| Sports |
By WILL RASMUSSEN
Life in wine vat no fun for grape pickers
SOCUELLAMOS, Spain: “Living in
this thing is no good,” Nadezhda, pointing to a wine vat lying
abandoned by a litter-strewn patch of waste ground on the plains
of central Spain, said.
Around her, barefoot children scamper between mounds of
smouldering rubbish. Flies buzz around their heads.
Nadezhda and about 40 others living in this makeshift camp are
ethnic Turks from Bulgaria who came to the vineyards of
Socuellamos to pick grapes during the six-week annual harvest.
At night they sleep in 20 or so overturned wine vats – car-sized
concrete barrels dumped on the outskirts of Socuellamos, a
farming community in the hot and dusty region of Castilla-La
Mancha.
In some of the vats, families of up to seven are crammed onto
beds of breeze blocks and foam. Cardboard is used as flooring
and a thin flap of fabric over the neck of the vat makes for a
front door.
Bulgaria joined the European Union on Jan 1 but the fact this
group travelled across the continent in search of work, and the
conditions they live in, is a reminder of the economic gulf
between old Europe and some of the bloc’s newest citizens.
The filthy camp empties out on a typical weekday, when most of
the group go looking for work in the vineyards for around 42
euros a day.
Nadezhda says her husband would earn 5 euros a day at home in
Sliven, southern Bulgaria.
Unemployment in their hometown is high and around 10% of
Bulgaria’s 7.3 million people are seeking work abroad.
“Life here (in Spain) is not good. There’s no water, no gas. We
have a proper home in Sliven, but no money,” Nadezhda, which
means ‘hope’ in Bulgarian, shrugs.
She points to bottles used to collect water from a public
fountain in the town’s central square a few hundred metres away.
The toilet is a hastily constructed shed in a field.
The local Bar Madrid is a world away from the Bulgarians’ camp
just across the field. Local people have seen the Bulgarians
occupy the land for the last four harvests, but rarely mix with
the outsiders, says a resident who gave her name just as
Magdalena. Most migrant workers lodge in town apartments or
buildings supplied by farmers.
“I guess they don’t bother us, but I don’t like it either,” she
said. “It’s obvious that not all have come to work.”
That fear of immigrant crime is one replayed across Europe. In
Britain, police bosses have asked for more funds to cope with a
dramatic rise in arrivals from eastern Europe – last December
Italians torched tents prepared for a new gypsy camp in a Milan
suburb.
Farmers in the area have other worries. They complain local
authorities take up to two months to register workers, yet the
immigrants they depend on to harvest 80% of the crop turn up
just days before the start of the short picking season.
That means many of the 3,000-4,000 immigrants who work on the
local harvest do so illegally, including Romanians and
Bulgarians who have no automatic right to work in 13 of the EU’s
15 old member states. Madrid has said it will consider opening
its market to the new EU entrants from next year.
For Jacinto Trillo, a winegrower and president of a local wine
cooperative, the rules are a serious headache. Growers have to
cross their fingers and hope the authorities – recognising how
important wine-growing is for the region – turn a blind eye to
their illegal employment of non-registered Romanians, Bulgarians
and others from outside the EU, he said.
If not, they could be fined up to 6,000 euros for each illegal
worker.
An unwelcome spotlight fell on the issue last month when, in the
space of a week, three workers without valid contracts died of
heart or lung problems in the fields around Socuellamos.
Trillo has had enough. Next year he is going to train his
ground-hugging vines onto trellises so they can be mechanically
harvested, cutting the migrant workforce on his private vineyard
from 10 to zero. – Reuters
 
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