Global Courant
Barcelona, Spain.-
After two in the afternoon, Ricardo enters a restaurant in Casteldefels, a municipality in Barcelona, to satisfy his hunger after six hours of work, half of his day.
He sits in front of the bar and orders a menu in his language, Spanish: pork ribs, potatoes and Russian salad. The waiter looks at him and remains silent.
20 minutes pass. And Ricardo is not served food. At that moment, two people (Catalan, judging by their dialect and physical appearance) order two coffees and two croissants in Catalan.
The same waiter, who watches Ricardo while ordering, takes their order. And two minutes later, he serves them. He asks if there was a problem with his order. And the bartender looks at him again, remains silent and continues to clean the bar.
“I couldn’t eat there because I’m not like them,” says Ricardo, a Honduran victim of racism in Spain, who recalled that episode due to what happened with the Brazilian Vinicius Júnior, on May 21, while his team, Real Madrid , faced Valencia.
The racism of which Hondurans in Spain are prey does not distinguish age, sex, or religion. And like Ricardo, the cases can easily be multiplied by 100 and, furthermore, they are found in all areas.
The most recent report on the Perception of discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin by its potential victimscarried out in 2020 by the Council for the Elimination of Racial or Ethnic Discrimination (CEDRE), yields worrying data.
For example, that discriminatory behaviors against the non-European immigrant population has increased by 10 points, compared to 2013: from 20.9% to 30.7%.
Housing rent, another problem
Karla Núñez, 39, from Honduras, has lived in Madrid for seven years. And she started looking for an apartment to rent seven months ago.
But not even the large costs that have to be paid in Spain to rent an apartment (three installments that vary according to the cost of the apartment), as they are told, have been the obstacle for Karla to get one.
The big problem has been, he told THE PREMIUM PRESSreal estate racism, which is a practice used by a real estate agency to slow down or increase the requirements for a non-Spanish or immigrant person not to rent the property.
“Apart from the payroll (his salary), the three deposits (quotas), they asked me for a guarantee to support my rent, as if my work or my money is not worth it or does not generate security,” he says, puzzled because “December will arrive and, therefore, how do I see this, I will not have a flat”.
“I realized that a week after trying to rent the apartment, a Spanish couple rented it,” he details, as he hopes to rent one in the following days.
A report by the Council for the Elimination of Racial or Ethnic Discrimination (Cedre) indicates that 31% of its respondents reported racism in real estate, double the number in 2013.
Despite the fact that some real estate agents in Spain prefer to rent apartments to citizens of the Motherland, this practice is sanctioned by the Comprehensive Law for Equal Treatment and Non-Discrimination.
In 2020, a report by Provivienda (an association dedicated to improving residential reality and making the right to housing effective), in conjunction with the Ministry of Inclusion of Spain, pointed out that the 70% of real estate companies acknowledged that they applied total racial discrimination if requested by the owners who hire them.
But, despite the regulations, real estate racism continues to affect Hondurans.
Discrimination
> Seven percent of the population residing in Spain declared that “they have not listened to them when looking for a job or they have rejected them during an interview” because of their ethnic origin > Discriminatory behaviors against the non-European immigrant population have increased in Spain by 10 points, compared to 2013: from 20.9% to 30.7% > 70% of real estate companies acknowledged that they applied total racial discrimination if requested by the owners who hire them.
marginalized
Irving, 35 years old and a resident of Barcelona, should not be told stories of racism after having been the focus of derogatory comments because of his skin color or origin. This young man, with a dark complexion, tall and an aquiline face, remembers that, when he was working in an agrochemical factory, a client had no qualms about openly discriminating against him.
After an intense day of work with an African colleague, the client came to return several bags of fertilizers, because they had made a mistake in the order. So it was his turn to help with the unloading.
For a strange reason, the company’s staff of Spanish origin did not collaborate with the unloading actions, so the buyer went to the Latino and the African to order them to unload the fertilizers.
“He approached both of us, the migrants, and told us the following: to do this job because, anyway, they were migrants and we had to do it for a couple of pesos,” he recalled.
However, the crudest moments occur every time he goes out looking for a job. As if skin color were a requirement, he has been ruled out of several job offers because of his dark appearance. He doesn’t sense it, he knows it.
“Last year in a supermarket, I asked for a job. The person told me that it could not be done, he put a thousand obstacles in my way, ”she recounted.
However, after leaving the premises, he met a friend who was well camouflaged with the Catalans because of his white complexion and his tense and strong accent. “I told her what happened to me and she went to the supermarket, because (the same person) took her papers and told her that he was the type of person she was looking for.”
It has not been an exclusive occasion, because for several job interviews, “at the moment they contact me, they may require me, but when they see me in person they dismiss me because of my skin color.”
Just like Irving, a seven percent of respondents of the report of the Spanish government indicates that “they have not listened to him when looking for a job or they have rejected him during an interview” because of his ethnic origin.
“ “I realized that a week after trying to rent the apartment, a Spanish couple rented it” “
Karla Núñez, Honduran resident in Spain
stereotypes
Dana -fictitious name- has embraced the Spanish culture. 28 years of life, of which seven have been in Spain. As part of his adaptation process, phonetic assimilation had an effect on his pronunciation (as we say in Honduras, he already speaks like Spanish: the marked zeta, the vosotros and the intense and strong rhythm).
However, Dana has also not been free from strange looks or microracist comments (subtly discriminatory everyday expressions). “When I say where I’m from (they tell me), ‘Oh, but you don’t look Honduran, you don’t speak like them!’”.
“On one occasion, when I said my age, they deduced that I had children… the absurd belief that because we are Latinas we have children at an early age,” criticized the Honduran.
His final reflection is that racism walks hand in hand with stereotypes. Unfortunately, “we normalize these situations ourselves.”
