[av_one_full first min_height=” vertical_alignment=” space=” custom_margin=” margin=’0px’ padding=’0px’ border=” border_color=” radius=’0px’ background_color=” src=” background_position=’top left’ background_repeat=’no-repeat’ animation=”]
[av_heading heading=’A growing Filipino community in Las Palmas’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY HERBERT VEGO
[/av_heading]
[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=”]
BY HERBERT VEGO
[/av_textblock]
[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=”]
SEVERAL years ago, this corner wrote about an Ilongga who found a Danish husband, Henning Blegvad, while working in Las Palmas, Spain. The couple now resides in Iloilo City.
But Melanie Estrada – a native of Kadinglian, Oton, Iloilo – still considers Las Palmas her second home. In fact, she has lost count of the number of times she revisited that Spanish territory which is already home to more than a thousand other Filipinos who comprise a growing Filipino community there.
That community, Melanie told us, is in one of the Canary Islands in Las Palmas. She had discovered it long ago by chance. While strolling around one of its beaches, she noticed two teams of men playing basketball; and, nearby, two teams of women playing volleyball. By their looks she could tell they were all Filipinos. So she walked over and discovered that even the audience consisted mostly of spouses and children of the players.
She talked to them and got another surprise: The majority of Filipino adults in Spain are workers – caregivers, waiters, cooks and bartenders.
“An important benefit our children get,” a mother in the audience told her, “is free public education here in Spain. Education is high-standard. The teachers are smart, well-paid and certainly happy, unlike our tired and underpaid teachers in the Philippines. We do not worry over our children’s safety because school busses always take them to school and back home.”
Incidentally, a few Filipino teachers are among the well-respected and highly-regarded foreign workers in Spain.
An aging Filipina mother told Melanie that she would not like to grow old in the Philippines for health reasons: “In our country, if you go to a hospital without money, they tell you to go home and die. Here, anybody who gets sick gets medicine and attention regardless of his financial status.”
A nubile Filipina added, “Still it hurts to be away from the folks back home. But do we have an alternative? Peace and order is a joke in our country. No President has succeeded in weeding out misfits in the bureaucracy. Crooks still occupy high political positions.”
As she was hearing those words, Melanie wished that the transportation system in Iloilo City were as good as that of Spain where only big, air-conditioned busses that don’t belch smoke pick up passengers. The roads are wide, concrete and hole-free.
Melanie also spoke about her brief encounters with Filipino businessmen who have established themselves at Las Palmas.
A businessman, she said, had questioned the business sense of the Philippine government. He lamented that with leaders who immerse the country in domestic and external debts and pocket the money, the Philippines could not rise above crisis.
She had dropped by a big store which sold nothing but all kinds of tea from around the world, La Cabana del Te. To her surprise, its owner is a Filipino, Michael Luceña of Iriga City.
There’s also a Filipino restaurant nearby, Pinoy Bar, owned by Leonora J. Martinez, which employs Filipino bartenders and waiters.
Linda de la Cerna, a Filipina worker from Baclaran, Parañaque, told Melanie that she would have preferred to go home for good but could not afford the “luxury.”
“I support my 89-year-old mother,” she said. “She needs expensive medicine to survive. Each time I go home to my family in the Philippines, I realize their misery gets worse.”
An Antiqueña named Emma Bendita, who had been working in Spain for 35 years already, vented her ire on Filipino politicians “who fatten themselves on our taxes but have no feelings for us. Shame, shame on them. They offer us no hope. I wonder if there will ever be a better future for young Filipinos at home. It’s we overseas workers who care for them there.”
Muy bien! Viva los Filipinos en España! (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
[/av_textblock]
[/av_one_full]
