Immigration

Angela Balsera and Anaís Gelde.

The immigration is the way to change the habitat or the place where you live to search a better life. Also they are different types of immigration: you can leave your country for economic problems, for example if your country is poor, probably you should go to a richer country. If happens the opposite, obviously you make it to help the poor people. As well they are immigrations for politic, for religious reasons, cultural or natural problems. It can be temporary or definitive.

Here, in Catalonia, almost of the immigrant people come from Morocco, South-America or China. Although a long time ago all the immigrants in Catalonia were of the rest of Spain. Now doesn’t happen the same because all the Spanish areas are equilibrated. In 1970 the 37.69% of the catalonian population were from those places:

6,45% of Andalusia
6,08% of Castella i Lleó
3,44% of Aragó
2,85% of Extremadura
2,73% of Murcia·
2,15% of Valencia
1,52% of Galicia
1, 16% of out of the country.

Now Catalonia has about 866.800 of foreingers, therefore it has a 12.2 % of population that has born out of the country.
Most of the immigrants approximately 71% are in the province of Barcelona (569,305). Moroccans are the most numerous as a number of 166,371 persons representing 20.8% of foreigner’s immigrations in Catalonia. The major part of them, works in the third sector.
The foreign population is concentrated in the young working age, between 15 and 44 years.The foreign population is predominantly male, with a ratio of 121 men every 100 women.In the population from Asia and Africa the imbalance in favor of men is very marked. In contrast, the population from South American women are the majority.America is the continent where they come from more foreigners, 36%. Europe is the second with 30% and Africa is in third place with 25%.The nationality most represented is the Morocco, followed by the Romanianand Ecuador.

La Castanyera

Victor Galisteo and Sergi Aymamí.
One of the most typical traditions of the All Saints is the Castanyera. The chestnut is one of the most excellent autumn’s products. Until a few years ago, the chestnut-girl (castanyera) was a typical character who you could find selling chestnuts in small shops on the streets of our villages from All Saints up to Christmas. Now a days, even though it’s not that easy to find chestnut-girls, in the All Saints time, you can find some little shops of chestnuts in several points of the city, many of them carried out by young people, specially students, who find in this activity the possibility of earning a little bit of money. Other then chestnuts, there are 2 typical plates special from these holidays: the panellets and the candied fruit. The origin of panellets is slightly clear. They say that they come from formal funeral banquets, where the people bring the panellets to the church in baskets and they eat them inside the church.
In some parts of Catalonia, they used to celebrate a meal after the death of some relative. The table was prepared on a special way, the distribution of the retainers and the eaten ones that were giving each other. For the candied fruit, depends on the season we are, even nowadays, it’s more often to find fruits out of season.