Euro-refugees get cold reception in Norway

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http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/1513001-euro-refugees-get-cold-reception-norway

"For a long time there’d been nothing to fall back on. My parents, who are already elderly, had been paying my mortgage of 540 euros for a few months. Nothing was working out, and my prospects were pretty dim. One night I was in a bar and the TV was on in the background. The programme was Españoles en el mundo, or “Spaniards Around the World”. A man came on who lived in northern Norway, and he said he was earning 4,000 euros. He seemed pretty happy. I said to myself, ‘Paco, you’ve got to get yourself up there.’"

Francisco Zamora, 44, of Alcantarilla (Murcia), is a quiet guy. He’s wearing a scarf wrapped three times around his neck to keep out the bitter cold. An electronics graduate, with experience in construction and factories, he was once earning 3,000 euros a month. But all that was left behind three years ago. Like him, hundreds of Spanish who have been without work for months left a Spain in crisis with their sights set on one of the richest countries in the world; the choice simply had to be a good one.

But once there, the myths crumbled around them. Lacking both qualification and languages, doors closed in their faces. The authorities don’t want to know anything about them. Some have spent all their savings and are barely surviving, and some are sleeping on the street.

Last August, Paco asked his parents for more money and bought a one-way ticket to Bergen. It was the first time he was out of Spain. In his pocket he had 225 euros. The first week he spent wandering around one of the most picturesque cities in the world.