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Argentine lifeguards, to the rescue of summer in Spain

2022-08-16T10:44:28.022Z


Argentina has formed a quarry of lifeguards that in cities like Palma are 70% and in Barcelona, ​​50% of the guards of its beaches


Yellow flag on the Nova Icària beach in Barcelona.

Good weather for sailing sports, uncomfortable for swimming.

A few minutes before, the first rescue of the day.

Luis Rosarno assures that there will be more.

He scans the shore for possible risk situations: there is an older man soaking where the waves break;

a little further, a child alone.

The bathing season in the Catalan capital lasts six months, longer than in other enclaves of the Spanish Levante, with an influx that on a normal day, in Nova Icària reaches 10,000 people.

Rosarno is Argentine, like half of the lifeguards on the beaches of Barcelona.

Without them, summer leisure on the coast would not be possible.

Rosarno is 47 years old and is one of the oldest lifeguards in Barcelona.

He started in 2003 and every summer he has held a rescue slot.

“There have been three waves of Argentine professionals in Spain”, he summarizes with a smile and his advertising tan: “In the seventies the psychoanalysts arrived, in the eighties, the dentists and, from the two thousand, the lifeguards” .

Lifeguards in Argentina are called lifeguards, a profession in which the local Red Cross already gave regulated courses in 1932. It is above all a vocation, unlike Spain, where until a few years ago it was still something more for volunteers of the Red Cross or for young people who wanted to win some dogs in the summer.

Rosarno raises the green flag on one of the watchtowers on Nova Icaria beach.Albert Garcia

"The lifeguard in Argentina is mythologized, they even applaud when they act, it's a bit theatrical," says Albert Calabuig, until last May president of the Association of Catalan Aquatic Rescue Companies (AECSA).

"Then, when they come to Spain and see that it is a job like any other, they don't understand it," says this businessman with 40 years of experience in the sector.

The Argentines asked by EL PAÍS agree on the social recognition of the trade in their country.

“It is a civil authority on the beach, there is no police or intervention other than theirs,” says Rosarno.

Other sources consulted for this article proudly add that a lifeguard even became president of Argentina, Eduardo Duhalde —head of state between 2002 and 2003—.

Calabuig quantifies around 10,000 lifeguards who are active in the summer in Catalonia;

Of these, a thousand exercise on the beach.

There are about 700 Argentine lifeguards, he says, and the vast majority work at sea.

Which allows calculating that half of the beach lifeguards in Catalonia are Argentine, Calabuig points out, and he ventures that in the whole of Spain, the average may be similar.

Salvador Perelló, spokesman for the Valencian Community Rescue and First Aid Federation, confirms that they have many Argentines in rescue tasks, but he does not believe that they will reach half.

The Argentine Christian Melogno, general secretary of the Union of Lifeguards of Mallorca, does estimate that in the Balearic Islands, half of these professionals are his compatriots.

On the beaches of Palma, where Melogno works, 70% are Argentines.

Melogno is 31 years old and has been in the business for 10 years.

He combines the summer seasons in Spain with those in Brazil.

Most Argentines, but also Uruguayan or Peruvian lifeguards, live in a constant summer season, carrying out their work in the European summer and then in South America.

The bureaucratic advantage of Argentines over other Latin American nationalities is that many can obtain dual Spanish or Italian nationality thanks to their European ancestors.

The autonomous communities began at the beginning of this century to introduce different levels of obligation to hire lifeguards in public or community pools.

The demand for rescue technicians skyrocketed and companies looked for where they had more options to find qualified personnel with knowledge of the language: Argentina.

The lifeguard title in Argentina requires a year of preparation and is physically very demanding, according to Perelló and Carlos de España, president of the homologous Balearic federation.

In Spain, the preparation required depends on each autonomous community, but the longest courses to obtain the certificate of professionalism last four months.

Perelló and De España also agree that Argentines lack technical training, such as first aid.

Rosarno on the beach of Nova Icaria.Albert Garcia

To practice in Spain, the homologation of the Argentine title is accompanied in most cases by short refresher courses, especially theoretical ones.

Inti Martínez tells it on her YouTube channel, in a special video for her compatriots who want to work as lifeguards in Spain.

Martínez, 28, lives in Malaga.

She is certified as a lifeguard by the most prestigious school in Argentina, the Red Cross.

“I had to swim there every day, from Monday to Saturday, for a year.

My husband got a lifeguard title in Spain, he got it in two weeks”.

Alberto García, director of the school of the Royal Spanish Federation of Rescue and First Aid, criticizes the disparity of autonomous regulations that oblige in the Canary Islands, for example, to have a professional certificate with more than 400 hours of training, or just to take a course

online

in Castile and León.

García emphasizes that the more hours and demands are needed to obtain lifeguard titles, the fewer Spanish citizens will want to do them because it does not compensate for a three-month job.

extreme demand

The harshness of Argentine rescue training is personified in Melogno and Rosarno: in the case of the former, of 50 students who began training, only 15 graduated;

in the case of Rosarno, out of 120 who took the entrance exam, 40 finished. “For a year they beat you to death, 10 hours a week swimming.

And you do it because there, working on the beach is a privilege, not like here”, says Melogno.

Lifeguards in Palma have a monthly salary of 1,000 euros, “less than a waiter”, laments this trade unionist.

"They say there is a lack of lifeguards, but there are lifeguards, what is missing is decent wages," adds Rosarno.

Martínez's video tutorial is a warning of the unpaid overtime that must be worked, according to his experience in Andalusia.

It is a cry of warning to those who want to cross the Atlantic thinking that the conditions in Spain are a bargain.

“The problem for Argentines is that our economy is very fluctuating.

There have been times when as a lifeguard you could earn 1,500 euros in Argentina, and now the normal rate is 350″, explains Rosarno.

The most sought after formula is to concentrate on municipalities where they can share housing with other Argentines and in regions where the contracts last longer.

Catalonia is the favorite destination: it has a collective agreement with a minimum wage of 1,300 euros, according to the CGT, and bathing seasons that in places like Barcelona, ​​Castelldefels or Tossa start at Easter.

The representatives of the aquatic rescue sector of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Valencia and Andalusia interviewed agree that professionals will continue to be lacking in Spain and that Argentina's hegemony will increase.

With 20 years saving lives in Barcelona, ​​Rosarno assures that professionalization started late in Spain, less than a decade ago.

There is still a long way to go for the Spaniards to boast of having had a lifeguard President of the Government, but Rosarno reiterates that he is seeing a change: “In Barcelona they used to sit us in a chair and under an umbrella, exposed to cold, heat or even people who threw things at us.

Now we have some towers with a cabin and a lookout point.

Young people, when they see it, they understand that it is something serious.”

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Source: elparis

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