LEISURE

With one or more jobs to make ends meet and send money back to Spain, caring for their own family and housework, they had little free time left. Even so, they tried to meet up in the homes of other Spaniards and, of course, in the bars, restaurants and tablaos that were to be found in the city. Especially in the area of the Gare du Midi, the Marolles district and the Rue Haute.

Music was an element of great importance for the Spanish community in Brussels. In addition to connecting them with the culture of the country they had left behind, it fostered a cultural exchange with the Belgians, who saw those rhythms as something exotic.

As we have been able to discover thanks to Miguel Menéndez's Rumba Hispanobelga project, the musical panorama of Spanish emigration in Belgium in the sixties, seventies and eighties was so rich that there were even people who were able to make a career out of it and even record their own albums.