Celebration Of Pakistani women Success in Spain Organised by Pakistani Counslate Barcelona.
Females account for just 24.5 percent of the Pakistani population.

Despite being a prominent face in her community, Dr. Jamshed’s personal circumstances do not represent the average lifestyle or education level of a Pakistani immigrant in Barcelona. In reality, only around five percent of Pakistanis now in Barcelona were previously earning professional salaries in their homeland. These emigrants left their country in search of a higher standard of living, but also because the vast majority could not make a living wage back home.

As the President of the city's Pakistani Workers’ Association, Javed Ilyas Qureshi explained in his 2009 report entitled ‘Pakistan, in search of an identity, many Pakistani immigrants in Barcelona left situations where salaries were as low as €45-€50 per month, while renting a flat cost €100 per month, and food staples, particularly proteins like chicken and beef, were beyond many people’s means.

In 1972, the first Pakistani immigrants began to arrive in Catalunya, coming mainly from the Punjab region, which spans the border between Pakistan and India. Qureshi quotes the total number that year as 110 people. These first immigrants, virtually all men, came to work in the carbon mines of Teruel during the week, but many lived in Barcelona. As these workers began to send money back to their wives and families, people still in Pakistan realised there were real opportunities, and they too made plans for a Europe-bound journey. That said, Spain was by no means at the top of the list of desirable countries for relocation. With Pakistan’s identity as a former British colony, many Pakistani families had relatives already living in Britain, and the majority of Pakistani people spoke English. However, the post-World War II period of ‘open immigration’ to the UK for Pakistanis ended in 1971, making Spain, with its more lenient visa process, the best option for many emigrating workers.

Qureshi estimates that between 1975 and 1982, 1,000 more Pakistanis came to Catalunya. A further 5,000 arrived in 1992 following a loosening of government regulations, 98 percent of whom came from other European countries where they had been living but were unable to regularise their paperwork. When Spain made it easier for Pakistanis to obtain work visas, many of those 5,000 benefited, though only some settled in Spain (around 20 percent used their new visas to return legally to countries like Germany and Denmark where the wages and standard of living were much better than those of Barcelona). The most recent significant influx of Pakistani immigrants to Barcelona landed between 1999 and 2007, during the construction boom. With a lot of new jobs needing to be filled, many workers came here, especially those with experience in the construction sector. There are currently 19,414 Pakistani nationals registered as living in Barcelona, 34 percent of whom live within the Ciutat Vella, and more specifically, the Raval.

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