Analysis of the situation: Spain

In the frame of Local Activ­i­ties I, each project organ­i­sa­tion had to analyse the sit­u­a­tion of young migrants and urban art in its coun­try. Here you have a sum­ma­ry of the text writ­ten by Ini­cia­ti­va Inter­na­cional Joven con­cern­ing the sit­u­a­tion of Spain.

MIGRATION:

From the 1980s Spain shift­ed from being a coun­try of emi­gra­tion to a coun­try of immi­gra­tion, It is also a coun­try of pas­sage for immi­grants trav­el­ing from the South (Africa) to the North and his­tor­i­cal­ly many peo­ple are also mov­ing from the coun­try­side to the major cities and most indus­tri­al­ized Autonomous Communities.
At Jan­u­ary 1, 2021, for­eign nation­als rep­re­sent the 11.34% of the total pop­u­la­tion of Spain, being Moroc­co, Roma­nia, Unit­ed King­dom, Colom­bia and Italy the top five coun­tries of ori­gin. Most of the pop­u­la­tion of for­eign ori­gin is con­cen­trat­ed in four autonomous com­mu­ni­ties: Cat­alo­nia, Madrid, Andalu­sia and the Valen­cian Com­mu­ni­ty. The net migra­tion rate of the coun­try is pos­i­tive. If we con­sid­er the sit­u­a­tion of the city of Mala­ga, for­eign­ers are 8.8% of the total pop­u­la­tion, being the Moroc­can, Ukrain­ian, Chi­nese, Paraguayan and Ital­ian, the five most rep­re­sent­ed nation­al­i­ties. In Andalu­sia, the autonomous com­mu­ni­ty where Mala­ga is locat­ed, there is a pre­dom­i­nance of migra­to­ry process­es for eco­nom­ic rea­sons with half of the pop­u­la­tion com­ing from the Euro­pean Union. Anoth­er phe­nom­e­non is the pres­ence of high num­ber of peo­ple com­ing from the North of Europe, with high incomes, who have sec­ond home on the coast­line of the Province of Malaga.
Even if Spain has become a receiv­er coun­try, many peo­ple con­tin­ue to emi­grate. The most com­mon caus­es are: lack of employ­ment and oppor­tu­ni­ties, improve­ment of the pro­fes­sion­al and/or eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, coop­er­a­tion, research and inves­ti­ga­tion, train­ing and learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, per­son­al and famil­iar rea­sons. Among the more than 2,5 mil­lion peo­ple that have emi­grat­ed in the last decade, the 91% had a uni­ver­si­ty degree.

URBAN ART:

Con­cern­ing hip hop, it arrived to Spain due to the pres­ence of US mil­i­tary bases in the ter­ri­to­ry. The one of Tor­re­jón de Ardoz, close to Madrid, is usu­al­ly point­ed out as the entry point of rap in Spain. The sol­diers, espe­cial­ly those of African-Amer­i­can ori­gin, were lis­ten­ing rap and start­ed to share it with famous night­clubs of the cap­i­tal. The first attempt to con­sol­i­date a hip hop scene was in 1989 with a com­pi­la­tion of dif­fer­ent rap groups called “Rap in Madrid”. After see­ing how Amer­i­cans moved with that music, Span­ish want­ed to imi­tate them and around 1983 break­ing explo­sion began, being the AZCA finan­cial dis­trict of Madrid one of the meet­ing points. Dur­ing the Nineties, the atten­tion of the media dis­ap­peared but the move­ment con­tin­ue to pros­per and many young peo­ple, now mem­bers of impor­tant nation­al groups, were record­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing their first demos in a very home­made way and the foun­da­tions for the appear­ance of a real hip hop scene in Spain began to be established.
Graf­fi­ti appeared also in the first half of the Eight­ies Madrid and one of the first ref­er­ences is Muelle, with his typ­i­cal “arrow” style. At the begin­ning of the nineties the pro­lif­er­a­tion of tags and the demand for spaces makes the laws tougher for graf­fi­ti writ­ers. Oth­er rel­e­vant cities for graf­fi­ti in Spain were Barcelona and Ali­cante. Although there are many hip hop events and com­pe­ti­tions, some of them well-known all over the world with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of inter­na­tion­al artists, the top­ic of migrant inclu­sion is not tak­en into great consideration.