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Now is the time to prepare for your summer job experience abroad.

In order to help you to find a job for an experience abroad, we have selected a few organisations for each of the themes below.

You will find information on voluntary jobs or internship abroad in our other articles on the left column of this page.

Job Hunting in Spain

Au Pair

The main opportunities for au pair work can be found in large cities, such as Madrid and Barcelona.
You can find more information in our Au Pair article.

See also: Lists au pair agencies for Spain: Europa Pages.

Summer Jobs and Coastal Resorts

Get a train, a bus, hitchhike to the city and find yourself a youth hostel (see our pages on accommodation). Then knock on every door on your way, be persistent and success will soon cross your path. You can also consider costal resorts in Tenerife, Lanzarote, the Costa del Sol, and the Costa Blanca that are all good places to start looking for casual work.

A few doors to knock at and ask for any vacancies:

• Pubs, sandwich shops, bar staff
• holiday reps
• DJs, ticket sellers
• Touting for Spanish restaurants and bars: it involves handing out leaflets, putting up posters, or even chatting to passers-by (however touting is a late night job and pays vary a lot so do no rely on it too much).

Campsites and Adventure Holidays

Camping agencies in Spain offer jobs during the peak tourist times in the summer.

Eurocamp (http://www.eurocamp.com) is the market-leader in self catering holidays to Europe on holiday parcs accross Europe. They often need for couriers on Spanish campsites. Employees must be over 18, and can anticipate earning approximately £95 per week.

PGL (http://www.pgl.co.uk) is a company that organises holidays for children and summercamps can be found in UK, France and Spain. They operate from Easter to October and during half terms as well.
Working for PGL as a helper or courier can earn you between £50 and £60 per week in Spain and board and bed is provided.

Agriculture

Spain's agricultural produce includes grapes, oranges, olives and strawberries. Andalucia is a large region with opportunities for fruit picking. If you are interesting, you might either try to find directly by going from place to place and enquiring to farmers and land owners, or use a volunteer organization such as WWOOF (http://www.wwoof.org). See our volunteer article for more details.

The French National Employment Service (ANPE) and the Center of Information for Youths (CIDJ) have set up a website in 5 languages (German, English, French, Italian, Spanish) : EuroSummerJob [http://www.eurosummerjobs.com] that provides more than 1000 summer jobs offers throughout Europe.

You will find a lot of information with BUNAC (British Universities North America Club: http://www.bunac.org), a non profit member club which has been offering work abroad programmes suitable for gap years and summer vacations for over 40 years. Programmes include in country support and last up to 18 months. They offer money to cover all expenses and a samll salary for the work. It covers the following countries: UK, USA, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ghana, Holland, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden. You will find also a list of organisation that offer voluntary programmes and gap year in the Gapyeardirectory website or to work as a J1 holder in the US.

Working holiday visa

Visa requirements are crucial to your trip planning.
This section is intended for reference only. We strongly recommend that you contact the embassy directly for the most up to date info.

In Spain

All EU nationals have the right to live and find employment in Spain but if you intend to stay for longer than this you must apply for a residence card (tarjeta de residencia) in the first 30 days of arriving. The card can be obtained from a police headquarters (comisarķa de Policia) or Foreigner's Office.

For non EU citizens, a visa will be required for a stay of more than 3 months.

The Spanish Embassy should be contacted for all visa related and immigration enquiries. You will find the address in our Consulate section

Discount Cards

A youth card or student card can offer you a lot of advantages abroad and is a recognition of your status. Two international cards will give you discounts and are essential for those taking a gap year or going backpacking:

• ISIC card (International Student Identity Card): this is for any full-time student over 12 years old.
• IYTC (International Youth Travel Card): if you are not a student, but are under 26, then this card is for you. IYTC has become internationally recognised as an identity card in 50 countries.

What the Cards offer:

• Valuable discounts on air, travel, bus and ferry, transport and accomodation (gap year backpacking discounts).
• Access to over 33,000 discounts in over 100 countries.
• Reduced admission to museums, galleries and historic states.
• Access to student travel organisations in over 90 countries.
• 24 hour emergency, legal and medical help line services.
• Basic sickness and accident travel insurance.

You can apply directly online to get the cards (http://www.isiccard.com) or buy asking your University or youth centers.

You will find information on voluntary jobs or internship abroad in our other articles on the left column of this page.