When I landed in Madrid last Wednesday, the first thing I did was nap. I was jet lagged , disoriented, and somehow already sweaty. After hauling my suitcase to my homestay and meeting my host mom (who’s lovely and extremely patient with my half-awake Spanish), I spent the entire day unpacking and sleeping off the time difference. The next two days were orientation with EUSA: insurance, STEP registration, host family etiquette, and a tapas lunch. Friday included a quick hour-long walking tour in 92 degree heat. Everyone was visibly melting. We went to a multi-story club in the center of Madrid. Each floor had its own genre, DJ booth, and bar.
The weekend was quieter. I got matcha and chai lattes with some friends, explored Retiro Park, and mostly just soaked in the city.
Monday marked the first official day of my internship with Fundación ACOBE, a nonprofit that offers legal and social assistance to vulnerable communities in Madrid. I was answering phones, assisting clients, responding to messages, and drafting legal documents—all in Spanish. I had to shift into full immersion mode pretty quickly, and as someone who’s already familiar with Spanish culture, I wasn’t exactly shocked by the slower pace of life or the two-hour lunch breaks. What did throw me off, however, was just how much that slower pace affects how time is managed across the board: at work, in the street, in cafés, and even at the pharmacy.
Fundación ACOBE operates in the nonprofit and social services sector, but more specifically within immigration support and legal aid. The organization provides assistance to immigrants and vulnerable populations, offering help with residency, asylum applications, labor insertion programs, and legal orientations. It’s a hybrid space where social justice meets bureaucracy — a world of legal paperwork, real human crises, and navigating public institutions that often move very slowly.
Though ACOBE is a nonprofit, the environment demands many of the same competencies as a traditional legal or public policy workplace. You need to be organized, emotionally intelligent, communicative, and patient. You also need to understand how to work within the system while simultaneously helping people navigate it or challenge it. It’s a delicate balance: you can’t exactly change the system while helping people survive it, but you can learn to maneuver it more effectively.
Key Skills & Strengths in This Industry
To thrive in this line of work, especially in Spain, you need:
1. Language Skills: Being fluent in Spanish is a must. But what’s underrated is the ability to code-switch between formal/legal Spanish and the everyday slang that I often use.
2. Empathy & Active Listening: Clients often come in with complex backgrounds. Many are navigating deportation risks, domestic abuse, labor exploitation, or statelessness. This isn’t a job for someone who just wants to “check boxes” on a task list. You have to listen with purpose.
3. Adaptability: Some days are quiet, others are a tornado of phone calls and last-minute walk-ins. There’s not always a structured playbook.
What’s Unique About Doing This in Spain?
Even though I’m of Spanish descent, working in Spain has still surprised me in ways that only show up when you’re doing day-to-day business here.
• The Pace of Work: In the U.S., there’s an obsession with efficiency — go faster, automate, optimize. In Spain, there’s more tolerance for delay. People arrive late, systems are outdated, and lunch is non-negotiable. It’s not laziness, it’s cultural.
• WhatsApp Is a Professional Tool: I cannot stress this enough — everything happens on WhatsApp. Client communication, internal coordination, even appointment reminders. It’s casual, fast, and sometimes chaotic. But it works, and it’s trusted here in a way that email just isn’t.
• Formality in Dress vs. Informality in Speech: Professionally, people are well-dressed. No one’s rolling up in athleisure. But conversationally, everything is more relaxed. First names, cheek kisses (sometimes), and lots of informal grammar.
• Understanding State Systems: Spain has a strong welfare state, but the layers of bureaucracy can make access incredibly complicated. NGOs like ACOBE fill the gaps, not because the services don’t exist, but because the system is hard to navigate for newcomers, especially without language fluency or legal knowledge.
Working at ACOBE is helping me develop more than just technical skills. I’m learning how to be globally competent, how to adapt communication styles across cultural contexts, how to read between the lines of institutional processes, and how to be effective without being extractive. I’m also learning how to advocate, not just with words, but with actions, paperwork, and persistence.
As someone interested in public policy and economics, this internship is a crash course in real-world systems. It’s not theory anymore — it’s the actual mechanics of helping people survive and thrive in a country that doesn’t always make it easy for them to do so.
This experience is forcing me to think about what “impact” actually means. Sometimes it’s not glamorous. It’s not protests or speeches or policy memos. Sometimes it’s just being the person who answers the phone and gives someone the information they need to stay in the country legally. And honestly? That’s enough.
