Spanish Crisis Closes The Door Industry

VILLACANAS, SPAIN - DECEMBER 21: Fifty-year old unemployed former door factory worker Luis Gonzales, who has been without welfare payment now for two months being unable to pay his 160 Euro (211 US Dollars) a month morgage, his electicity and heating bills, shows the food that is left in his refrigerator after receiving the monthly Red Cross food hand out for him and his two duaghters at his home on December 21, 2012 in Villacanas, Spain. During the boom years, where in its peak Spain built some 800,000 houses a year accompanied by the manufacturing of millions of wooden doors, the people of Villacanas were part of Spain's middle class enjoying high wages and permanent jobs. During these construction boom years the majority of the doors used within these new developments were made in this small industrial town. Approximately seven million doors a year were once assembled here and the factories employed a workforce of almost 5700 people. The town is now left almost desolate with the Villacanas industrial park empty and redundant. With Spain in the grip of recession and the housing bubble burst, Villacanas is typical of many former buoyant industrial Spanish towns now struggling with huge unemployment problems. (Photo by Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)