‘Why are you doing this to me?’: how one woman survived two years of slavery on a Spanish farm

At the farm in the northwestern Spanish region of Castile and León, a typical day for Fatima* would start at 2am and then stretch late into the night as she carried out tasks that ranged from planting vegetables to herding sheep and cleaning the chicken coop.

After she arrived at the farm, her to-do list gradually lengthened until she was working up to 19 hours a day, seven days a week.

“If I were still there, I would have probably killed myself,” says the 50-year-old Moroccan national. “When I start thinking about it, I get anxious. Why did I put up with all of that?”

Fatima left Morocco for her third turn as a seasonal worker in Spain at the urging of her husband, who was eager for the funds she could send home. In 2020, she was one of thousands of women who came to pick strawberries, bracing themselves for months of hard labour and separation from their families.

Those plans, however, were dashed by the coronavirus pandemic. When her work visa was cancelled, Fatima decided to stay on in Spain rather than return home empty-handed to her husband and four children, who were then aged seven to 26.

She worked at whatever unofficial jobs she could find: caring for children and elderly people, baking bread or sewing shoes. “Some of them paid me and others no,” she says.

Fatima knew she was vulnerable. Few people in Spain spoke Berber, her native north African language, and she spoke little Spanish or Arabic. She had been pulled out of school at the age of six by her father so she could work on the family farm, leaving her illiterate.

Initially, she had help from a brother who lived in a village in another province of Spain. But after his wife began to fret about the risks of having an undocumented person in the house, he heard of a farm in Castile and León that was looking for a worker. “And that’s when the nightmare began,” says Fatima.

At first the family who owned the farm treated her and another Moroccan woman who worked there well, she says, at times even helping them in the fields. The other Moroccan woman translated for her and helped her with anything she was unable to read.

There were hints, however, that things were not as they seemed. She never received any kind of contract and was startled to learn that the other woman was sleeping with one of the family’s sons. She was given three payments of €300 (£255) for the first three months – far short of the Spanish minimum wage of about €1,425 a month.

She then stopped receiving any kind of pay, she says, with the family citing the high cost of their promise to secure Fatima’s residency as the reason they could not pay her.

About 18 months into the job, the other woman got her papers and left. “That’s when everything changed,” says Fatima. She was left to do everything herself: hauling feed for the animals, milking sheep and planting and harvesting the land.

Fatima says the son who had been sleeping with the other woman began pressuring her to have sex with him, becoming angry when she refused. He and his father became physically abusive, she alleges, hitting her and warning that they would escalate the violence.

“One time the son ran over my foot with the tractor. I asked him, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ He said, ‘You deserve this’ and that ‘I run this tractor over you and crush you.’”

She was housed in a shack without heating, leaving her freezing as night-time temperatures dropped as low as –6C (21F). A small heater, given to her by a Moroccan man who occasionally visited the farm to buy milk, was taken by the family, she says.

The conditions worsened one night after she asked about her unpaid wages and the status of her residency papers, she says, recalling how the father and son entered the shack and smashed the windows and doors. “After that it felt like I was sleeping on a mountain of ice,” she says.

She lived without access to drinking water, using a hose for watering livestock as a makeshift shower and a hole in the ground as a toilet. “I didn’t think of asking for help. Instead I thought, ‘If I can just hold on a bit longer, maybe I can get residency,’” she says.

She had only been allowed to leave the farm once a fortnight, when she was taken to a small supermarket in the nearby town. The owners of the farm warned her to stay away from police, telling her that any interaction would result in her being deported to Morocco.

“All I could think of was my family and the fact that I did not want to go home empty-handed,” she says.

Food was often hard to come by and the closest thing to a kitchen she had was a wood-burning stove. She kept a mobile phone hidden from the owners of the farm, using it to contact her family periodically.

“At times I would bang my head against the wall,” she says. “My thought was that I would either leave here with papers, or dead.”

In late 2023, the police were tipped off about a woman being housed and exploited at a sheep farm. About two months later, agents from the anti-trafficking units based in Burgos and Valladolid working on the case had collected enough evidence to intervene, along with labour inspectors.

Police described finding Fatima in appalling conditions, living without electricity in unsanitary housing.

For Fatima, the sight of police at the farm sparked an overwhelming sense of joy. “I thought, ‘Let whatever needs to happen, happen, but I want to put an end to this,’” she says, estimating that she was mistreated for up to two years after the other woman had left.

Since being rescued, Fatima has steadily rebuilt her life with the help of the Adoratrices, a Catholic religious order that helps women involved in human trafficking. It paid for her stay in a hostel after police raided the farm and supported her as she steadily rebuilt her life in Spain, helping her to find work, secure a place to live and see her children again.

Consuelo, the head of Adoratrices in Burgos, who asked that her last name not be published, says of Fatima: “When we met her, she was downcast, quiet and had this sad look on her face. She didn’t want to leave her room, at times out of fear. Now she’s completely different. She enters a room and lights it up.”

Fatima describes the support given to her by the organisation as life-changing. “Meeting them was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she says. “The rest was a nightmare.”

Since finding Fatima, the police have arrested three men suspected of human trafficking for labour exploitation. A trial is expected to begin in the coming months.

Fatima now has the legal right to work in Spain. “After everything I’ve been through, I have a lot of faith in the authorities. I hope justice is served,” she says.

“I’m super-proud to have endured that. Now I’m happy and eager to start a new life and bring my family here to be with me.”

* Name has been changed to protect her identity