By Alexandra Sandacz
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MADRID, Spain – On Sunday, Spanish youths, frustrated by a lack of opportunities in Spain, protested in various cities against high unemployment and poor working conditions, which force them to move abroad to find work.

Hundreds of youths marched in Madrid behind a large black and white banner that stated, “We are not leaving, they are throwing us out.” Furthermore, the youth chanted, “We don’t want to go!”.

In addition to the protests in Madrid, numerous other smaller protests took place in Barcelona, Zaragoza and over 30 other cities around the world.

Mikel Revuelta, a spokesman for a grass-roots group called, Youth without a Future, stated, “We want to denounce the forced exile which young Spaniards are experiencing due to a lack of job opportunities.”

Currently, Spain is experiencing a recession that was caused by the collapse of a decade-long building boom in 2008. The employment rate reached 55 percent among 16 to 26 year-olds.

Unfortunately, the unemployment growth shows no sign of slowing.

However, last month, Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government introduced a 3.5 billion-euro plan to boost hiring of young people and help them start businesses. This particular plan includes reductions in social security payments for the self-employed and for companies hiring workers under 30 and training for young people who did not finish high school.

Furthermore, on Friday, the Spanish government stated it would invest 2.4 billion euros over the next three years to help rental housing and renovate buildings.

Unemployment caused tens of thousand of young Spaniards to look for job opportunities in other countries. Last year, more than 280,000 youths left Spain last year to find jobs in countries, such as Germany, Britain, Argentina and Venezuela.

David Garcia Jurado, a young Spaniard, stated, “It’s frustrating. It’s boring when you wake up every morning and you don’t know what to do. You try to study a little bit, study languages or try to learn how to use new IT programs, but you know that the next day is going to be the same.”

Jurado also stated he started to doubt himself and feels “useless”. “If you have an opportunity, in my case, you are lucky. Just an opportunity, just to have a door open. I just want to have the opportunity to demonstrate my capacities, my skills, my hard work. But now there are no opportunities in Spain. This is the only thing that I want, an opportunity. And Canada, for me, means opportunities.”

For further information, please see:

PressTV – Youth Spaniards Hold Job-Related Rallies – 8 April 2013

TengriNews – Spanish Youth Protest Around the World Against Unemployment – 8 April 2013

Aljazeera – Spain’s Youth Rally Against Unemployment – 7 April 2013

Deutsche Welle – Unemployed Yoth Turn Their Backs on Spain – 1 April 2013