Empire Rising: Spain - Chapter 313 - 185: National Flag Revision Proposal (Part 2)

It can even be said without exaggeration that the Royal Power Company will be crucial for the smooth progress of Spain’s electrification process and may also become Spain’s largest power giant in the future.

In addition to the task of building thermal power plants, the Royal Power Company has another task, which is to recruit talents related to electricity in Europe.

The public excuse is that the construction of the thermal power plant requires a large number of electricity talents for employment, although it’s just a small-scale power plant, the recruitment of talent has no limit.

As long as they are related to electricity talents and experts, after a certain background investigation, they can easily join the Royal Power Company to work.

If they’re capable and outstanding researchers, they can be recommended to enter the Electricity Laboratory and the Royal Academy of Sciences, enjoying more comprehensive benefits and preferential treatment in terms of identity and status.

Currently, Europe’s electricity research hasn’t made any useful achievements, so Carlo doesn’t have to worry about openly poaching talents causing opposition from other countries.

Before other countries pay attention to the electricity industry, it’s precisely a great time for Spain to absorb foreign talents massively. Although Spain could rely on cultivating talent to fill the vacancies, the university’s training time alone takes four years, which is enough to change a lot for the current Spain, at least now Spain cannot afford to wait.

Although the news of the Spanish Royal Power Company’s recruitment of employees is sensational, ultimately, it’s just one of Spain’s external poaching efforts.

It’s not just the Royal Power Company, including the Royal Guanizuo Shipyard, the Valencia United Shipyard, the Royal Steel Factory, and various other factories and enterprises, all are recruiting employees heavily from domestic and abroad.

Before Spain’s reform, Spain’s appeal was not high to other European countries. After all, it was a monarchist autocratic kingdom with an overly backward system, oppressing its people too severely.

But after Spain’s reform, Spain’s appeal also gained further enhancement. Domestic and international media have established post-revolution Spain as a representative of constitutional monarchy and propagandized that only a constitutional monarchy is the most advanced system, bringing progress and strength to the country.

This also earned Spain certain attention, with the number of European immigrants to Spain increasing every year, especially from Italy and Portugal.

Actually, comparatively speaking, Italy’s environment isn’t bad either. But Italy’s industry and economy are mainly concentrated in the northern regions, with vast lands south of Rome still being backward areas mainly focused on agriculture.

There are two major reasons for this: Firstly, Southern Italy has fewer mineral resources, making it less suitable for industrial construction.

Secondly, Southern Italy once belonged to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and wasn’t part of the core region of the Kingdom of Italy, the Sardinian Kingdom.

Although the population on the Apennine Peninsula is merged into Italians, because of the huge gap in industry and economy between Northern and Southern Italy, people in Southern Italy have low acknowledgment of the whole country.

The immigration data in European countries also reflects this characteristic. Before the unification of the German Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, the United Kingdom had the most emigrants.

But after this time point, immigrants from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe gradually replaced those from Northern Europe, becoming the mainstream of European emigration.

Currently, Italy has indeed shown such a trend. Spain, as a country with only 18 million people, sees its population increasing by more than 200,000 annually.

While Italy’s population has already exceeded 28 million, Italy’s annual net population growth is only about 150,000.

Is Italy’s birth rate low? Not at all.

It’s because every year a large number of Italian farmers choose to emigrate, and the small Apennine Peninsula really cannot bear so many people.

This isn’t the highly mechanized and automated agriculture of the later era, but agriculture completely relying on manual production in the year 1875. coupled with immature fertilizer technology, the Apennine Peninsula indeed finds it hard to sustain nearly 30 million people.

Despite looking like Italy’s population is still steadily growing at a rate of more than 150,000 each year, the income of millions of farmers in Southern Italy isn’t high, with some even living in hunger.

Currently, Spain receives more than ten thousand Italian immigrants every year, soon reaching the level of over twenty thousand people.

For Spain, a large number of Italian immigrants is both a good and bad thing.

Most of these Italian immigrants come from Southern Italy, a region generally consisting of farmers.

These Italian immigrants have very low education and only speak their local Italian dialect, making communication with Spaniards difficult.

Precisely because of their low education, they are willing to accept jobs with a salary lower than Spain’s average in exchange for more stable working hours.

For these Italian immigrants, a more stable working environment is more important than income. For it, they would sacrifice some salary to obtain stable, non-dismissive employment.

This is a good thing for Italian immigrants, as they can gain more stable jobs by compromising on income.

But for native Spaniards, this is not a good thing at all. The influx of Italian immigrants leads to many jobs originally available to Spaniards being seized, as capitalists prefer employees with lower salary demands and who don’t like to make demands.