Scavenging

 

Scavenging

 

 

 

This is Juan. Every morning he goes off into the campo scavenging. He knows where things are and  collects enough in a few hours to buy him drinks for the rest of the day. On a good day he can be pissed by midday. Today he has a bagful of snails and he's trying to sell them in a bar. They are big juicy snails and are plentiful after the floods last week.
Sometimes he has wild asparagus which is either sold in bunches or if there's enough a big fat bunched is raffled.
A day later I bump into Juan again. This time his bag contains olives.

 

I have no idea how he is going to sell a branch with olived attached. Now is the time to harvest the local Manzanilla olives for bottling. They need to be green, firm and as large as possible. This year the processors are paying over 1 euro a kilo. He can't have more than 5 euros worth here.

There are reports that supermarkets in Spain are putting lock on their waste bins because scavenging or 'dumpster diving' is widespread. Youth unemployment is over 50%. Southern Spain is the worst hit. The charity Caritas says that 22 % of Spanish families are living in poverty and more that half a million adults have no income whatsoever.
At the same time, the Spanish government is carrying out further cuts in benefits, employment rights have been removed and national health provision and education are being attacked.

Juan was scavenging when the economy was booming. He doesn't appear to eat much and he lives with his sister. There have been unwritten rights of scavenging in the countryside for many many years, reflecting the historical poverty in Andalucía.

05/10/2012