Emigration To Belgium In The 1960s And 1970s

Oral History Project

Topic:

The topic chosen is Emigration to Belgium. This topic can be interesting because we can find out why people decided to go to other countries to live and work, how they manage with their new situations and why they decided coming back to Spain after a period of time or to stay at the new country.
The period of time in which we'll focus is during the 1960s and 1970s. During those years a considerable amount of people left the country looking for more life chances. 

Interviewee:

Our primary sources for this project are Felisa Torres and Manuel Cotán, Cristina's grandparents. They where born in Olivares in 1943 and Bellavista in 1939, two towns in Seville. We have chosen them because during the Post War period in Spain they decided to emigrate from Seville, where they lived, to Brussels, in Belgium. The main reason for which Felisa and Manuel decided to leave Spain was because they wanted to improve their lives chances.  

They are qualified narrators because they can talk about their experiences before emigrating, when taking the decision of going out of the country, during the emigration to another country and their feelings during the period they lived outside of their origin country far away from their families.

First group of Spanish workers leaving to Belgium in 1957.