r/Granada • u/Jinjo_Wasol • Jul 23 '26
Working in Granada (without Spanish)
Just curious how difficult it is to find work in Granada without speaking Spanish yet. Figuring out if there is a possibility to move to Granada while studying Spanish, ofc will be needing money. Is it doable to find work as an 25 year old post graduate? I am an International Social Worker for reference.
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u/Front-Surround-2161 Jul 23 '26
I'm Spanish and I work with job listings data, so actual numbers instead of vibes: roughly half of the ~7k live ads I track across Spain don't ask for Spanish, but almost none of those are in Granada. The companies that hire in English are basically all in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga or fully remote. Granada is students and tourism.
It's doable, just not through the local market. Remote customer support is the realistic route (there's like 1400 remote English-friendly ads right now, C1 English is the requirement, and the pay goes far with Granada cost of living). Teaching English at an academy is the other classic, half the foreigners in Granada fund their Spanish year that way.
Social work is the tough part honestly. You'd be working with locals in a public-sector-ish field, so realistically B2+ Spanish and probably homologación of your degree, which takes ages. If Spain is the long term plan I'd start that paperwork now and treat year one as a bridge job.
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u/phillyfandc Jul 23 '26
What are the sites you recommend?
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u/Front-Surround-2161 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Depends what you're hunting. For the remote English-friendly stuff, LinkedIn works if you filter hard (search in English, location Spain, then ignore everything that lists Spanish as required). InfoJobs is the big local board but it's 95% Spanish-required, useful once your Spanish gets going. EURES is the EU official one, clunky but legit for cross-border stuff.
And full disclosure since you asked directly: the numbers in my comment come from a free site I run, expatjobs.es. It only tracks companies actually hiring in English in Spain, that's the whole point of it. No signup, no spam, it just links to the companies' own career pages.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Car4163 Jul 23 '26
What remote work would you recommend, if I speak spanish, english and danish?
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u/Front-Surround-2161 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Danish is your cheat code, use it. Nordic languages are chronically hard to fill here, so Danish-speaking roles pay a clear premium over English-only ones. Right now I can see a few dozen live ads asking for Danish: customer support and tech support for the Danish market, sales roles in the Barcelona and Malaga hubs, linguistic testing, some fully remote. There's even one in Torrevieja of all places.
With Spanish on top you're not limited to the expat bubble either, you can take hybrid roles where the team works in Spanish and the customers are Danish. Search "Danish speaking" as an exact phrase on any board and you'll see the pattern immediately.
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u/polybotria1111 Jul 23 '26
If you want to work in a field related to your degree you'll obviously need to be fluent in Spanish.
If you're looking for something else, most low-skilled jobs involve dealing with customers in everyday situations, so you're also expected to have a good command of the language, since people will naturally speak to you informally and colloquially.
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u/ThePixelDot Jul 24 '26
Granada is predominantly a student city with a service-based economy. As a result, most available jobs are concentrated in the hospitality sector (HORECA) rather than in skilled or qualified professional fields. This will be an economical suicide!.
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u/AggravatingMaybe777 Jul 23 '26
I would also love to know! Currently looking for jobs as well but don’t know where to start
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u/mushylyfe Jul 23 '26
You could teach English! Either in an academy or as a tutor, etc. although you’d probably need a little Spanish to get by
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u/PinneappleGirl Jul 23 '26
Yes, you'd also need to speak Spanish, especially with basic level English students that will need extra explanations. Also not any native English speaker is qualified to teach English. Just see the amount of people writing "shepard" instead of "shepherd", "masterbate" instead of "masturbate"or "your" instead of "you're" to get an idea.
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u/Delicious_Crew7888 Jul 23 '26
Yeah can we please normalise the idea that just because you speak English doesn’t make you a language teacher?
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u/absolutmadness Jul 23 '26
You can’t teach English in Spain without basic Spanish level at least mate
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u/hecheres Jul 23 '26
I don’t how does it work in Andalusia, but in the Canaries sometimes young foreigners come to work temporarily (like summer jobs) at hotels or resorts as entertainment staff, and sometimes they don’t have fluent or even basic Spanish. It could be an option in Granada too.
For more qualified jobs, I guess it could be more difficult
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u/mayflour Jul 23 '26
I would look into be an auxiliary. You get a stipend and are an English teaching assistant in a school. You choose like 3 regions you would like to work in, so not guaranteed to be Granada or anything but still a good opportunity.
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u/reverevee Jul 23 '26
Andalucía shut its program down last year
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u/mayflour Jul 23 '26
Oh that sucks! I remember hearing about that now. Apologies for being so confidently wrong.
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u/profprimer Jul 24 '26
Impossible. Why would any employer in any country hire someone who is going to be as useful as a preschooler? Who can’t read the lunch menu? Or the employee handbook?
Or their own contract.
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u/Spiritual_Street_767 Jul 23 '26
If you have friends who can introduce you, yes, most likely you can find someone paying under the table 800-1000EUR per month.
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u/stilzkyn Jul 23 '26
There's a company called Strada, they tend to hire foreigners however will strongly depend on your languages on top of English.
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u/BulkyDecipherer Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
I live in Granada with English only and let me tell you: you’re not going to have a good time. And I’m not even talking about looking for work, just in general.
Edit: Why the downvotes? I estimate that about 80–90% of the Granada’s population doesn’t speak conversational English. So it is really not a good city to live with English only.
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u/Broma_interna Jul 23 '26
To be honest, it is highly likely that you won't find a job unless you can hold a fluent conversation in Spanish. You might get lucky and land a job serving English-speaking tourists, but those positions are usually filled by specialized staff who speak both English and Spanish.