The episode may look like a mere curiosity. I read it instead as the symptom of a reality rarely discussed in the European debate: Spain, a host country usually associated with arrivals across the Mediterranean, is also a country whose citizens leave to work elsewhere on the continent.
Key takeaways
- Helsinki received around 1,000 applications from Spaniards for 60 teaching positions.
- The salary offered is €3,298 gross per month.
- Every summer, 12,500 to 15,000 Spaniards go to France for the grape harvest.
- Of the 3.2 million Spaniards registered abroad, 860,957 were born in Spain.
- The figures do not point to a mass exodus, but to a migration reality that is rarely discussed.
Helsinki is hiring, and candidates are responding
According to El Mundo, the candidates selected who complete the training and reach the required level of Finnish will be eligible for a gross monthly salary of €3,298. In May 2025, the city of Helsinki explained that it had launched the programme with six Spanish teachers. After this first experience, it selected twenty more, set to join the city’s schools after nine months of language training. The administration itself acknowledged at the time that it was struggling to recruit enough qualified professionals locally.
This point deserves emphasis. The movement is not explained only by what Spain fails to offer, but also by what Finland is looking for: university graduates that its labour market cannot supply. Helsinki facilitates their integration because it needs them.
On the Spanish side, the teachers interviewed by the newspaper describe a familiar situation: young graduates still living with their parents, salaries that make independence difficult, high rents and years of uncertainty before finding a stable job. Some admit they had never seriously considered leaving before discovering the Finnish offer. This detail matters, because it suggests that leaving is not always a long-standing plan. It can arise from an opportunity that suddenly makes concrete what was previously theoretical.
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A phenomenon absent from the debate
In recent months, immigration has occupied a considerable place in Spain’s political and social discussion. Arrivals from Morocco and other African countries, the pressure on Ceuta, expulsions and border controls have fuelled a debate in which “making a living” in Europe has been almost systematically associated with people coming from across the Mediterranean.
Against this backdrop, the emigration of Spaniards to northern Europe remains largely in the blind spot. It has no border imagery, no apparent urgency and no political label. When a teacher from Madrid settles in Helsinki, people readily speak of professional mobility. They more rarely speak of migration, even though the economic logic is the same: going where work and training are better valued.
WHY ARE YOUNG PEOPLE FLEEING SPAIN? THE MASS EXODUS THEY ARE HIDING FROM YOU 🇪🇸
From the grape harvest to Finland, the same driver
Incidentally, there is no need to go as far as Finland, or to limit oneself to graduates, to find Spaniards ready to cross a border. Every summer, thousands of workers travel to France for the grape harvest. The UGT-FICA federation of the General Workers’ Union estimated the number of trips from Spain for the 2026 harvest at around 12,500, while other union estimates put it at 15,000.
France guarantees a minimum wage of €12.32 gross per hour and a 35-hour working week, conditions that continue to make these jobs attractive. According to the UGT, this movement has lasted for decades and about 90% of participants are regular workers.
The qualified teacher and the seasonal worker do not belong to the same professional worlds, and it would be wrong to conflate them. But they share the same reason for crossing the border: a higher income and working conditions seen as more favourable.
What the figures really say
This is where precision is needed, because statistics lend themselves to hasty readings. The Register of Spaniards Residing Abroad counted 3,202,002 Spanish citizens living outside the country on 1 January 2026, an increase of 5.1% over one year. Europe hosted 1,164,394 of them.
This total does not mean, however, that 3.2 million people born in Spain have emigrated. The National Statistics Institute (INE) indicates that 2,341,045 of them, or 73.1%, were born outside Spain. Only 860,957 were born on Spanish soil, of whom 517,116 live in another European country. In addition, four out of five new registrations recorded in 2025 concern people born outside Spain.
To get a clear picture, here are the key figures:
- 3,202,002 Spaniards registered abroad on 1 January 2026, up 5.1%
- 1,164,394 of them live in Europe
- 860,957 were born in Spain, or 26.9% of the total
- 517,116 of these live in another European country
- Four out of five new registrations in 2025 concern people born outside Spain
These data do not allow us to speak of a mass exodus. They paint a more complex reality than the division of the map between a migrant-sending south and a host north. Many of those registered were born elsewhere, notably descendants or naturalised persons. What remains is a core of Spaniards born in the country, more than half of whom live elsewhere in Europe.
Every year, 12,000 young Spaniards go abroad in search of work
Morocco, a useful mirror
The comparison with Morocco sheds light on this debate. There is no typical profile among Moroccans who settle in Spain or other European countries. Many arrive with an employment contract already signed. Others are doctors, engineers, IT specialists, researchers, teachers, nurses or graduates who find better prospects abroad. Morocco, too, bears the cost of training human capital that ends up working in foreign economies.
Having a contract or a sought-after profession has not always protected these workers from the suspicion that accompanies certain discourses on immigration. Successive border crises have helped project a uniform image of people coming from the south, even though very different paths coexist under the same label.
The contrast with Finland is sharp. The departure of a Spanish teacher is described as professional mobility or brain drain. That of a Moroccan professional hired by a Spanish company is still largely perceived through the word “immigrant”. In both cases, however, the mechanism is the same: people migrate to where they believe their work and training will be better rewarded.
This needs to be said with nuance. The situations are not equivalent: Spaniards benefit from free movement within the European Union, which profoundly changes the legal conditions of departure. But the difference in vocabulary says something about how we view mobility depending on origin.
What this says about Spain
The case of the teachers raises a question that goes beyond migration: an economy’s ability to retain the workers it has trained. Behind every graduate lie years of study and public and family resources. If another labour market ends up benefiting from them, the debate is no longer limited to pay.
Housing completes the picture. When a salary does not allow independence, or when a large share of income goes to rent, the decision to stay or leave is no longer measured only in euros. The teachers interviewed mention the desire to start a family, to buy a home, to achieve stability. These aspirations are nothing extraordinary.
This situation can be read in two ways. For some, the mobility of young graduates is an opportunity: international experience, better pay, a possible return with enhanced skills. For others, it reveals an inability to offer lasting prospects to the generations trained in the country. The available data do not settle between these two readings, and they do not measure possible returns.
A reason as old as emigration itself
For decades, Spain and other European countries have attracted Moroccan workers and professionals. Today, Finland is turning to Spain to recruit, while France welcomes thousands of Spanish seasonal workers every summer. Origins, professions and destinations change. The reason remains: when salaries are higher elsewhere, when work is better valued there or when it is easier to build a future, packing one’s bags becomes a conceivable option.
The question that remains open is whether our debates on migration will one day learn to look at all the routes, and not only those that cross the most publicised borders.
FAQ
How many applications did Helsinki receive?
According to El Mundo, around a thousand Spanish early childhood education graduates applied for 60 positions.
What salary is offered to Spanish teachers in Helsinki?
A gross monthly salary of €3,298, once the training is completed and the required level of Finnish is reached.
Can we speak of a Spanish exodus?
No. Of the 3,202,002 Spaniards registered abroad, only 860,957 were born in Spain, according to the INE.
How many Spaniards go to France for the grape harvest?
The UGT-FICA estimates around 12,500 trips for 2026, with other union estimates going up to 15,000.
