From the Airbus to the strawberry: Andalusia, against the clichés

Seville/Huelva/GranadaOne of the firecrackers hit him in the leg. He shows it by lifting his trousers. Pere Tordera, the photographer, also grabs a handful of hair: "Look, he's burned himself." But far from worrying, there, everyone laughs. We are at Pelay Correa street number 25 in Seville, the headquarters of Penya Bética Triana. Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta. Betis has just beaten Elche, returning to the Champions League after 21 years, and the streets are filled with the smell of gunpowder. "Come on, we'll buy you a beer," say Charo and Rosa. They don't care about football, they were just looking for a place to eat snails.

“Triana is not just anything, Triana is something to see. Triana is wonderful, long live Triana and olé”, sings Pedro, standing next to the table where we are sitting. Between one sevillana and another, they talk about Alfonso Guerra and Moreno Bonilla. About whether they will vote. About some damn thing in Seville. "It will be difficult to leave here," says Tordera. The conversation is chaotic and fun. "It is precisely our character that saves us from many things," says Rosa, now retired, who worked for many years at the Junta. She assures that she has switched from PSOE to PP as if nothing, without any shock or almost any sensation of change. Pedro is saying goodbye. He says goodbye about twenty times, but never actually leaves. So finally, we are the ones who get up. The truth is, we are tired. We have spent many hours working and driving. This very morning we were in Huelva touring strawberry fields. It is the same area that Pujol –yes, Jordi Pujol– visited in '96. In fact, on the journey, I've reread several articles from that day and they are a good snapshot of what changes and what remains. 

The chronicles explain how a Catalan flag was placed on the balcony of Lepe and Jordi Pujol and Marta Ferrusola were named adopted sons of the town. All parties voted in favor. He congratulated them because thanks to the effort of the Andalusians in the countryside, they were fighting against the backwardness of Andalusia. That is the word he used. Backwardness. Today, no Spaniard is seen in the countryside. The industry linked to fruit is being technologized, and the community that had exported so much labor is gaining population. It is another Andalusia. It is also another Catalonia. But in '96, strawberries aside, Pujol was traveling to Seville with another objective: to defend the new financing model that was about to be approved. He did so in a conference titled: "The time for dialogue without reservations." Some things change and some things stay the same. 

The military aircraft factory

No photographs can be taken. Here the clients are the armies, and who knows what information could be known if they were published. We are at the Airbus plant in Seville, where the final assembly, the last part of the manufacturing process for the C295 and A400M aircraft, takes place. The first is about to celebrate thirty years since its first flight. The second is, today, one of the largest military aircraft in the world. “See? That is the tail,” says Dulce Muñoz, A400M development director. “It can carry 37 tons.” The dimensions, frankly, are impressive. It is the aircraft that was used to transport material from China during the pandemic or with which people were evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021. Airbus, which combines public capital from various European governments with private investors from around the world, represents one of Andalusia's leading companies. It has 3,500 employees and accounts for 59% of the aerospace sector's business in Andalusia, which has a turnover of around 2.9 billion euros per year. “We are confident that the geopolitical situation will help us continue to grow,” says Muñoz. And indeed, all forecasts indicate that the defense industry is in a period of expansion in the medium and long term. “What are the salaries?” I ask insistently. They don't want to say, but they make it clear that they are good, and they add that they offer a nursery, a pension plan, medical insurance, and a free cafeteria, among other benefits.

“Being a king perhaps is too much, but if you live in Seville and work at Airbus, you are safe”, says Manuel Hidalgo, economist and professor at the Pablo de Olavide University. He adds, however, that these cases are “cathedrals in the desert”. “The industry that leaves good salaries is the aeronautical one, spread between Seville and Cadiz. There are also good technology parks, especially those in Seville and Malaga, but in percentage it represents what it represents”. I remind him that one of the phrases Moreno Bonilla repeats the most is that Andalusia is a locomotive. He lets out a sigh. “Let’s be serious. Andalusia is doing well, but you don’t change 200 years in six months. We are not a locomotive for anything”.

A community always at the bottom

“When you have the historical dependence of being a poor region, getting out of the trap is very difficult”, states Hidalgo, who was for six months secretary general of economy in the first government of Moreno Bonilla. But has not it changed, Andalusia? I ask him. “Undoubtedly, it is not the one from forty years ago. It has improved a lot, but so has Spain. And poor regions do not need to do only well, they need to do extremely well”.

Many things are understood, in fact, when you look at the data and the productive structure. The weight of the countryside has fallen, yes. In the eighties it represented around 13% of GDP, today it is just over 6%. But it remains well above the Spanish average and continues to be a sector that, however much it strives to be competitive, is not industry. Industry, in turn, is largely agri-food. It has been technologized, yes, but it cannot generate the same salaries as a car factory or a plant dedicated to aeronautics. And most of the economy is based on services. 'The structure explains 95% of the difference in per capita income and per capita GDP between Andalusia and the rest of Spain. That is to say, a greater specialization towards sectors of lower added value', concludes Hidalgo. 

From AI to the countryside: Huelva's strawberry

“Look, do you hear it?”, asks Diego Moro, operations director of CoopHuelva. Tac, tac, tac, tac… the sound indicates how the machine is placing the fruit in the indicated spot. “I’m from here –he says– and I didn’t expect the room to be like this, I was surprised when I entered”. We are in the blueberry room, the most technologically advanced in this cooperative that is dedicated to the production and marketing of berries –strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries–. Technology has been replacing manual tasks. A robot places the blueberries on a circuit that transports them to a machine that, using artificial intelligence, determines the quality, hardness, size, and can divide them into different lanes –that’s the tac, tac, tac we mentioned at the beginning– so they can be packaged appropriately. Several people supervise that everything works well. One is Laura, 39 years old, who works here for the berry season and combines it with the orange season that begins in the fall. 

Near the cooperative, Mustafà is in a hurry to fill the truck. Around 12 p.m. they start sending fruit. For a long time now, there have been practically no Spaniards in the fields. The vast majority are Africans. And it's easy to see why. The beauty of the landscape – the green of the leaves, the red of the strawberries, the silence of the countryside – contrasts with the harshness of the work: many hours with a bent back, not fully crouched, nor fully standing, for about fifty euros a day. 

As the Spanish workers disappeared, farmers warned that there was a labor shortage. Today, Huelva is a European leader in what is known as 'hiring at source': these are mainly women from Morocco who come with the commitment to complete the season and return to their country. It is no coincidence that the majority of contracts are in the feminine: it is understood that many are mothers and wives, with significant incentives, therefore, to return to their country. They come with the condition, not only of having work, but also a place to sleep and eat. 'Europe has agricultural companies in its sights, and that's why it has also improved,' says Emma González, from the organization Huelva acoge. 'But despite this,' she adds, 'we observe that in 40% of cases the habitability conditions are still not met: they are made to live in spaces that are too small or in metal modules.' How many immigrants stay? That is the big question that no one answers. 'We know that a percentage do,' says Emma, 'but not the exact figure.' In some cases, they end up in settlements. It is estimated that there are between 3,000 and 3,500 in the area. Huelva acoge asks to separate the settlements from the seasonal workers. There, they say, there are people who come from all over. And there are not enough resources everywhere to attend to them.

Mustafà hurries his companions. They don't stop. One box. Another. Most of the boys wear football team shirts. “I'm from Madrid. I've had a bad year”, he says. “Do you know there are elections?”, I ask. “There are what?”. He doesn't know, but some parties are talking about them, and a lot. For Vox it is one of the pillars of the program, and the party is balancing to attack immigrants while meeting the labor needs of farmers. “We have a tense calm situation”, says Emma. “They haven't reached the votes of Almeria, but the message is indeed getting through”. And she explains how a few days ago, while she was at a CAP accompanying a migrant, a man confronted her shouting: "You are taking over all our services!". “That didn't happen before”, she concludes. 

The cancer crisis

“Excuse me, do you mind if we take a photo?” No problem. I get up and take the photo myself. “Thank you for what you’re doing. We are with you”, they tell her. It’s hard to stay calm at the table. There’s an electoral event in the next room, people are already arriving and they look at her and say things to her. Ángela Claverol has become a familiar face in Andalusia. She is the president of Amama, an association for women with breast cancer. Public services are strained everywhere, yes. But it is in Andalusia where they have shown their most dramatic face. 

In 2021, the regional government decided to outsource part of the breast cancer screening. The arguments were efficiency and technological modernization. But in this process, women with suspicious results were not notified. The hospitals stopped doing it because they were told that the process had been automated, but the external company wasn't doing it either. “We started receiving cases at the association that we didn’t understand. They were already coming with advanced cancer, but they told us they had had control mammograms and that no one had told them anything”.

They contacted the ministry. And the account they give is devastating. The minister Jesús Aguirre Muñoz called them cowards, and his successor, Catalina García, that they were exaggerating. Until an interview on Cadena SER changed everything. They went to explain a case and to say that if there were more, they should contact the association. Ángela is silent. She takes a breath. “I think about those days and I remember the fear,” she says. It was an avalanche. Calls and more calls. “I thought: but what is this? How many cases are there?” she says. They met with the Board again. Ángela explains that the first time they left crying because the already resigned minister, Rocío Hernández, spoke of few unfortunate cases in front of those affected. Cases. She wasn't able to name them. The next minister, she explains, even spoke to them about subsidies. “I have never felt so humiliated,” she states. 

The number of affected people provided by the association and the one provided by the administration are different. They argue that at least six women have died due to delayed diagnosis, that 360 women are affected with advanced cancer, and that 40% of them have metastasized. The Board has admitted that there are 2,317 affected women, but says that only 1% – 23 – have been proven to have developed a tumor due to the delay. 

“Public healthcare is the campaign topic”, says Sebastián Martín, spokesperson for Marea Blanca. A primary care doctor, now retired, he denounces that appointments for primary care take up to eleven days and that there are more than a million people on the waiting list for a specialist consultation. “Cuts and privatizations lead to more deaths. It's the result we see”, he states. And he cites a scientific study that compared the last five years of the PSOE with the last five of the PP. The result is an excess mortality of 3,077 people.

It's the same report that left-wing parties repeat at rallies, in interviews. “Does this affect Moreno Bonilla electorally?”, I ask him. Sebastián is convinced that it does, even though polls say he could win an absolute majority again. “I find it hard to believe –says Ángela–, he has shown that he is more interested in votes than in Andalusian women, let him go fry potatoes because there at least he can only hurt himself”. “But if he wins –I insist–, how will you feel? He puts on a serious and sad expression. “I think it would mean we are idiots”. 

Identity and roots

It must be the best office in the world. The garden is inside the Alhambra, with views of the monumental complex. Few images can accumulate so much beauty. “Do you know who said the same thing?”, says Rodrigo Ruiz-Jiménez, the director of the patronate of the Alhambra and the Generalife while he prepares coffee. “Olaf Scholz”. It turns out that in 2023 there was a meeting of heads of state and the then German chancellor approached him to say: “You have the best job in the world”. Nine thousand people visit it every day and quotas are established to avoid mass tourism. “How much does it represent of the city's GDP?”, I ask him. “It's not up to 10%”, says Ruiz-Jiménez. The figure, likewise, is very high, but he assures that mass tourism has not occurred here, although they detect a certain weariness with tourism. He strives to emphasize that the important organization is the University of Granada. In fact, the particle accelerator awakens great optimism in the city, a project that aspires to be the largest scientific infrastructure in Spain and which is to be used to test materials for future nuclear fusion reactors. 

“We are not the agrarian, illiterate, and poor community that some still have in mind”, says Carlos Rosado, one of the fathers of the Statute of Autonomy of Andalusia and president of the Andalusia Film Commission. “Although, evidently, we export talent because there isn't enough productive fabric for certain sectors”. Rosado was born in ’51. He remembers the emigration of the sixties. “Public policies have managed to keep people in the territory, and that seems important to me; we do not suffer from the depopulated Spain that Castile does experience”. And he also highlights that culture and folklore know how to integrate those who arrive. Andalusian sentiment is present everywhere. In the green of the electoral posters. In the accent. In a Blas Infante who is even claimed by the Popular Party. And Andalusian identity is also present in an Alhambra that shows how the community's identity is built, as happens in so many other places, over centuries of miscegenation. Andalusia is not what it used to be. Neither is Spain. However, there are things, clichés, that remain. We check this at the guesthouse, just after checking in. "Do you serve breakfast?", we ask. "Yes, you have two shifts. The first starts at 9 in the morning”.