From Peru to your community pool: the scam that hires lifeguards in Spain who don't even know how to swim

The offer has been running through the streets of Lima for more than a decade: "If you want to enter Spain with a job and earn money fast, become a lifeguard."

The buzz spreads unchecked through the universities and institutes of Peru, as a lure for the youngest.

Visit groups of friends and family on WhatsApp, as well as Instagram and Facebook walls.

Always at the beginning of the academic year.

After all, three months of employment and salary in Madrid between swimming pools – more than 3,500 euros net from mid-June to mid-September – are equivalent to almost two years of working life in the Andean country.

But, as in any bargain, you have to read the fine print.

The B side of being a foreign lifeguard in Spain is discovered by themselves over the months.

It involves losing savings, being exploited for 120 days in swimming pools in neighborhood communities and beaches, chaining up to a month without being released -some have only rested seven days throughout the summer-, paying for documents that end up being false and even obtaining certificates of lifeguard courses that were never done for 200 euros.

Some of these lifeguards don't even know how to swim or do word of mouth.

In Madrid alone, lifeguard businessmen distribute more than 10,000 community pools without counting the public ones.

If it is assumed that an average contract to monitor and maintain the pool is around 10,500 euros per year, the business amounts to more than 105 million euros for each season.

Industrial warehouse on Calle Progreso number 2, in Getafe, where the 16 companies owned by Roberto Miguel Laborda in the capital are registered.ALEX ONCIU

After this millionaire business, a group of lifeguards, between 20 and 35 years old - this season alone more than 1,000 have come to Madrid from the other side of the Atlantic, according to various sources in the sector -, has decided to tell their story after experiencing the worst summer of their lives.

They speak on condition of anonymity.

They fear being expelled from Spain or that these companies will retaliate.

“We feel cheated and helpless.

We have lost a lot of money”, they have a transparent folder full of documents.

His testimony is like a small thread that, stealthily, begins to emerge from a skein of uncertain size.

The sources of the sector consulted indicate that in this business there are "many" sewers in swimming pools and beaches "all over Spain" and that what these young Peruvians say is only the tip of the iceberg.

“This is chaotic.

There is no control of any kind."

To understand how the Peruvian dream of working in Spain turned into a scam, the story can be divided into four stages:

1. “Dream it, wish it”: recruitment in Peru

The hook is an advertisement on a bulletin board at a university in Lima.

Pablo, the fictitious name of a 25-year-old Peruvian, reads an advertising poster, like this one from last year: “Dream it, wish it, do it.

Europe near you”.

Or this one from just a few days ago: “Do you want to work in Spain?

Receive your certified degree and practice throughout Peru and in the Madrid-Spain job market (season 2023)”.

Every year, a different slogan.

Every year, thousands of interested.

And for more than a decade.

Paul calls.

Behind the announcements are two Peruvian brothers, Giuliano and Amadeo Pedraglio, dedicated to the swimming pool business in Peru.

One offers the lifeguard course, which he says is necessary to practice in Madrid and for which he charges 350 euros.

The other has two functions: it contacts the Madrid companies that will hire its clients and processes the documentation to take them to Spain with a six-month work permit and a commitment to return.

Another 350 euros.

A search for these two names on Google brings up a news item from 2013 titled: "Subjects gave adulterated lifeguard certificates to work in Spain."

At the Consulate General of Peru in Madrid they assure that they have no records of complaints related to these scams, nor of other more recent ones.

Most of the future lifeguards accept, although 700 euros in Peru is equivalent to three months of employment.

To this we must add the one-way ticket, which in this case cost about 1,000 euros.

Paying that amount all at once means for many selling part of their assets.

But it is a good investment, they are convinced.

They will go home with triple.

Or so they think.

“In the end we have spent more than 2,000 euros.

It was not an investment.

What I came to win here was not such”, lament now the complainants who did cross the pond.

"It's not just the money, it's the emotional aspect, that one feels cheated," they confess.

In a chat that is created with the future lifeguards, one can read: “Salary to earn for swimming pools for eight hours a day: 1,000 euros a month.

Nine-hour pools: 1,100 euros.

10-hour pools: 1,200 euros.

Liquidation: 900 euros.

Work contract for three months and a six-month visa with which you can improvise the fourth month looking to work in black (without a contract) kitchen helper, waiter…”.

Among the requirements is not knowing how to swim.

In fact, one of the complainants arrived in Spain and was hired in a swimming pool without knowing how to do it.

It is not an isolated case, but something that several companies overlook: the gossip and the complaint of the sector is that it is not so rare to have lifeguards in Madrid and in the rest of Spain who would not know how to get out of the water on their own.

The offer of the Pedraglio brothers, apparently, has no catch, but the couple deploys some tricks.

The course taught by one of them does not work in Madrid, because since last year the Community does not homologate foreign titles and requires that the training to be a lifeguard be done in the capital of Spain.

The brothers hide it from their clients.

"We are not responsible for Madrid deciding not to homologate these titles due to doubts about their veracity," reads one of the contracts for this last season.

The response to EL PAÍS by Amadeo, the brother who manages the paperwork, is to deny any irregularity.

"I'm already tired, every year it's the same, they think that by denouncing me they can stay in Spain... I've been in trouble for 11 years."

But he does not clarify the questions of this newspaper either.

2. "I have never heard that name."

The arrival in Spain

For Spain to give this work permit to Peruvian lifeguards, it is essential that a company has committed to hiring them.

In the case of Madrid, Pisciborda SL appears on the scene, the company that signs the contracts and payroll of this group of lifeguards thanks to the mediation of one of the Peruvian brothers.

This company is key and, in turn, invisible.

According to the commercial register, the administrator of Pisciborda is the Spaniard Roberto Miguel Laborda, who has a total of 21 companies, 5 in Zaragoza and 16 in Madrid.

All companies in the capital are registered in a building in a polygon in the Madrid municipality of Getafe.

But there is no trace of them.

Who is Roberto Miguel Laborda?

"I have never heard that name," says the doorman, who has been taking care of the property for 10 years.

The concierge, who has memorized the more than 250 companies in the building, only recognizes one from Laborda, which is dedicated to the “wholesale fuel” trade.

The company, indeed, appears as the tenant of one of the premises of the building.

But the office he supposedly occupies sports the sticker of another trucking company.

Nobody opens the door.

A coincidence: Laborda creates, between January and February of this year, with a view to the coming summer season, up to three companies linked to swimming pool maintenance.

Laborda is the one who officially hires these Peruvian lifeguards for Spain but, once the permits are approved, the firm and its owner become ghosts.

Not even the Peruvian recruiter, who manages all the permits with Pisciborda, knows or wants to explain who is behind this company.

3. "I don't understand my payroll."

The lifeguard who never delivers

The first clue to this story emerges on the lawn of an urbanization in Madrid.

Luis Villalba, a 26-year-old neighbor who was a lifeguard, was surprised that the person who watched his pool had not been off for a month.

“I knew that the conditions in this field were bad, but I started to get more interested and everything he told me sounded very strange to me,” he explains.

In his pool was one of the Peruvian lifeguards hired by Pisciborda and brought by the Pedraglio brothers.

But the administrators of this neighborhood community have never heard of these people.

Who they deal with is the company Piscinas Sánchez, which bills them about 12,000 euros a year for the surveillance and maintenance of their pool.

It is the name that lifeguards wear on their uniforms.

Premises of the company Piscinas Sánchez, at number 10 Estafanita street in Madrid.ALEX ONCIU

Piscinas Sánchez has been in the sector for more than 10 years and manages 80 swimming pools in Madrid.

He does not have a formal link with the rescuers, but it is there that they go to collect their payroll, to complain that they do not understand it, that they want to get rid of it or to fight for their severance pay.

The office is a messy and dirty place.

Here only a secretary works surrounded by file cabinets and bills and its owner ignores any irregularity over the phone.

"They ask not to rest because they want to earn more, they are not like the Spanish, who do not want to work," she says in a first call.

“It is the intermediaries —in reference to Pisciborda— who do the management, we don't have time,” she adds.

But Piscinas Sánchez does more than he admits.

Upon arriving in Madrid, the secretary handed out a piece of paper to all the Peruvian lifeguards with the appearance of an officer, which she later asked them to tear up.

In it, the Community of Madrid notified that they had been registered in its lifeguard registry, a procedure that is no longer necessary.

The document, as confirmed by EL PAÍS, was also grossly falsified.

Also, as expected, the lifeguard course that the Peruvians sold them in Lima ends up not being valid to work in Madrid and they will have to do another one.

Although, in theory, Piscinas Sánchez does nothing more than distribute subcontracted lifeguards around Madrid and its surroundings, it is his secretary who gives them a diploma for 80 hours of training.

The course was never done, but the 200 euros that it costs were deducted from her last salary, as EL PAÍS verified in her payroll.

Without passing any examination or control, the complainants worked fraudulently.

The false diploma with the seal of an official lifeguard school in Madrid.

The false diploma has a seal from an official Madrid lifeguard school called Alvisa.

A spokesman for this warns: "We know that there are false certificates of ours hanging around there since May."

"Why didn't they file a complaint?"

"Who are we going to report?"

4. "There is no control."

The tip of the iceberg

Working as a lifeguard in Spain opens a huge hole of illegalities.

At the migratory level, because the tricks of employers multiply to get their low-cost workers.

And at the regulatory level, because each community demands its own requirements, but with little control.

In Madrid, the law changed in October 2021 to bring some order.

If before it was necessary to homologate the title of the country of origin -which allowed any foreigner to work as a lifeguard with a course from their country and collapsed the registration for officials-, now it is mandatory to take a course in a school in the region.

Sources from the Community of Madrid acknowledge a certain lack of control in the sector and stress that they have reported several alleged scams to the Prosecutor's Office, without specifying how many.

"There is no type of control," says Alejandro Reyeros, former president of the Madrid Association of Rescue and First Aid, with more than 40 years of experience in the sector.

"I have seen titles of lifeguards from Santo Domingo with more than 180 hours that no one believes them," he says.

So much so that, according to Alberto Díaz, spokesman for the Spanish Federation of Lifeguards, a worker from the federation signed up for a course infiltrated years ago and received the title without attending.

“It has been happening for 20 years and throughout Spain.

Our diplomas and titles are falsified.

We have denounced it, but there is no solution”.

The spokesman explains that the fraud transcends titles: "The return they obtain from foreign workers, with papers and without papers and with a limited defense capacity, is very large."

Other sources in the sector tell, under anonymity, that there are large companies that are expressly dedicated to bringing rescuers from Peru and Argentina who are not even registered with Social Security.

"They put them as volunteer workers and period," says a businessman.

Another even shoots: “Beyond this specific case, there are real mafias.

I am the first interested in it coming to light, but I do not want to have problems with those people.

Do you know cases of irregularities in lifeguards in Spain?

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