In order to get along and fit it at Spanish companies employees and managers group together, often going to lunch every day. This is where a lot of key relationships are made.
Often those relationships play out in the workplace as well and it’s quite normal for a manager who jumps to a competitor to take over “los suyos” to the new firm. Like it or loath it that’s the way it is hereand it can work to your advantage or work against you.
I must say that foreigners, whilst treated with curiosity, are often made to feel excluded if on secondment or hired full time. This reflects in many ways Spanish society, whilst very friendly Spaniards are group animals (mum & dad, brothers, long term friends) and do no easily accept outsiders into their inner circle unless introduced by a Spaniard. Who said it was easy integrating into another culture ? Imagine what some of those poor illegal farm and construction workers must go through…….

Productivity is quite low I would say. Youtube has got to be the most visited website – even above Google, I swear! Even managers sit and play suduko for hours.

But when there is work to be done, we work hard, when there isn’t, we go home early. I love the flexibility of being able to leave work and run a quick errand (you know, like eat breakfast, take a coffee, go to the bank ). I think it improves moral alot, but perhaps a little too much, looking at productivity!

Generally I would say it is a much better atmosphere than in the UK.

Other differences people mention is that Spanish offices tend to have a stricter and more formal hierarchy. In Spain people fear the boss much more.

Also, in the UK it is common for people to earn a living contracting. You might even find some technical expert working as a contractor being paid more than their project manager, simply because their skills are in short supply. Apparently that would never happen in Spain. In fact, it is a pain for me that in Spain it seems only TEFLers can make a career out of contracting – it just doesn’t happen in other sectors. Spanish employers expect you to hang around companies for years on end. In the UK it is more acceptable to change every 2 or 3 years, especially if it means you’ve built a varied CV.

I suspect you’ll need more than the Catalan. First you’ll have to get your qualifications “homologado” which means that photocopies of them lie on someone’s desk for about 15 months before being approved or rejected. Then you spend half the rest of your life doing exams even if you’re only interested in being deputy chief photocopier in the department of qualification homologación. So it will take you a while to get to the point where you can get that nice, secure job. I’ve worked in private companies where they have nice timetables too, the first job I ever did in Spain was at Gas Natural and they were working the jornada intensiva, so after 3 p.m. I often found myself the only person in the office.

My colleagues told me those were typical working hours for a Spanish company in the IT sector, so I went through a real career re-evaluation stage.

However a friend of mine who is also a programmer says he has never worked more than 7 hours a day in his current (Spanish) company. They have an obligatory half our coffee break on top of a two hour lunch break, and they lock the door at 7pm so everyone has to leave.

I now work for a company where people get to work between 9 and 9.30 and leave between 7 and 8. We have occasionally had to work the odd weekend. That is pretty much in line with my experiences working in the UK.

When you compare this to the world of the funcionario in Spain, where he working day often involves reading the paper it is frustrating. I get the impression of a private sector that is often working itself into the ground to support a public sector where most people are in a state of semi-retirement. This attracts more and more people to the public sector, even though it doesn’t contribute to the economy. However that might just be me being biased.