A Coruña Hospitality: Talented waiters offered €1,500 gross

## A Coruña calls for talented waiters offered €1,500 gross

There is a queue to eat and an emptiness on the service line. On September 20, 2026, the city's hospitality employers' association cried out—"there are no hands for so many coffees"—and added a crucial detail: it's not a lack of waiters, but a shortage of "qualified and talented" ones. The offer accompanying this demand is, at best, around €1,500 gross per month. With that figure on the table, the narrative of labor scarcity cracks along the most obvious line: price.

How much is truly paid in Coruña's hospitality sector?

The €1,500 gross per month that the sector presents as a reference point is no minor detail. Twenty-five years ago, a waiter earned around 250,000 pesetas, exactly the same as today's €1,500. Two and a half decades later, there are establishments in A Coruña where the pay barely reaches €1,200. The salary has not risen; it has retreated. And this happens in a city where the cost of living has done the opposite.

That is where the fracture lies. The official complaint speaks of lost vocation when what has been lost is purchasing power, and the conversation stalls on the same question: if the salary has barely moved in a quarter century, what talent are they really talking about?
The fine calculation, broken down by gross, payments, and net figures, reveals a number that explains many things.

The requirements demanded by the sector and the salary offered

Qualified. Motivated. Talented. Fluent in languages. Capable of working under stress. Available for 12-hour shifts, six days a week. That they learn quickly and, if possible, do not complain. All of this for an "agreed upon salary." This portrait summarizes the malaise of the profession and explains why vacancies remain unfilled.

An anecdote circulates among the guild that speaks volumes: a candidate passed an interview in four languages only to end up clearing crumbs from the tables, yet the owner hesitated before offering them the job. He hesitated, and the candidate hesitated. This scene, repeated in a contemporary version, says more about the labor market than any vacancy statistic.

The factory, the AVE, and the cost of living in A Coruña

In the Coruña area, there are alternatives. Food, plastic, storage, and slaughterhouse factories absorb labor with fixed, continuous shifts, respected rights, and no public face. Some recount the case of a cook who became head chef after twenty years in the trade and doesn't want to hear about going back. Hospitality is not competing with unemployment; it is competing with jobs that pay similarly and do not destroy personal life.

And then there is housing. The AVE has turned the city into a residence for those earning in Barcelona, and flats near the station are flying off the market. A 40-square-meter studio without an elevator has been sold for €60,000. With these prices, €1,200 or €1,500 gross does not cover rent and living expenses. The argument of talent crashes against the monthly bill.

The narrative of labor that doesn't arrive

Part of the discontent has been directed toward immigration: some argue that the arrival of foreign workers should have covered these vacancies, and it hasn't peine. Other analyses point in the opposite direction: when the salary does not allow one to live in the city where they work, the candidate's nationality matters little.
The experience of neighboring sectors supports this—they pay poorly, and the service degrades, not due to lack of hands, but due to lack of incentive to care for the job.

The conclusion is not a finding; it is a fact. The salary offered today is equivalent, euro for euro, to what was paid in 2001. Coruña's hospitality sector does not compete for talent with that figure; it competes with memory.