Moroccan Immigrants in Spain’s Tarragona Province Surge to 42,000

Lahcen Boumakhtaf, 54, arrived in Tarragona from Morocco in 1999, in search of a better life. At that time, there were about 6,000 Moroccans living in the province; today there are more than 42,000. "I lived through all the years of the economic boom. Here, there were more opportunities than in my country. Many people came to work in construction, but also as seasonal workers, in the fields. We could even combine several jobs and change them at will. It was very easy to thrive," he explains to Diari de Tarragona.

Lahcen was later joined by his wife and their four-year-old son, now 23