Getting on through effort: open hiring, blind CVs and paid internships for Spain's young

In her launch speech for Democracia 21 on 10 October 2026, Miriam González said that getting on in Spain should depend on effort, and she named the obstacle: «las agencias de colocación de los partidos», the parties' job agencies. We have already written the plan for the core of the state, with a legal cap on political advisers and open competitions for senior managers, in our piece on merit in the administration. This one follows a young person further, into public companies, private firms and that first internship, because most careers start there.

Start with how young Spaniards actually find work. INE's 2016 labour force module on young people asked 4,142,400 employees aged 16 to 34 how they got their current job. 41.68% said through family, friends or acquaintances. 21.73% had applied directly to the employer and 9.93% had answered an advertisement, online or elsewhere. Among those aged 16 to 24 the share through contacts was 46.36%.

There is nothing shameful in that. Raghuram Rajan, whose The Third Pillar frames this week, describes the community as a pillar that runs on relationships: people get support because of who they know. A neighbour who vouches for you, an uncle who hears about an opening, a teacher who calls a firm. That is real capital, and it does real work in a labour market full of uncertainty. The trouble is its distribution. The young person whose parents know managers, partners and councillors starts with a full address book, and the one whose parents clean offices starts with an empty one. Albert Hirschman's exit, voice and loyalty tells us what happens next: when the doors stay shut, the most able leave, and many already do, as our article on young Spaniards who emigrate shows.

Public jobs outside the ministries

The rules are better than their reputation. Article 55 of the Basic Statute of Public Employees gives every citizen the right of access to public employment under equality, merit and ability, and requires published calls and criteria, transparency and impartial, professional selection panels. Its first additional provision extends those principles to state, regional and local public-sector entities that sit outside the core administration: public companies, foundations, consortia.

So the law already asks for open recruitment across the whole public sector. The radical-centre step is to make it visible. Every vacancy in every public company and foundation, at every level of government, appears on one national portal with its criteria, its panel and its deadline, and the result is published when the post is filled. A post that was never advertised cannot be paid from public money. That is cheap, easy to check, and it turns a principle into something a journalist or a rejected candidate can test.

Blind CVs, honestly

Anonymised CVs are the obvious tool, and the evidence asks for care. France tested them for ten months in 2009 and 2010 through Pôle emploi in eight departments, with firms of more than 50 employees that volunteered, and the researchers working with J-PAL found the opposite of what was hoped. For minority candidates the interview gap rose from 2.4 points with normal CVs to 13 points with anonymous ones, and the hiring gap grew by 3.7 points. The volunteer firms were already more open to these candidates, and anonymity removed the context that explained gaps in their careers. France dropped the policy in 2015.

Germany's federal anti-discrimination agency ran its own pilot from November 2010 with eight organisations, companies and public bodies, for twelve months each. They screened 8,550 applications anonymously, invited 1,293 people to a test or interview and made 246 offers. The IZA evaluation found that in most procedures women and people of migrant background had the same chance of an invitation as everyone else, and in some it equalised the chances of women who had previously been disadvantaged. Most of those organisations already had diversity policies, so the evaluators read the causal results as tendencies. They also warned that anonymity cannot make up for inequalities built earlier, in the education system. Spain ran a voluntary project too: by March 2018 the then ministry of health, social services and equality counted 91 entities and more than three thousand selection processes in a twelve-month pilot.

The lesson is to use blind screening where it fits. Public bodies and public companies should anonymise the first sift, the moment when a name or an address decides who gets an interview, and leave room for candidates to explain a gap. Private firms keep the freedom to hire as they like; the public employment service offers them a free anonymised first screen, and every scheme is measured against a control group so that we know whether it helps.

Internships that pay and are open to all

The first internship is where contacts matter most, and Spain has made progress. Since 1 January 2024, university and vocational students on training placements, paid or unpaid, are included in Social Security; for unpaid placements the host company carries the obligation unless the agreement gives it to the training centre. On 3 March 2026 the government approved the Estatuto del Becario, the trainee statute, with compensation for expenses, holidays, a 480-hour cap on extracurricular placements and fines of up to €225,018. The Labour Inspectorate had regularised about 1,600 false interns between 2021 and 2023. The bill was never voted on, and it lapsed when the Cortes were dissolved on 6 October for the 29 November election.

Europe is moving slowly in the same direction. The Commission proposed a traineeships directive on 20 March 2024, counting around 3.1 million trainees in the EU, 1.6 million of them paid. The Council agreed its position on 19 June 2025, the Parliament's employment committee voted in September 2025 to open negotiations, and the file is still waiting for a final text.

The next government can bring the statute back with two rules at its centre. Every extracurricular internship pays at least an allowance, so that the start of a career is open to young people whose families cannot fund months of free work. And every internship offered by a firm or a public body is advertised publicly, on the university's platform or the public employment service, before it is filled.

The left is right that equal opportunity needs enforceable anti-discrimination rules and paid internships. The market-liberal tradition is right that firms should hire freely, that competition rewards those who spot talent, and that the state should start by cleaning up its own hiring. Rajan adds what neither camp says: networks are capital, so open them up. Alongside the portal, the blind first screen and paid placements, every school and vocational centre in a poorer neighbourhood should be linked with a group of local professionals who mentor its students, take their calls and pass on openings. A seventeen-year-old on a vocational course in a working-class district should be able to ring an engineer, a lawyer or a hotel manager who knows her name, the way her classmates from wealthier districts ring their parents' friends.