My Migration Journal

How my family and I survived 3 years without papers after arriving in Spain days before the 2020 lockdown. No filters.

THE STORY IN NUMBERS
March
2020
Llegada + confinamiento
3
years
No papers, no work
2
daughters
School + Healthcare
2023
Regularization
THE 3 MILESTONES
📍 March 2020: The arrival
We arrived with my family. Days later: total lockdown.

Work plans cancelled. Savings that had to last "until finding a job". Suddenly, the world closed. No one knew for how long.

⚡ 2020-2023: The struggle
3 years without papers. Subsistence.

No work permits. No formal access to the job market. Finding ways to manage. But our daughters could go to school and we had universal healthcare coverage. That's what kept us standing.

🚀 2023+: The regularization
Finally, papers. Now we work and we're part of the "system".

After 3 years, we managed to regularize our situation. Now we work, pay taxes, and are part of the system. The reconstruction continues, but this time from a solid base.

WHAT I LEARNED
BRUTAL LESSONS OF TRUTH
Documentation is everything — Without papers, you're out of the system. Literally everything takes 10 times more time and energy.
Savings run out faster than you think — We arrived with a cushion. After 3 months of lockdown, it started to shrink.
Education and health work — Even without papers, our daughters went to school and we had healthcare. That changed everything.
Community (or lack of it) matters — When everything closes, you need networks. We didn't have them.
3 years is a long time — Psychologically, it's not a "phase". It's a parallel life where you wait for it to end.
VIDEOS DOCUMENTING PART OF THE PROCESS

Part of what I lived and learned over these years. Documented. So if you're also considering emigrating, you have a real reference of what it means, the difficulties, and how to navigate them without losing direction.