you will not have to worry about keeping up with the Jones’s!
So my advice is. Relax! Enjoy the laid-back lifestyle. Learn Spanish. Learn the culture and if you plan to stay for a long time, then better jobs in Barcelona will come along and you might even think about starting your own business. I will tell you more about starting businesses in Barcelona in another article - Mañana!
