Topic: Refugees in Barcelona

I am Ruben Adarme, I am from Venezuela and 29 years old and I have been living here for one year and a half. Back in Venezuela I can say I was one of the lucky ones. I guess you heard about what was going on there. During my childhood we were below medium class, but after that my family had a farm, a really big one. So in a few years the farm started making a lot of money. We were not rich but we started having a better life. After that, all this crisis started and we went back to medium class. But the medium class is slowly disappearing in Venezuela. It is either you have a lot of money which is very few people or you are really poor. I guess I had a normal life and

I was born in a family of two young parents. My mom got pregnant when she was 19 and my father was 22 at that moment. I think that was the biggest reason they got divorced very quickly. A few years later my mom decided to move and we moved to Edinburgh, very far from my hometown. I was changing schools oftenly. So I was a child who was never staying put, I was always traveling somewhere. I think that it is something that was already in my blood because later I never wanted to stay in my hometown when I was growing up.

My name is Sunday, I’m from Nigeria, and I’m soon to be 40 years old. More specifically, I come from the Edo State, situated in Southern Nigeria, which is predominantly catholic. I’ve been living in Barcelona for the last 14 years. Yet I still have not received my papers  which would allow me to work legally. I spend my nights sleeping in an occupied house in  the outskirts of the city, along with my pregnant wife and 2-year-old daughter.

In 2014, the revolution started in Ukraine and at that time I was working in a political party as a prosecutor for the opposition party. I was very confident and convinced that I could help to change the future, change my country for the better like to be in the European Union. Unfortunately, it did not work well. It was a difficult time so when I finished my university, and my work at a political party I decided to leave the country for good. I found a European project that could economically help. Then, I did the application process, and it last 6 months until one Spanish organization selected me as a volunteer. After that, I applied for a Visa to come to Spain. In 2015 July, I arrived to participate in that project which was related to Erasmus.  

My name is Andrea Sierra, I am 34 years old and I come from Venezuela. I was born in Venezuela, in Merida, specifically. My mom comes from Venezuela and my dad is Spanish, he came from Madrid. My childhood was really calm, I think typical. From 4 until 17 years old I studied in a nun school. It was only girls. I had swimming lessons, dance lessons. The school was very strict but the education there was very good. I left Venezuela because I had this curiosity about living abroad and I always thought about living in another country. One day, my friends from the university told me about opportunities to study abroad. I was curious so I thought “let’s do that”. The first country I moved to was Ireland. I was working there and studying English. When I moved

I was 19 years old when I left. Me and my parents we always had a very good relationship, we have always been very close to each other. We are always together, we do sports together, meditate, we go jogging, we travel… a very good relationship. So coming here – especially being the younger daughter – leaving my parents and my sister, it was a shock. In Brazil, I  was living with my parents and my sister, I had a long-lasting relationship, I was a school coordinator and an English teacher. So I had a life that we can practically call “stable” and that was good. I worked, I studied, but to a certain extent, I was kind of accommodated. So this feeling of being accommodated – as well as the breaking up of my relationship, cause that made me

I believe I can’t ask for anything more from the life I had in my country because I had everything. There I had good opportunities as a small business owner.  In El Salvador I was always dedicated to my work, I had two taxis, four corn mills and I was able to earn some money and support my family. I also enjoyed working with electric welding and doing manual labor. I had grown up watching my father doing it. I learned everything from him, and that is why I liked it so much.  

My name is Akshita and I am from India. I left India when I was 21. I had just finished college and a few internships and I left to pursue my master’s degree in Italy. I was living a “standard urban life”, a concept which is especially relevant to my city, Mumbai.  The city is busy and there is constantly something going on. I led a social and busy life which is something that almost everyone in Mumbai does.

I grew up in a traditional middle-class family in Chengdu, where the Pandas are from, so pretty laid back. My parents are the kindest people, I’m so grateful for having them. My favorite memory is my 6 years in primary school, everything was so pure. With my classmates, we laughed and cried all together. Funny how 10-year-old kids know unity better back then.  So nostalgic when I think about it, real-time back in the 90s you know, I can still see those rising dust in the playground, those jumping figures in the summer haze. Then, the competition started to kick in at Middle school, especially for us the “one-child policy” generation. It was a hell of a lot of competition in school, no more spare time, only homework and extracurricular tutoring. High school was the beginning phase of western or

My childhood was as beautiful as any child with his parents could ask for. My family was from the educated class, made up of teachers and officers. In Iraq, I studied the fields of psychology, sociology, and politics. Then after an additional four years of study, I worked with a judge in the court for a year. I also had a shop selling underwear for women and worked as a taxi driver using my own car.