Why is it that my top 3 most popular posts on this blog are the ones that are the most controversial? Are you guys trying to tell me that you like my biting sarcasm and wit and when I get sassy and borderline inappropriate? Or maybe is it because you like reading something painfully honest, wait…..EVERYBODY HALT! OMG a blog being CANDID AND NEGATIVE?!?! Shocking.
ALL of us bloggers (with the exception of Will Peach) are guilty of creating a fantasy travel bubble filled with rainbows and unicorns, where our lives are literally picture perfect; where we journey around the world without a care in the world and if anything does go wrong, it ends up as a cutesy-comical-learned-my-lesson anecdote on our blog, if mentioned at all. Hey, I’m equally guilty of this. I want my blog to be a happy place, where I share the best experiences I’ve had traveling and show others how to achieve the same.
But there are three things I can’t tolerate in life: unfairness, bullshit, and mayonnaise (nothing ruins a burger or sandwich like that nasty white stuff in a jar). And if something has been nagging me for years, I’ve gotta stand up and say something! Maybe I am just on a high from the success of a recent article I wrote about how Kaplan Killed the Hopes and Dreams of 42 Bloggers. Maybe I’m just bitter and hormonal from my breakup with Spain. Either way I am about to break it down for you.
I have been living in Spain for the past two years with the English teaching assistant program through the Spanish Ministry of Education (auxiliares de conversación), and you know what? IT EFFING SUCKED! Not the living in Spain bit, that was awesome, rather the program itself.
I literally have hundreds of emails, messages, tweets and comments asking me questions about working in Spain as an auxiliar, whether about visas, apartments, taxes, money or even if they should apply or not, I hear it all. And I almost always give the same answer, “yeah this program is great. I love living in Spain. Bulls. Flamenco. Paella. Sangria. Yada yada yada.” But here it is, my REAL, uncensored, unedited thoughts about coming to Spain with the auxiliar program.
AND I am going to break the cardinal blogging rule here and put HATE in the title of this post. I’ll put in all-caps for good measure. Maybe I’ll lose a few readers. I’ll probably get enough hate mail to make me want to off myself by tomorrow (seriously, you anon readers can be wicked harsh!) but I feel honor bound to share how I really feel about this program on my blog, especially since such a large part of my audience are past-present-future auxiliars. Someone needs to say it. Might as well be me. And according to my stats, this is the kind of stuff you like to read. Don’t shoot the messenger!
Just remember guys, I’m not a hater, really I’m not! If you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting me, I am bubbly, blonde and happy. Just indulge me this one time on my tirade.
Here are My Top 5 Reasons Why I HATE the Auxiliar Program in Spain (you know, top 5, because I can think of more than 5)
1. It’s a disorganized clusterfuck
To put it mildly. In fact all the things I hate about this program are so disorganized in my head from all my problems dealing with the disorganization with the Ministry, I don’t even know where to begin. I’ll elaborate in bullet points:
- The application process. Who actually understands it? 3 years down the road and I don’t! Don’t even get me started about renewing. What if you’re switching regions? What if you are renewing for a third year and switching regions? Where do we send the documents? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had all of these answers available to us on the application page? The only information we get from the Ministry are monthly newsletters in comic sans font sent every three months to half of the mailing list that don’t say anything valuable and look like they were designed by my 11 year old sister. Why are all the regions in Spain listed on the application when the program has been cut from several of them? Oh that FBI report you had to get for your application? Yeah, you have to get a whole new one for your visa because they expire and we didn’t tell you! Do we have orientation? Who gets to go? Where is it? When is it? Also, everyone is assigned a number upon submitting an application, first time renewals get placed first, then first year applications and third year renewals. Except the Ministry doesn’t always follow those rules and places people willy nilly. I can go on and on
- Hey remember that one time thousands of people didn’t get paid for 3 months? Oh wait, that’s every year!
- It is not unusual for ministry officials to give out conflicting information about everything, if you can get a hold of them at all. In fact, many of the schools aren’t informed about what your role as an assistant is, leaving you open to all mannars of interpretation. You could spend your year sitting at a desk in the back playing solitaire or you could be left alone in the room with 25 screaming 3 year olds. Hopefully you end up somewhere in the middle.
- Pretty much the people who run this program don’t know what they are doing, so don’t expect clear answers. Inconsistent information is the name of the game with the auxiliar program in Spain. Get used to it.
- Have you read my post about how I spent over 4 months being jerked around by the guys who run this program in Madrid and why I ultimately left Spain?
The upside? You get a visa to live in Spain, which is nigh on impossible to get any other way as an American.
2. A total hit or miss
Your experience as an auxiliar can be a total hit-or-miss and you might not have any control over it. From my own observations, it seems applicant’s names, regional preferences, city and school type are all thrown in a giant jar, swirled around and plucked right back out. i.e., it makes no sense.
You could end up working at an amazing concertada (semi-private) modern school right in the city center with amazing goal-oriented teachers and well-behaved students. Or you might end up in a village of 5,000 people, in rural back country Spain where your students don’t know the difference between England and America, the English teacher doesn’t speak any English and you have to commute an hour to work every day. The range of possible situations you could end up with is HUGE and they will either positively or negatively impact your year, depending on how flexible and open minded you are.
For example, this year I had an amazing schedule. I worked Monday through Thursday, 9am to noon at 2 schools in the center of Logroño. I had to take a 10 minute bus ride to get to work every day. Totally feasible. I had other friends who were placed at schools in villages over an hour away, that they not only had to commute to, they had to pay the teachers to let them ride with them to and from work, over 100 euros extra a month, and they were given schedules with huge breaks in them so they were stuck in their villages for hours without classes.
I think my year would have gone a bit differently under those circumstances. My schools were generally flexible with my schedule if I wanted to travel, I could make up hours. Other schools don’t let the auxiliars miss any days or hours and some even give them schedules where you would have to work Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri. Complete hit or miss, you have no control over.
I’ve worked with 2 teachers who really wanted to take advantage of having a native speaker in the classroom to help the kids. They understood what a unique opportunity it was to have an American there helping the kids learn English. The other 10 teachers I’ve worked with ranged from they really didn’t give a damn to they wanted to use me so they could get out of doing their job.
Be warned, some teachers will take advantage of you in the classroom. Know your role. We are assistants, not the teachers. We provide supporting material and help, but we don’t plan the lessons. We’re not supposed to be alone with students. I’ve had friends who were forced to do everything, spend hours at home planning lessons and even forced to work more hours or face having a “horrible” schedule or be complained about. I had huge problems with this my first year and getting taken advantage of in the schools. Don’t let it happen to you.
You could get paid on time every month since you start. You could go months without being paid. Unless you are a trust fund baby, I expect that would make a BIG difference in how your year goes.
The upside? You could have the best year of your life! I am a true believer that experiences are what you make of them, so even if things don’t go exactly how you’d for them to, try to focus on the positive! You get to live in Spain!
Me and the lovely Liz of Liz en España and now A Midwestern Life
3. The funcionarios who work for the Ministry
Is it just me or is everyone who works for this program (from the Spanish consulates in the US to the regional coordinators to the directors in Madrid) a certified straight up d-bag?
Of all the people I’ve dealt with over the years with this program, I’ve known one, ONE nice, helpful person! And they fired her after a year!
In case you didn’t know, funcionarios are government employees in Spain, and they basically make a lot of money and can never be fired, simply put. Here is a video that explains them to a T. Ok, sweeping generalization but that’s how I feel about these guys, along with many Spaniards.
Not only do they generally have no idea what’s going on, they are also rude and unhelpful in general. I can talk to them for hours on the phone or in person and leave the conversation not knowing anything more than I did when I started! And on top of that they make you feel bad about it! I have even had them intentionally hang up on me when I was demanding to know when we would get paid in La Rioja last year, sparking my most popular post. I would go into a meeting with the program director’s to ask when we would get paid, and I would leave feeling like everything was my fault for not being ok with not being paid! WTF?!
“Normally we use Christians but in times of crisis, substituting funcionarios has been very successful.” Source
They are probably so unhelpful because they aren’t informed themselves. But last time I checked in the real world in a professional job, when you don’t know something, you say, “you know what? I am not sure. Let me check and get back to you” instead of “this is so-and-so’s responsibility, go ask them” that is, if you can get a hold of anyone at all.
I have scheduled meetings with coordinators and they have shown up an hour late, most of the time they don’t answer my emails or phone calls. In fact, the only time they call me back is when I threaten to go to the US embassy or I call them directly out on not doing their job. Then I get a phone call from some official all fussy and upset by my insinuations.
For example, my first year in Córdoba, we weren’t even provided with the contact information for the regional or city coordinator. If we had a problem, we didn’t have anyone to talk to except with our schools.
If I had a euro for every time I got a runaround answer from a ministry official in Spain, I would be as rich as Iker Casillas.
The upside? You learn to take things into your own hands, I guess. Honestly, I can’t really think of an upside to this unless you miraculously end up working with amazing coordinators and directors. We’ll go back to the you get to live in Spain thing. Big upside.
4. The Visa Nightmare
I call it a nightmare because every time I had to think about my experiences with the visa and NIE, I want to die. The entire paperwork process from applying for the visa, applying for a NIE, renewing your NIE, and the details of living in Spain with a student NIE could not be more stressful and complicated!
I understand that this process is not really within control of the Ministry of Education, but at the same time, it is a government sponsored program, and one of the guarantees is a NIE. I think the Ministry needs to do two things:
- Provide a better guideline for auxiliars about how and when to apply for the visa and the NIE and how to renew it. Really, it cannot be that hard to put something together. In fact, it would be great if that was what they talked about at orientation instead of 2 hours of how the Spanish education system works in rapid-fire Spanish that I am sure half of the first years do not understand. Shouldn’t the English bilingual coordinators speak English?
- Coordinate with the local extranjerías about the auxiliar program. They need to understand this program, what dates should be given on the NIE’s, renewals, ect. It is not that hard to go meet with them and explain so that everyone is on the same page. This would avoid so many nightmares
This all goes back to the disorganization and hit or miss. For example, some people are given papers that expire exactly one year after they submit the paperwork, so September or October of the following year. Some people are given cards that expire exactly on May 31. The rest, somewhere in the middle. It makes absolutely no sense. You could end up completely screwed like with what happened to me. If I was given the correct papers with the correct dates, I could still be in Spain right now.
It gets even more complicated when you try to renew your papers, and if you try to switch regions. Some regions will let you renew no problem. Others make you go back to America and get a whole new visa. Hit or miss. Some regions even let you submit the paperwork in the fall to renew and then told you a month later you needed to buy a last minute flight to America and get a whole other visa. It’s actually ridiculous. Try buying a $1000 flight home when you haven’t even been paid!
Sometimes it takes so long for the offices to process your paperwork you can go the whole year without getting a NIE! Or they give you appointments after your visa has expired.
The upside? You (hopefully) get papers to live in Spain! It’s almost impossible to get a visa otherwise as an American. That is if you can survive the deathly obstacles thrown at you
5. Kept blind and in the dark
I think singlehandledly the thing I hated most about the program besides the disorganization is the fact that the Ministry did a terrible job of informing us of ANYTHING!
It’s one thing to be disorganized but at least tell us what’s going on. Here are the 3 main things the Ministry should keep in contact with the auxiliars about
- If there are going to be delays with payments, tell us! It’s not that hard. We shouldn’t have to complain and whine about it to the newspapers and American embassies into shaming the Ministry into paying us, or at least saying when we’ll be paid. Last year they weren’t planning to even tell us in La Rioja about the delays until dozens of us called and emailed and demanded to know what was going on.
- When the government cuts hundreds of auxiliar positions and even whole regions, it is their duty to tell us! You shouldn’t have to find out everything on facebook or through me. In fact, I think the government should be contracting me since I have been doing half of their work for them for YEARS!
- They should explain clearly what our job is, what it entails, our benefits, our rights, ect.
This lack of Ministry information directly leads to mass hysteria on the dozens of facebook groups and expat forums about this program. When I mentioned that to a director in Madrid he yelled (literally yelled) at me about how we shouldn’t listen to these things on Facebook. I kindly replied that it’s the only way we learn anything or know what’s going on, which led to awkward silence…
The upside? You learn to be patient or you just lose your marbles
The point of this post is not to whine and moan about the auxiliar program in Spain. It is to share an actual and honest opinion of a program that has been glamorized far too often. People have been asking me for years about what I really think about it, and I feel it’s high time for an honest answer. Negative hate and all.
Are you an auxiliar in Spain? What was your experience like with the program? Have or heard any horror stories? What did you hate the most about it?
Image 1 Source
About the author
When I states: “I have to work with children with special needs” means that these teachers had to be alone with 30 students and 5/6 of them had special needs. Yet despite this, they are very happy because they are traveling and living abroad.
I would like to highlight some points that made me laugh:
1. SALARY. The salary of an “auxiliar” is 700€ per 12 hours. Auxiliares don’t usually plan anything for the students. They just walk around the school and translate some words into English for the students as well as the teacher. A salary of an official Primary School teacher is around 1400€ per month and they work more than 30 hours per week. If they are “funcionarios”, they are very lucky because they work the whole year and get paid the whole year. There are other teachers who aren’t that lucky and they have to travel and work for some weeks/some months, called “interinos”, changing all the time the school they work and the place they live in. My point is: you’re lucky you get paid this salary, mostly the same salary as a Primary school teacher (12 hours/part-time employment here or even less) , who has had to study very hard in order to get this job.
2. DON’T PLAN THE CLASS/DON’T BE ALONE WITH THE STUDENTS: don’t go to France, then. Auxiliares have to plan all their classes in France, and they are usually ALONE with the students. I agree with you in this point, it is stupid that the Spanish government pay American students to come here and do nothing.
3. “Totally feasible. I had other friends who were placed at schools in villages over an hour away, that they not only had to commute to, they had to pay the teachers to let them ride with them to and from work, over 100 euros extra a month”
Maybe this person would have stayed in the village, and don’t move to one hour distance. Otherwise yes, he/she should pay the teachers. These teachers are paying the petrol themselves and they might have families, pay the mortgage, etc. I have met a guy who was working one hour away from Granada and he never paid anything; teachers gave him a lift into the school FOR FREE. Some Spanish people are nice, aren’t they?
4. Last but not least. I am Primary school teacher and I am highly offended with this article. First of all, I am TIRED to read/hear people from abroad saying that Spanish teachers/people don’t know any English. I have been to the UK and English teachers didn’t know any Spanish neither. What is more, they were teaching Spanish. People are spending thousand of euros and time in order to learn English in Spain. For instance, me, I didn’t study English at school, since I studied French, and I had to work very hard to learn English. I have been studying for 5 years and I have only been to the UK once. I haven’t had the opportunity to go to the United States because your country only offer 4 vacancies of “auxiliar de conversación”. WE OFFER 4.500 VACANCIES. To become Auxiliar in the States you must have studied Philology or Translation at the University. We don’t ask any related study to come as auxiliar in Spain. I have seen doctors, architecs, etc. Besides, the American government only gives 1000 dollars per month to live there, and I believe you have to pay the petrol to go to the school, or even worse, you need to buy a car. I don’t know how the cost of life is in the north of Spain, but in the South, any person who get 700€ per month with any family burden can live quite well.
As I have said before, I am Primary School teacher. I don’t have any job, I have passed two competitive exams and my government didn’t give me the opportunity to work. I am not the only one; thousand of jobless people are studying and working very hard to become teachers in Spain. Many people are going to the UK and the States to work as an au pair or any bad- paid job in order to learn English. I will be very happy to have the opportunity to work in any school in order to get some experience and earn some money.
By the way, do you know the “Programa de visitantes” in the States? I have read many blogs which report the same: teachers from the school don’t give you any help, you are alone with the students, you have children with special needs, you have to teach English. The American government give the worst schools to Spanish teachers from this program.
I think you had problems to adapt yourself in Spain and you are blaming my country. Maybe you shouldn’t have had moved from your country.
Footnote: sorry for my English. I have tried to make this message as accurate as possible, but I am not English speaker.
Thanks for your comments, but you are misinformed on many points on here. I am a big believer that if you are not 100% well informed on a topic you shouldn’t leave these kinds of comments, but most of all, I find it incredibly childish to take an article an compare it to other programs abroad, like you just did with france and the US. I am not writing about those places. To say “na na na well it’s just as bad or worse in France or the US” IS A FUCKING CHILDISH REPLY. Grow up.
I almost wrote out a reply to each of your points but I am not going to waste my time. It’s clear, especially from points 1 and 2 that you have no clue how the auxiliar program is run all over spain, or at least how it was 2 years ago when I wrote this article. Once you’re better informed, I would love to hear your opinion, til then, please keep your assumptions and misjudgements to yourself. Thanks.
100 per cent agreement. I felt the same sensation.
Your replica is excellent. Congratulations.
Liz:
I know I am breaking my previous statement to not write again to you but I know you Americans tend to value free speech a lot and I really appreciate that about 99,99999999% of the hundreds of Americans I have met who generally give me the opportunity to defend my statements. I am only writing this comment in response to your latest one but if you wish we can continue with private e-mail so the thread doesn’t deviate.
Yes, believe me my extranjería is on top of things – the problem is, again, Spanish government which doesn’t give enough resources to all the provincial offices. It’s not at all normal that for hundreds and thousands of applications for NIEs we have maybe two, maybe three workers. But that’s not our problem — Spanish workers do what government tells them to do and this government is totally stupid, incompetent and corrupt. That’s who you should be blaming, not the Spanish workers.
No, I have not worked as an auxiliar but I have a lot of experience with how language classes generally work in Spain.
No, please, you misunderstand me. There is NO REASON to say ONLY positive things about Spain. Believe me, you will find no harsher critic of Spain than me. I HATE many things about the way my country and other people here think about things in general so no, that’s not the problem. The problem is when you direct your criticisms at the wrong people. Again, this is a government problem. Employees are simply doing what government (incompetent, yes, but not civil servants) tell them to do. Let’s direct the criticisms where they should go.
I still think you are directing your critiques at the wrong issues. You have had problems with your NIE. Write me an e-mail if you want and tell me what the specific problem was with your NIE or other paperwork issues. You probably have no idea how frustrated we are sometimes with idiotic people who don’t seem to understand simple directions (I’m not saying you don’t follow directions by the way, but there are many, many people, especially foreigners, who complain that they get yelled at here but then when you probe, you find that they just felt entitled to get whatever it is they thought they should get).
And I didn’t make any sweeping judgments about you without clarifying that I do not know you, and am only judging from your writing here. I know you like Spain…I can read English too.
I completely agree with Lucia Villanueva’s comment.
Get OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE. I am from Spain, have learned English since I was a child and have lived, studied and worked for many years in the USA. A lot of the problems you mention for Spain have happened to me in the United States as well.
What did you expect from disgruntled government employees? A smile and a red carpet just because you’re American and make ridiculously obnoxious threats about telling bs to the “US Embassy”?
I wish you could try to deal with “civil servants” in New York and see how incompetent and awful the bureaucracy can be in the United States with things like getting permits, renewing licenses for things or just simple paperwork. At least in Spain the workers speak the national language, because in the US depending on the area some of the employees working in the town hall can’t even speak English since they are Latin American and make no effort to learn English and work there because they are politically connected. This is a fact in Queens, New York, and some of the New Jersey towns around Newark, etc.
Spain has rude civil servants, so does the US. You are acting as if though this was only a Spanish problem. Guess what lady? We Spaniards also get treated nastily by these employees because many of them make lower wages (their wages have been frozen for years and years) and many studied really hard and now were lied to by the Spanish government (the right-wing politicians who couldn’t give a crap about the welfare of our workers) thanks to pressures from…yep, US ECONOMY AND BANKS.
I love the American people and 99% of Americans I’ve met are nothing like you sound. I don’t know you but you sound self-entitled and self-important in your comments.
The biggest whingers in Spain tend to be British people (I have yet to meet a single respectful British person in Spain) but Americans generally make the effort to adapt and know this is not the US (NOR SHOULD IT BE).
As others have pointed out, if you hate this country, you can always pack your bags and leave. When I was in the US, there were tons of things I didn’t like – the fake smiles in restaurants just to get tips, the passive-aggressive attitudes and fake ways of so many people and the general stressed out lifestyle. But, I made an effort to respect the country and know that I was nobody to tell American workers what to do or how to act. You seem to think you can tell our workers what to do or how to work.
I hope you change your attitude.
Hey Alfredo, this article is for Americans coming to Spain with the auxiliar program, which I’m sure you have a lot of experience with, right? This is not an article about foreigners coming to the US because I have no experience to write about that – congratulations for making the article about you and missing the point entirely! I find it very childish when people flip things around and blame other people. I never said I hate Spain, which clearly you missed because you can’t see straight due to your anger towards me; I write one negative post in an effort to help young americans prepare for their move to Spain and it cancels out the hundreds of other wonderful things I said about Spain which I’m sure you read on my blog, right? Or are you making all of these judgmental comments based off of one post that you have absolutely zero background information on. Also this post is 2 years old, and since then I HAD to leave spain because the program I was with is an absolute disaster and pretty much everyone in charge of it is completely incompetent. I have never told spanish workers how to do their job, rather begged them TO DO their job in the first place, which is pretty much where are the problems originated from. So please, take your bitchy comments and judgements somewhere else and off my blog, thanks.
Considering I work EVERY day with the program, yeah, I most certainly DO have experience with the program since I work in “Extranjeria” and know all there is to know about NIEs, EU visas, the auxiliares program, etc.
Yes, I read your article about having to leave Spain and I understand you are/were not happy with the program. Your problem, not certainly the thousand others who have nothing but good things to say about their experience in my country.
That being said, you do what you have to do. I do not wish to “occupy” your blog or your time since you obviously have very set opinions about how we operate and that you are our supervisor making us “do our job”.
I find your answer to be very angry as well. The reason I made a comparison with “my” experiences in the US is because in your post you make it sound as if though only Spain has incompetent public workers or disastrous programs. So I used the example of my own experience in the US to refute your arguments in these matters.
That being said, don’t worry because I will make no further comments on your blog. There is too much life to enjoy here for me to worry so much about what ONE person writes.
Oh good then I’m sure the extranjeria where you work is on top of things, have you also worked as an auxiliar too? I was writing from my experience with them in Cordoba and Logroño and I can safely say they were completely incompetent two years ago on multiple occasions, one can only hope they improve. I think it’s really ridiculous that I must only say positive things about Spain. Is the world so black and white? Just because I had problems with the program doesn’t mean I didn’t love Spain and also have positive things to say about – again did you actually read my blog before you made all of these sweeping judgements about me? But I am not surprised when I hear someone argue back saying well things are the same or worse in another place – I wasn’t writing about the US or making any comparisons. It’s like arguing with a child. So yes, please don’t worry with what I write, I don’t worry about your negative feedback either consider I’ve gotten hundreds and hundreds of messages, and thousands of views on this post over the years thanking me for giving an honest review of the program.