Neither one thing nor the other!

Imagine, if you will, 250,000 16 to 24 years olds. This is the number of people in that age group in Galicia.

75,000 of them are still in mainstream education, most likely doing bachillerato or formación profesional.

65,000 are studying at university.

73, 000 are in employment.

The remaining 40,000 or so are “los ni-ni”, a new sociological term in Spain, apparently. It is short for “ni estudian, ni trabajan”, those who neither study nor work. In the UK they call them “neets”: Not in Education, Employment or Training.

The typical ni-ni gallego, I understand, is likely to be a young man who completed or, more likely, scraped through ESO (more or less GCSE equivalent) and then did not continue with education or training or find a proper permanent job. He is quite happy to live at home depending on his parents and doing occasional temporary work to fund his leisure activities.

Because of the rural exodus of their parents’ generation, most ni-nis live in Galicia’s biggest cities, particularly La Coruña and Pontevedra.

Nowadays, of course, the push to become independent is not as urgent as it used to be. It is now perfectly acceptable for a young couple, each living with their individual sets of parents, to go away for the weekend or even go on holiday together, something that was unheard of 30 or 40 years ago. As someone commented, they have all the advantages of being married but none of the disadvantages.

And then parents are quite willing for the most part to help out their offspring in a way that they would have liked to be helped themselves, although one mother, remembering the long hours she worked in her youth, remarked that they have made life too easy for their children nowadays.

Not all expect to supported, however. Just last night I was talking to a young gallego, not a ni-ni, this one but repeating some subjects this year to complete his bachillerato, After that he plans to do a couple of years of formación profesional and then spend a year travelling, picking up work as and when he can, learning some foreign language and culture. After that, aged about 23, he might go to university. When I asked if his parents were financing all this, he told me, ¡qué va!, he is already working evenings to finance himself and intends to continue to do so. He even manages to save some money for going on camping holidays with friends.

Many of the parents of this generation emigrated to find work in the past. It was almost an accepted part of Galician life. Now, it seems, this is not happening, or at least not as frequently. Many of those who have gone away to work have returned home because the job market has folded internationally.

What is happening though is that young gallegos are now wanting to travel for fun. Maybe the gap-year organisations which have profited from young Brits going off trekking or helping out in third world countries will do the same thing here in Galicia.