Little did Paola imagine, when she was very little, her grandmother sang the Asturian anthem to her and she hummed without knowing what it was, that she would end up in the land of her grandparents and great-grandmother from her native Argentina. Like José Ramón and Edmilson, from Gijón and Brazilian, whom Gijón joined almost twenty years ago and, after a decade in Brazil, have decided to return to Asturias, but this time with company, that of their three children.
The story of Paola, José and Edmilson has nothing to do with each other, they do not even share a country of origin, nor a country of birth. What unites them is that the three have chosen Asturias to continue building their life projects, driven, perhaps, by the RetornAs initiative, which the Asturian Government has launched to enable the meeting “between what we were, what we are and what we can achieve.” to be.” The three, with their respective families, have only been in Asturias for a few months and they all agree that, despite the homesickness, the adaptation is being “very good.”
The story of Paola Andrea Miranda began to be written in Bilbao, from where her grandfather Juan Alberto set sail at the age of 19 towards Argentine lands. He left the Asturian town of Infiesto, where he was born, in search of a better life. It was September 26, 1947. Fate wanted that also from Bilbao, but two years later, on the ship Monte Udala, her grandmother María Concepción, 16 years old, set sail in the company of her mother, Pilar, Paola’s great-grandmother. . They both came from Oviedo. It was January 6, 1949.
Almost 80 years later, on August 1, 2024, it was Paola who reproduced, but in reverse, the trip that had taken her grandparents and great-grandmother to their native Argentina. On her adventure she was accompanied by her children and her husband, all Argentine, they had been looking for stability in studies and work, and they decided to do it in that land that Paola had only guessed in the stories that her grandmother told her when she was little, but which she did with so much affection, that they managed to penetrate very deeply into that little girl who was barely three or four years old.
Now that she is in Asturias, she fondly remembers the moments she shared with her grandmother, mother and sister, in the Asturian Center of Buenos Aires, where they went to eat fabada and where they shared time with the large Asturian community that was in the capital of Buenos Aires. “It was like being here,” he admits, smiling.
Everyone has adapted well, perhaps the one who has had the hardest time is his daughter, who is in her teens, but both she and her little brother have already joined a gang at school and high school. There is longing, of course, the people are missed, the customs too, but everyone has adapted very well because “the people in Asturias are very open and supportive, they received us very well.”
Paola and her family live in Oviedo, where every time the Asturian anthem is played in the Plaza de la Escandalera, she gets emotional remembering her grandmother, who was the one who instilled in her the feeling of Asturianness that, even thousands of kilometers from distance, always housed inside. “Having been able to come with them would have been beautiful,” he says, referring to his grandparents, although now in Asturias he feels closer to them.
Study, work and start a family
Edmilson Rodríguez is Brazilian and came to Gijón (Asturias) for the first time in 2006, where a friend lived. Her Brazilian mother and Andalusian father, emigrated to Brazil at the age of 19, in 1954, along with the rest of the family, soon met José Ramón Rodríguez, who would end up becoming her husband. They stayed in Gijón until 2014, the year in which they decided to return to Brazil. Edmilson wanted to study and the university system in Spain did not make it easy for him to combine work and studies.
In the ten years that they remained in Brazil, the life of this couple experienced many changes, among them, Edmilson finished his degree in Dentistry, specializing in maxillofacial. He worked from eight in the morning to six in the afternoon, and went to class from seven in the afternoon to eleven thirty at night. In addition, they decided to be parents together, since both were already parents from previous relationships, adopting three brothers and thereby assuming what they describe as the biggest challenge of their lives. This is how their three children arrived, Nicolás, Iza and Nocoly, who are currently fourteen, twelve and nine years old.
They began to miss the Asturian family. The education, health, security, in short, the quality of life in Asturias made the region the best place to raise his children and José, who had gone to Brazil for love, also wanted to return. And that was how they decided to begin preparing their return to the Principality.
They arrived a few months ago. Not for them, but for the children everything was new, and although their parents thought it would be difficult for them to adapt, especially to the food, the truth is that they have done it wonderfully.
José Ramón, like Paola, highlights the importance of the program that the Asturian Government has launched to facilitate the return, “it helps you rebuild your life,” he says. However, there is a complication that those returning from abroad demand to be resolved promptly, since being able to lead a dignified life depends on it: the validation of the titles that accredit professional experience.
And, as Edmilson explains, he, as a dentist, is working in the hospitality industry, since the Ministry of Education has not yet validated his training and, therefore, he cannot practice his profession in Spain. Four years ago he requested that his academic degrees be validated, and he is still waiting for it. Even so, he recognizes the mediation of the Return Office in Asturias, thanks to which his application is being reviewed and will soon be informed.
“The way to return the favor they do to us by making it easier for us to return is to be able to work and contribute,” explains Edmilson, who has tried to access jobs as a hygienist, even below his training, but they did not accept him because he was “overqualified” for them.
Favoring the return to Asturias
Taking the Galician emigration plan as a model, the Government of the Principality of Asturias is getting to work to make it easier for those Asturian men and women, or their descendants, who want to settle in the Principality to do so with all the guarantees. The first of the steps taken has been the launch of the Return Office, which functions as a one-stop shop in which social, labor, economic and administrative advice is provided to those who have returned or are thinking about doing so. It works in person and online to support social and labor integration, especially of those people who are in a particularly vulnerable situation.
This office is one of the measures framed in the RetornAs Plan, currently in the drafting phase, which will bring together all the policies to support and promote return, from those that are already being applied (such as financial aid or the office itself), to those that are going to be promoted by the autonomous Administration and those that are articulated by other entities or proposed by different groups.
Last October, a meeting was held between the vice president of the Asturian Government, Gimena Llamedo, and some of the people who have returned to Asturias thanks to the measure implemented by the Principality, during which they were able to share and exchange information. the personal experiences of each one.
The Asturian Government, which this year 2024 has allocated 500,000 euros for this purpose, has also modified the regulatory bases of the aid with respect to the previous ones, especially with regard to time, since the beneficiaries have been years abroad or are second-degree descendants (grandsons or granddaughters), so these changes have been key to increasing the number of people who have been able to benefit from this support.
So far there are a total of 138 people who will return to Asturias in the coming months, primarily from countries such as Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba, but also from Andorra, Germany, South Africa, Canada and France. The average age is 53 years and many of these people return to their families, among whom there are fourteen minors.
According to the latest data published in the Register of Spaniards Resident Abroad of the National Institute of Statistics, there are a total of 142,315 Asturian men and women who reside outside Spain, with the majority, 109,430, in America, followed by Europe (30,388 ), Oceania (1145), Asia (957) and Africa (395). The distribution by age shows that 13,344 are under 16 years of age, 85,541 are between 16 and 64 years of age, and 43,600 are over 65 years of age.
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