Spain is looking for alternatives to solve the lack of personnel in road freight transport, an issue that affects the entire European Union and worsens year after year.
The Ministries of Transport, Social Security, and Interior of Spain are working to facilitate the hiring of individuals from countries outside of Europe who are willing to work as professional truck drivers in the Iberian country, provided that they have a valid driver's license.
This measure could benefit all Cubans who have Spanish citizenship.
The beneficiaries could access employment even if they do not have the CAP (Certificate of Professional Aptitude), a requirement demanded in Spain to obtain the license and which makes the process very cumbersome, as denounced by companies in the sector.
The International Road Transport Association (ASTIC) advocates for hiring people from other places in the European Union or from countries in Africa or Latin America.
The La Información website reports that the sector applauds the government's measure in its last term of granting a two-year residence and work permit to those who complete the CAP.
From ASTIC, they emphasize that they are helping Spanish transport companies to hire drivers in countries such as Morocco, Peru, Cuba, or Argentina," the report specifies.
In March, Spain published the Catalog of Occupations in High Demand for the first quarter of this year, listing the categories in which companies could bring in foreign workers.
The list includes job positions and vacancies that are particularly hard to fill, through which the applicant can obtain a residence and work permit in Spain.
In that list, the job of truck driver does not appear; instead, there are others such as crane operators, athletes and coaches, and many related to maritime transport.
The number of Cubans residing in Spain reached a historic high of nearly 200,000, according to the latest data published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) of the Iberian country corresponding to January 1, 2023.
Until that date, 198,639 people born in Cuba were registered, of which 73,548 were residents and the rest were citizens.
In 2002, there were only 52,701 Cubans registered in the Iberian nation.
The largest increase occurred between 2021 and 2023, when about 22,000 Cubans settled in Spain. The rise coincides with the worsening of the economic and political crisis on the Island.
In October 2023, the General Consulate of Havana stated that Cubans had been the ones who had received the most Spanish nationality since the approval of the Democratic Memory Law (LMD), also known as the Grandchildren Law, 10 months earlier.
Until the end of August, there were 15,000 endorsed requests, a figure well above those of Mexico City, which followed with over 8,500.
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