Valencia’s Álvaro Ruiz found a new home in Brussels
“European countries need a better co-operation”
Journalism student Álvaro Ruiz Valero, whose family moved from Valencia to Brussels 5 years ago, analyzes the differences between living in the capital of Europe and living in his former Spanish city. As a citizen of Brussels, he believes in the European Unity. “In our globalized world, the European Unity is a strength.’
Relaxed. This is how Álvaro faced this interview. A normal guy whose family decided a few years ago change the way of living: “My family decided to do that just because they thought that in Belgium there were more opportunities to get a job, and actually they were true”.
The way in how he says that show confidence in himself, but not always it has been on that way: “my first year here was hard, I didn’t know a lot French and, of course, I didn’t know anybody. But it helped to be more confident in myself”. Four years later, he has now his own “group” of friends and actually a girlfriend.
The differences between Belgium and Spain start to be seen when Álvaro talks about hanging out with his friends: “for example, the easy part which is hanging out, is very different. It’s true that Spain is cheaper in general; but here in Brussels the students have a lot of offers, and discounts for being university students, and in Spain that doesn’t happen”. He explained
While the interview continues it is appreciable how Álvaro is very happy of living in Brussels. He used to live in the outskirts of Valencia, and now he lives in the outskirts of Brussels, but according of what he said “although Brussels is much bigger than Valencia, it cost me less time get to Brussels centre, than it used in Valencia. This is because public transport here is more efficient here than in Valencia. Maybe the trains here look older and dirtier, but the frequency is perfect! One train or bus run every five minutes. In Valencia if I lost one train I had to wait like half an hour”.
Although Álvaro has spoken about very good things of Belgium, there are a few things that he misses about his city, and not only his olds friends “one of the things that I miss the most is being able of go shopping in the Spanish afternoon, here everything closes at 19:00, it’s insane. And, of course, the sun. In Valencia, I saw the sun every single day, and here the normal thing is not watching it” he explained.
Focusing the interview in the political aspect, it was necessary ask him about Cataluña’s problem, because although he is not from there, the subject is something that attached the whole country. About the situation, he wanted to highlight that he didn’t “understand” what exactly “is Cataluña doing” because from his point of view “in this globalized world, it’s necessary that all the countries of Europe work together, if we don’t we will lose the power that we have”.
Furthermore, about the manifestation which took place last 7 of December he explained that he “went to the manifestation” but not exactly because he wanted to support it, but because “I wanted to see how many Spanish people there were”. And according of what he saw, there were a lot of Belgium people that only went there for curiosity, “Spanish media is saying that there were forty-five thousand people, and that’s a lie. I sure you that there were a lot of people that only went there for curiosity, in fact my Belgium friends came with me and they don’t want the independence” he concluded.
Continuing with Cataluña’s problem, and asked about how the citizens of Brussels see the situation, he thinks that he can not say what every citizen of Brussels think, but that “a lot of lies have been told. Puigdemont is damaging the vision that many people have of Spain because he is acting like a refugee. And he broke the law!”
In conclusion, Álvaro is quite sure that he wouldn’t change the decision that his parents made a few years ago “I am very proud of being his son, I don’t know if I could leave everything with 40 years and moving to a new city”. And he thinks that, although Spain is “growing” and “maturing as a country”, it still has to “achieve the European goals, such as has better public transport, being more multicultural or accept more the diversity of people”. He said his last sentence because fascists groups in Spain are growing in a big quantity: “although the most part of Spain supports Europe and loves diversity, every time there are more groups that miss the old dictatorship that we lived, I don’t understand and I hope that they change their minds” he finished.
