Only those registered on the "paro" are counted. But once your paro runs out you get no money. So the only possible people missing would be those who are tired of having to sign on every 3 months.

However, given that everyone on the paro has been guarenteed a 450 euro payment per month recently, they would have to be stupid not to be registered.

i only witnessed the tail end of the last recession in Spain and remember thinking how cheap everything had become. You could buy a small house for £10,000 and a coffee and brandy cost 100 Pesetas, about 30P.

I happened to look in an estate agent's window yesterday, and that house now costs £90K and my coffee and brandy cost me £4.

I've just realised that I looked in the same estate agent's window in 1992, and had my coffee in the same adjoining bar, both Spanish owned. All the English places from around that era have long gone, along with the people, apart from an old man I recognised who was sitting in his usual place, sipping his beer with a dog on his lap.

I nearly asked him if it was the same dog, but it would have to be 18 years old and I didn't want to upset the old man.

The Spanish system stinks as it does not encourage people on short contracts ie six months to look for new jobs as they get their benefit paid for the next six months and are able to catch up with outstanding jobs they have promised to do for the neighbours at 8-10 euros an hour.This can include, building work, plumbing, gardening, painting, cutting down or trimming trees etc etc while their wives are doing cleaning jobs after a 6 month stint as a supermarket checkout girl and also getting benefit. You could almost argue that THERE ARE NO UNEMPLOYED in a great part of the working classes. Just six months on the black and rich and six months poor on the minimum wages.

It doesnt work like that

You need to work for 2 years in order to get 6 months benefit. If you have a 6 month contract, you'll only get 1 month of paro, if that

8-10 Euros an hour for gardening or a bit of painting? Even in the UK you'd be lucky to get 6 an hour.
I don't buy this Daily Mail "if people have access to benefits they don't want to work". My partner received several hundred pounds tax credit and housing benefit when I was unemployed, but I still preferred to seek out work (despite the 5 hours commute I currently do a day). For a lot of us, being forced to stay at home drives us up the wall. When advertised jobs receive 150 or 200 applications (and that's just in the UK, may be higher in Spain) you can be sure there are plenty of people wanting to work

In the 1990's I bought three houses for friends in Oliva at 4000 pounds each ie one million pesetas. They are now very desirable village houses.
A bottle of gas was 800 pesetas and my rates and rubbish together were 10.000 pesetas a year.

Once you have worked for the first two years and are in the system, if you have children then you get the benefit. An English neighbour who had been made redundant after only a year with wife and child got nothing. A student of mine who worked as an executive for a famous building company was made redundant when the company went bust and decided not to look for a job until after the summer as she was entitled to one year's dole money. She now works for a bank and hopes to get a permanent contract. Most permanent Spanish orange pickers work 6-8 months on and 4-6 on the dole and their wives who work in the orange factories do the same.

Listening to the Spanish radio today, they were saying that the populaton has grown in Spain, but the number of "households" has gone down, that is because a lot the youngsters and not so young "children" that had independantised, have now returned home to live with parents.

The job situation with this age group is very high and as there have been job losses, they have been unable to continue living alone and being independant from their parents.

I read some time ago that the average age in Spain to leave the nest is 30 for men and 25 for women. Shove them out at 18 is my philosophy even if it's only to go to university or college. There are too many cuckoos in the nests.

It is not that simple, if they dont have a job, they cant pay for their own living expenses.

And when most go to university, the sacrifice that the family have to make to send them there can be crippling, especially if it is in one of the big cities.

Apparently many rich parents refuse to pay and if their children are over 18 and skint and have the marks required to get a place then they go on a grant and the parents may be shamed in the Daily Mail but cannot be obliged to pay. Or so I am led to believe.

Are you on the pop today? Jose Luis was obviously talking about Spanish students.

Maybe I'm under the influence and don't realise it

I thought he was thinking of his own children and how much they had cost him. He tends to be a bit ambiguous. What's with the Jose Luis I thought Spanish was verboten.

On TV a few weeks ago said that many Spanish on the CDS who came from other areas of Spain have returned to families as there is no work and they cannot pay the high coastal rents.

I shall try to be less ambiguous in future, and you should take more water with it..............