by Karla Darocas, Instructor
Business & IT Skills Training
What businesses are going to survive in this multi-national globalized economy, which Spain has become? The business battleground will be fought in different tongues – and the more languages you know – the more diversified your business marketing will be. Capturing the cultural niches will be the challenge for small, medium and big business alike.
Spanish will always be the respected language of this country – no matter what – as that comes down to national pride – but not necessarily business. More and more native Spanish-speakers are jumping the gate and learning English and German – in order to compete and get ahead of their competition. Smart businesses will do the same. Smart businesses will act local – but speak global.
Over the past decade, Spain has become the new homeland to over 3 million foreigners. More than 11 percent of the country's 44 million residents are now foreign-born, one of the highest proportions in Europe. With hundreds of thousands more arriving each year, Spain could soon match the US rate of 12.9 percent.
Thanks to Spain’s open immigration it is now Europe's best-performing major economy, with growth averaging 3.1 percent over the past five years. Since 2002, the country has created half the new jobs in the euro zone. Unemployment has plummeted from more than 20 percent in the 1990s to 8.6 percent, within earshot of the 7.2 percent euro zone average. The government attributes more than half of this stellar performance to immigration with three-fourths of immigrants coming from Latin American and European countries with languages and cultures similar to Spain's.
Immigrants are weaving vitality and flavour into Spanish society. It is now possible to find a German bakery, a Moroccan furniture shop or a Chinese bazaar. Unlike other countries, Spain welcomes the business possibilities of immigrants. A recent poll by Harris Interactive shows that only 19 percent of British and French think immigration is helping their countries, vs. 42 percent of Spaniards.
Immigration rose from 57,000 in 1998 to more than 600,000 for each of the past two years. The biggest influx, about 800,000 since the mid-1990s, came from Ecuador, followed by Morocco and Romania. Spain, unlike France and Germany, places no restrictions on immigration from the EU's new members in the old Soviet Bloc.
However, it is estimated that 25 percent to 35 percent of the current immigrant population is undocumented. But Spain has been generous with amnesty, granting legal status since 2000 to more than 1 million who could prove that they were employed.
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