"How could we abandon a child?"

Unemployed, homeless, up to their necks in debt and desperate, Claudia and Juan, a Colombian couple in their forties, decided after 13 years in Spain to try to their luck in the United Kingdom. Claudia went first, in January, and rented a room. Her husband followed. The couple's grandmother and three children, aged 14, three, and one, stayed with friends Alba and José. Two months ago, the eldest, Jorge, was left behind when his sisters and grandmother finally were able to travel to London. He will finish his school year here first.

Jorge is older than his years, and has grown accustomed to separation. "My mother came to Spain when I was just a year old, I followed two years later. She worked in a supermarket and as a cleaner, while my father worked in the construction industry. My grandmother cleaned houses until my two sisters were born." Then came the crisis and they lost everything.

Unemployment among Spain's immigrants is around 37 percent, 15 percent higher than the national average. In response, more and more Colombians are leaving Spain: some 28,000 last year. After 13 years of continued growth, Spain's foreign-born population last year decreased.

"I was sad to see my family go, but I understand. They told me that they had to make a new start, and that as soon as they found work, we would all be together again."

I was sad to see my family go, but I understand. They needed a new start

Jorge begins to cry when asked where he feels home now is. "With my parents, but also where I am living at the moment," he says.

Jorge has made many friends here, and will miss them when he has to go to the UK later this summer. "I will write to my friends. They say they are going to miss me, they hope that I'll be back sometime." Asked if he will return, he says he hopes so, and wipes away more tears.

Alba and José know what Jorge is going through. And they also know that it is very important for him to get a good education. Alba left her children behind in Colombia 15 years ago when she came to start a new life in Spain. "It was tough. I was divorced very young, and when the time came for my kids to go to university, I couldn't afford to send them. We talked about it, they said that they would study, so I came here. I worked 18 hours a day, Monday to Sunday. It took me three years before I could go back, because I couldn't leave until I had my papers here."

Alba's eldest son took a degree in computer studies, and her daughter studied marketing and advertising. Alba had done what she set out to do, but things didn't work out as she had hoped and when she was ready to return home her mother became ill and she ended up spending the money she had set aside on medical care. Her eldest son decided to come to Spain because he couldn't find work at home. He took out a mortgage, but when he lost his job, he had to give the apartment up.

I see middle class people in soup kitchens or sleeping in their cars"

Alba says that she understands Claudia's decision, which is why she had no hesitation in looking after Jorge. She also feels for what Jorge is going through. "When I came here people insulted me, and he still has to deal with that at school; this affects children in particular."

José says that he is happy to stand in for Jorge's father. "He wanted to give us money, but we told him that another mouth to feed was no problem. I love these kids as though they were my own, and their parents are like brothers and sisters to me. How were we going to abandon a child? They had to go, there was nothing for them here. There are people who are ashamed to return to their country with nothing."

"I know Colombian families who took out mortgages for 250,000 euros on properties that weren't worth half the price. Now they are homeless," says Alba. "The middle classes here are disappearing. I see middle-class people in soup kitchens, or sleeping in their cars. We are relatively lucky. I have been out of work for four years, but José has held on to his job, he is a bus driver."

The couple met on the bus. "She used to get on every day at the same time and from the same stop, at six in the morning. We started to talk. Then one day we had a cup of coffee, and then another, and then one thing led to another," says José. After seven years they finally married. "I never imagined that somebody so smart, so beautiful, so hard-working would say yes."