«Social life in London is amazing»

Sunday, August 25, 2024, 02:00

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It’s been almost a year since Amanda Pando Gómez (Gijón, 1994) got on one of those trains that you can’t miss in life. After five years working in Madrid at a consulting firm, she was offered the opportunity to jump to London “to boost a transactional banking business line” and, as she herself admits, she couldn’t say no, it was a “very tempting” offer.

Faced with this career prospect, this telecommunications engineer packed her bags and settled in the British capital – “the city” – “one of the most important financial centres in the world”, as she defines it. “In Madrid there are big companies and big clients, but I think that, in that aspect, London is incomparable because you have access to high-level people in the world of finance”, she says, while acknowledging that she had to adapt to their way of being at work. “In Spain we are more about saying clearly what we want and what we expect from others and that is difficult for them in the United Kingdom”.

For this reason, Amanda tries to bring her Spanish way of working to them every day. “I try to be clear because being clear is not offensive,” she says. And that’s true, but now she will have to adapt to a new working world, the French one, which she will join in October. “I will go there for four months and then I will return to London, it’s a new adventure,” she says, laughing.

These are very rewarding feats, but they have the odyssey of finding a home as a counterpoint. “In London, to rent, they ask you for references of apartments you have previously lived in and, if it weren’t for the fact that I went with a friend, it would have been much harder for me to find a house,” she explains. In addition, prices are absolutely out of control, much more than in our country. “I’m paying more than double the rent I paid in Madrid, it’s crazy,” she laments. “It’s true that salaries are higher, but I don’t think it’s proportional,” she says, while acknowledging that there are “real hovels” for rent, although she assures that she was lucky when it came to finding a home.

Home and friends because Amanda promises that “social life in London is amazing”, although she has to combine it with many hours of effort and work. Likewise, from the time she is having to enjoy it, she knows that “it is such a big city that there are many different environments to go out in”. So much so that “if every weekend you wanted to try something different, you could do it and you would never get tired of going to the same places”.

This reality came as a great surprise to this Gijón native who, when she moved to London, went “without any expectations because I knew little about the city, beyond the stereotypes that the food is bad and it rains a lot.” Statements that day to day have shown her to be lies and, for this reason, she is “very comfortable and very happy” living there. “I came for a year, but I want to stay for at least a couple more,” she says. “I think this is the time to be in London, grow professionally and continue to see the world.”

However, when time passes and she gets older, Amanda is clear that she would like to “return to Asturias”, although she does not take anything for granted because, as we know, “life has many twists and turns, so we will see”. We will have to wait and see what trains pass by her side.

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