Is an interesting question. I have some friends from East Europe living in Spain. They typically learn how to navigate the language surprisingly fast. They even laugh at us about this.
The reason is that their native Eastern Europe languages are very complicated to read and speak by nature; vowels are scarcely used, you need a finely trained ear to discern some special whispered sounds, is not always easy to recognize a word by its shape...
For this people customed to use every day words with "two vowels hidden in twelve characters", speaking spanish is practically a childsplay.
Yet Romanians are the second biggest minority in Spain. There are no more problems than the disgusting and systemic racism that Spain has towards any other country and hurt feelings on the other side.
Looking at the salaries mentioned in this discussion, I wouldn't expect any Czech or Slovak developers in Spain - I already make more in Prague than I the "maximum" in Spain is (and I'm not that well paid for a senior developer), and the cost of living is much lower here.
Most of our highly skilled emigrants moved to Germany or Ireland.
I am Spanish. If I say racism in Spain is disgusting and systemic it is because I have seen it.
You are probably familiar with things like "Cómo en España en ningún sitio" and how we dismiss other people’s food preferences, cultural habits and religions as those from someone inferior.
The problem is that some of you are incapable of acknowledging that because you think you are right and Spain is some sort of chosen by God country.
Just as an example, you use the word gypsy as something bad.
>You are probably familiar with things like "Cómo en España en ningún sitio" and how we dismiss other people’s food preferences, cultural habits and religions as those from someone inferior.
You know what, every country does that. And I doubt anybody think this is a "chosen by God country". Before the "como en España en ningún sitio" we have the "Spain is different", the "picaresca", etc. Those are negative values. Spain is a country that is ashamed of itself.
>Just as an example, you use the word gypsy as something bad.
Gypsies are bad. I know a few good gypsies, and you know what? You look at them and you wouldn't even think they are gypsies. By gypsies, we all know what we mean, and most of them are Spanish themselves. As an example: Spain is a big country, with tons of accents (and languages), and gypsies live so secluded from society they have their own accent country-wide.
Oh c'mon, stop making the same lame excuses over and over again. I've been living in Spain for the better part of a decade and love this country, but the reputation for being racist is well deserved. Your comment itself is filled with racist/xenophobic references. I've lived in 5 countries already and the only place where I consistently get crap for being 'not from here' is in Spain
Obviously not as important for low-skilled, manual labour, but we're talking about highly skilled jobs in the tech sector here.