Antonio Ledezma is a former mayor of Caracas. He jokingly comments that he sometimes forgets that Madrid is not the capital of Venezuela, from which he fled five years ago.
“Whenever I walk through the city or take the bus, I bump into two or three Venezuelans,” he says. “It’s a little weird, but sometimes I feel like this place is Sabana Grande [avenida de Caracas].”
It is not new for Latin Americans to seek work in Spain, often in low-paying jobs. But the turmoil of recent years in Latin America has drawn a wave of prominent and wealthy exiles to the country. Today the Spanish capital rivals Miami as a hotspot for Latin Americans — and, in many cases, for their money as well.
Ledezma and several other high-profile Venezuelan opposition politicians arrived in Madrid fleeing the repressive regime of Nicolás Maduro. Other wealthy Latinos are starting to shift resources out of countries where leftist presidents were recently elected, including Mexico in 2018, Peru last year and, most recently, Chile, where Gabriel Boric was sworn in in March as the most senior president. country youth. Boric promised to make Chilean society more egalitarian.
The reaction in Spain appears to be rolling out the red carpet. When Ledezma landed in Madrid in November 2017, he was greeted by then Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who offered him Spanish citizenship right away. Ledezma refused, but many other Latin Americans, especially those with money, have applied for or have already received Spanish citizenship. Some have received the so-called golden visa that Spain gives to anyone who spends at least €500,000 (R$2.57 million) on the purchase of a property.
Madrid allows Latin Americans to apply for citizenship after two years of legal residency — less than the ten years normally required for people of other nationalities or the five years for refugees.
“Spain has been really generous to Venezuelans, opening its doors and offering them multiple ways to get legal residency,” says Venezuelan Jorge Neri, who owns a media company in Madrid. He points out that Madrid has offered better investment opportunities than Miami — “where prices are very high.”
Business consultant Gilberto Carrasquero is one of many who sold a property in Miami and acquired one in Madrid — an apartment in the Salamanca neighborhood, where Venezuelan and Mexican businessmen are buying and renovating entire buildings.
“When Venezuela went into crisis and we started to leave, it seemed that our natural destination was Miami, and that’s where I went. But today I feel much more at home in Madrid,” he says. He has already applied for Spanish citizenship.
Today there are about 200,000 Venezuelans officially registered as residents of Spain, but experts say the real number is much higher — this is because the statistics do not cover people who are not officially residents or who entered the country illegally. About a quarter of Latin American migration to Spain is illegal, according to a study published in 2020.
Venezuelans form the largest contingent of new migrants in Spain, and the number has risen more than 50% in 2020, despite obstacles to travel arising from the pandemic, according to the Spanish government.
But Neri says he is now also seeing more people from other Latin American countries, many worried about the “leftist politics” that is gaining ground in the region. Colombia could become the next to follow in that direction: in the presidential election scheduled for May the favorite is Gustavo Petro, the former leftist mayor of the capital, Bogotá. Petro has a clear message for the rich: pay more taxes.
Peruvian real estate broker Bruna Denegri Iglesias, who has been in Madrid for 18 years, says her Peruvian clientele has more than quintupled since July, when leftist Pedro Castillo was elected president.
“There are people who see Madrid as their emergency landing. These people want to buy a €1 million apartment, get housing and then, if they actually end up spending most of their time here, maybe buy a bigger and better property.” Iglesias says that today at least 80% of his customers are Peruvian, whereas before “there were months when he didn’t get a single call from Peru.”
The pandemic has severely limited people’s mobility, but the recent lifting of travel restrictions has allowed many high-income Latin Americans to return to a lifestyle involving multiple residences, with Spain as one of their stopovers.
Argentine Dani Levinas, director of the board at the Phillips Collection art museum in Washington, divides his time between the US capital Miami and Madrid, where he bought an apartment six years ago.
He says he considered living in the Spanish capital after going to the Arco art fair. “I feel much more comfortable with the culture and lifestyle of Madrid than I do of Miami,” he says. “In Madrid, I live near eight theaters. I can see a different show each week without taking a cab. That just doesn’t exist in Miami.”
Latin Americans are also rapidly expanding their business presence, acquiring commercial real estate and hotels, including the five-star Rosewood Villa Magna, which reopened in October after a renovation paid for by its Mexican owners. Some entrepreneurs are bringing Latin American employees to Madrid.
Although Spain has been facing high unemployment, the government recognizes that the country needs hundreds of thousands of new migrants annually to balance its aging population and avoid labor shortages in key sectors.
Ledezma says he is still determined to help oust Maduro from power, but he now also wants to help lower-income Venezuelans settle in Madrid.
“Obviously I felt very welcomed, but the question is whether Venezuelans who deliver food by bicycle are also doing well,” he explains. “While I’m here, I also want to show solidarity with those for whom this migration has been a huge struggle.”
