For every Barcelona person traveling to London, traveling in a Uber ship down the Thames would be a transgressive and endearing form of defiance against limited mobility policy and the competence of the mayor. Plus, traveling by Uber Boat on the River Thames is a great way to find out how the British capital is growing and changing.

To return to the center, it is recommended to travel with dlrthe flyover that lets you cross the center of the Docklands, today changed to financial and housing center, that a few years ago was an abandoned wharf of the world’s largest port.

Greenwich welcomes visitors with Cutty Sark, rebuilt after a fire in 2014. The place gives its name to the zero meridian, which in our country crosses Monegros through a remote place indicated by one of the highway monuments of dubious taste.

Greenwich it maintains the atmosphere of a fishing village and houses the university with a building with a nostalgic atmosphere from the imperial era where he worked Celso Lopezspokesperson for the Council of Spanish Residents in the South of Great Britain (CRE).

The Resident Council is a body whose purpose is represent the interests of all Spaniards in the UK in front of embassies and consulates. One of the main tasks of CRE is to create community among Spaniards, collect their concerns, and publicize their cultural initiatives. One of the most recent was the establishment of the Platero school in Kent, an initiative of Asen Arriazua Navarrean mother who launched this initiative so that her daughter could learn our language and our country’s culture and customs.

Celso arrived in England in 1993 and believed that the country offered opportunities, for example, a freelancer pays nothing until he earns an incomeIt also has a simple bureaucracy. “For the average Spaniard with permanent residency, Brexit does not mean any change,” he said.

Brexit has a less visible effect as it affects all Spaniards living in the UK and with income in Spain. So, for example, income from property or income from shares has been seen increase tax rate from 19% on net profit to 24% on gross income, because Great Britain after Brexit is a third country like China or the United States. This change in tax regime has caused many Spanish residents in the UK to consider selling their property in Spain.

CRE has many relationships and constant meetings with embassy and consulate staff, but it’s not a submissive organismbut is critical of the lack of infrastructure and personnel of the Spanish embassy which makes “even embassy staff to renew passports easier by getting on a plane and traveling to Spain than doing paperwork at the consulate ».

The Spanish community in England is huge and the Spanish consulate, in the Chelsea neighborhood, is small and understaffed. “There are not enough promises available for the number of requests that exist, many of them had been canceled the day before due to the difficulty of being able to meet so many requests and because there were long queues on the road. During the pandemic, they are canceled from one day to the next without prior notice,” explained a spokesperson for the Resident Council.

CRE has supported demonstrations and strikes of embassy staff and consulates, which is also the case in other countries demanding increased salaries and resources to carry out their work. Workers denounced vacancies and three years of wage freezes.

Apart from consular matters, Celso lauds the flexibility of the UK workforce and the opportunities it offers, «lack of personnel means there is an incentive to keep the job». Vacancies in many jobs primarily affect the NHS public health service, where there are thousands of positions filled by staff from third countries such as the Philippines.