Girona has become a little Honduras. The number of Honduran residents in the last decade has more than doubled and it is the foreign group that adds the most new registrations to the registry. So much so that politicians in the Central American country already speak of Girona as the 19th district of Honduras.
The city's link with the Honduran community is by no means recent. The first pages began to be written in 1976, when the now septuagenarian Rosa María Álvarez, along with other friends, came to work in homes in the city. “The need was pressing, I came from a very poor family and I hardly had the opportunity to go to school; At the age of 8 I started working in a store, in a tobacco company, in houses and my last job there was in a McDonald's," explains the woman who hopes to return to her native country to spend the last years of her life there. At 24, she received an offer to go work doing housework for a woman in Girona.
He came for two years and has been here for 47, a period during which he has raised a family and has not stopped working. “Until I retired, I have never lacked employment,” says the woman, a native of Talanga, about 50 kilometers from the country's capital, Tegucigalpa. The majority of Honduran women living in Girona come, precisely, from this city. Word of mouth, as in many migratory processes, has been decisive.
“Eight years after arriving in Girona, a woman opened an agency for domestic workers and contacted one of my friends who had emigrated with me: she was looking for candidates in Honduras and that's how some of them told others, and they told them. others and a chain was created that has survived to this day,” he explains.
In November there were more than 7,300 Hondurans registered in the city. The graduate in pedagogy Mariela Sandres, a victim of gender violence in her country, arrived four and a half years ago, encouraged by her family network and friends that she already had in Catalonia. After some time in Barcelona, she worked caring for children, the elderly and people with disabilities. Now she does it at the Honduran consulate in Barcelona, but she maintains her home in Girona.
“All migratory phenomena begin with a network of trust and the case of Girona,” states the professor of Political Science at the UdG, Salvador Martí, who affirms that Girona is the city in Spain “with the greatest presence of Hondurans per square kilometer.” . Since 2010, the number of citizens of this country registered in the city has increased by 140% and since 2012, they are the majority foreign group in the city, ahead of Moroccans. More than two-thirds are women and tasks related to caring for the home and the elderly are the group's main modus vivendi. Among men, many work in industry, mainly in the meat sector, and in transportation. The Eixample Sud (25%), Eixample Nord (20%), Santa Eugènia (19.8%) and Can Gibert (11%) neighborhoods concentrate the majority of the group, according to data provided by the Girona City Council.
This immigration, which mostly arrived in the late 1990s and early 2000s, was initially quite invisible. “A large part of the population did not realize that there were Hondurans in the city until ten years later. This was because it was a very feminized, silent group that spent most of its time at home, doing domestic chores or caring for the elderly, and had little demand for public services. It begins to become visible when the children arrive at school,” explains Martí, who estimates that in the metropolitan area of Girona, adding neighboring regions such as Pla de l'Estany and La Selva, the number of Hondurans is close to 20,000. In the entire province, according to the latest data collected three years ago by the Association of Cooperation and Economic Development of the Honduran Community of Girona (Acodehgi), there would be around 34,000. A figure that doubles that which appears in the INE. “These data do not include, for example, those who are not registered or who have dual nationality and who also appear as Spanish,” says the president of the entity, Alex Arita, who emigrated 16 years ago because of the gangs. of young criminals who extorted him. “They forced me to leave, my life was in danger,” he explains. “Honduras lived in a narco-dictatorship for 12 years, debt skyrocketed to 800% and poverty went from 48% to 76%, of which 54% was extreme poverty. That, added to the gangs, turned Honduras into the most violent country without being at war,” he says. Today, of the 8 million inhabitants, two million are abroad and generate 25% of the country's GDP, explains Arita. The largest group is in Catalonia.
Girona is the Spanish province with the highest percentage of its total population with neighbors of this nationality. Some data that shows the need for a vice consulate. A fact that has the approval of the Government, as explained by the subdelegate in Girona Albert Bramon and the Honduran authorities. Acodehgi sources maintain that the premises are already available, which could open its doors during the first quarter of next year. Sources from the Honduran consulate in Barcelona indicate that they will announce the exact opening when the passport team arrives. It will be the eighth consular office in the city. A fact that will make life easier for many residents who until now had to travel to Barcelona to resolve their procedures. Another demand is the homologation of the driver's license, a procedure that could arrive soon. The group also denounces the difficulty of validating studies. “There are very well-prepared people, with university degrees and jobs below their capabilities,” says Arita, who calls for more agility in homologation.
