SOCIO-ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES, RELIGIOUS PRESENCE AND URBAN VISIBILITY THE CASE OF ROMANIAN MIGRANTS IN CATALONIA

Abstract

When they decided to leave their homeland, the migrants prepare their luggage with everything they need in order to start a new life. They also take, without realizing, their culture, traditions, gastronomy, customs and religion. The phenomenon of migration from Romania to Spain should be also analyzed from the cultural and religious point of view because migrants carry with them their own culture and religion. When they arrive in Spain, Romanians are interested to practice their own religion. They started to constitute a lot of churches in Spain. There are Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, Protestant and Neo-Protestant churches. The Neo-Protestant churches include: Baptist churches, Adventism, Pentecostalism, and Evangelism. The church managed to bring together the members of the Romanian community in Spain. Beside the Orthodox community, the Neo-Protestant community has had an important development in Romanian community. The protagonists of this study are people who emigrated from Romania and have become quite a large community in Catalonia. The object of the study is the knowledge of socio-economic and religious activities and the evaluation of the urban visibility of the Romanian migrants who have settled in Catalonia. The authors also pay particular attention to the following issues as regards the visibility of Romanians in Catalonia: the symbiosis between the Romanian population and Catalan population (the linguistic similarity), the syncretism, the importance of the religious practice, the opening up spaces for practicing various activities, the preservation of national identity, the cultural contamination, the way the migrants keep in touch with their relatives from Romania, the gastronomic habits, the presence of Romanian institutions and organizations.