The Broken Hopes of a Spanish Generation

Pep Bonet / Noor Images for TIME

Lorena Dominguez, 23, is a former automobile worker who lost her job when the local Peugeot-Citroen car plant shut down in her home town of Vigo, Spain

Not long ago, Lorena Dominguez looked forward to the future. She had a well-paid job at the Citroën automobile factory in Vigo, the town in northern Spain where she had grown up. She had recently moved in with her boyfriend Oscar, and had put her own apartment on the market. The two spent their weekends hanging out with friends in Vigo's lively waterfront cafés and were planning to travel this summer. It wasn't a bad life for the 23-year-old daughter of a longshoreman and a housewife.

Then came la crisis . Domínguez first began to feel the effects of...

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