El Emigrante (2017)

It is the so-called “Mar del Plástico”, an extension of greenhouses covering more than 30,000 hectares in the south of the Spanish region of Almería. In this deserted place, thousands of African migrants live in inhuman conditions, without a work contract and without the minimum resources. They are the ones who get the vegetables and fruits that help to feed half of Europe, but they survive in unhealthy wooden shacks insulated with the same plastics as the greenhouses or in old abandoned country houses, without drinking water and some even without light. Despite the fact that the law stipulates that the harvesting salary must be 7.28 euros per hour, many report that they are paid barely 4.5 or 5 euros and do not reflect the actual number of hours they have worked and even legal migrants do not get paid the minimum wage.