So I went ahead and used Uber for the third time. I needed to get to Heathrow and decided that everything be damned if at my age and working as much as I do I will subject myself to subways and shuttles. Not that I used any other method of getting to an airport but a taxi even when I was young and poor, to be honest.
And it turns out using Uber was a great idea because the driver I got was an immigrant from Spain who’d left the country 5 years ago, right after the crisis hit. So you can imagine how much we had to say to each other.
Just like every single person from Spain I ever talked to, Ricardo finds the discussion of who will win the next election in Spain to be quite boring. The crisis is about the corruption, and Spanish corruption is a product of the country’s history and culture, he believes.
Ricardo is an educated person with a degree from the Complutense, but there’s no need for him and his expertise in Spain.
“Here I will always be an immigrant, always suspect, always second-class,” he says. “But it’s worth it because here in the UK I go to a government agency an nobody expects me to bring a bribe. And do you know how many people who work in the official capacity here are not white? There are quite a lot! And that never happens in Spain. We keep our dark-skinned immigrants at the very bottom. And I don’t want to live in such a place.”
The culture of nepotism and corruption in Spain goes so far back that nobody knows how to live any differently. My hope is that the young Spaniards who are leaving the country to go work in the EU, Canada or the US will discover a different way of life and bring the knowledge of how to live without corruption back home with them.
The 42-year-old Ricardo is not planning to go back, though. He’s applied for UK citizenship and is preparing for the exam.
Clarissa's Blog 