Jack Tame: Empty streets echo lost generation

After the Catalan Independence Referendum being suspended by Spain's Top Court, demonstrations are being held in Barcelona daily. Photo / Getty Images

"Compramos Oro." We buy gold.

I thought the signs would be gone by now or at least there would be fewer. The last time I visited Spain, in 2011, the gold dealers wheeled around central Madrid like pigeons chasing scraps. An old wristwatch? Your grandma's wedding band? In Spain almost anything was money.

Or maybe it was simply that the pawnshop pigeons had the only jobs going. Spain's economic meltdown left most other western economies in the dust. The global recession, a debt crisis and a poorly structured workforce had unemployment in March 2012 at almost 25 per cent.

Travelling in the country's western provinces this week I was shocked not by the familiar signs and pawn stands, but by the people on the streets outside.

The number of beggars and panhandlers was comparable to many Western countries, but in western Spain their faces were not.

They were not only desperate addicts, the disabled and the mentally ill. In Spain, I saw a woman begging who could have almost been my mum.

She wasn't alone - at least twice in as many days I encountered well-heeled middle-aged Spaniards, tidy and groomed and on their knees. They had handwritten cardboard signs: they'd lost everything, somehow.

Perhaps the most devastating impact of Spain's dramatic fall is with the generation of those poor people's children. It took me a few nights of restaurant and bar-hopping to work out why even the busiest towns felt a little odd: the young people were gone.

Many of Spain's young professionals have left to find work. They were nowhere in Spain's villages. Scant in the tourist hubs, too. There aren't enough jobs or opportunities to sustain them. In 2011, the OECD said more people were leaving Spain than were moving in.

There's a cliche about travel and the things you encounter, that the more places and countries you visit, the more you learn about your own home. At least our young talent comes home. Some in Spain fear they've lost a generation.

Jack Tame is on NewstalkZB Saturdays, 9am-midday.