“Paid less, worked like others”
Ceferina García García
“… that I was paid less, even though I worked just like the others.”
With these words, Ceferina García García describes her experiences as a worker in Germany. In the early 1960s, she moved from Spain to the Ruhr region, following her husband in the context of labour migration in order to help support the family.
She speaks about the challenges of those first years: arriving in a foreign country, working hard in the textile industry, living in cramped conditions, and being separated from her children. At the same time, she reflects on resilience and solidarity, and on how she gradually built a new life.
Testimony
Leaving Spain: Crisis and Decision
Ceferina García García grows up in Asturias, where economic hardship and uncertainty shape everyday life. When her husband falls ill and the family faces growing financial pressure, the decision to leave Spain becomes inevitable.
Arrival and Struggle: Life in Germany
Arriving in Germany brings new challenges: unfamiliar language, hard work in the textile industry, and difficult living conditions. At the same time, Ceferina must cope with the painful separation from her children.
Building a Life: Work, Family, and Belonging
Over time, Ceferina gains confidence and stands up for herself at work. Through perseverance and support from others, she gradually builds a new life in Germany and creates a sense of belonging.
Historical-Political Background
Ovidio Fernández García, born in 1927, initially worked as a hewer in the La Camocha coal mine in Gijón, a mining town in the northern Spanish region of Asturias. After being diagnosed with silicosis, he was no longer able to work underground. Faced with debts from the construction of his house, he decided to migrate to the Ruhr region in 1961. In Essen, he first found work at an ironworks and later at GWB Gelenkwellenbau, where he was employed as a lathe operator until his retirement. He died in Essen on 23 May 2013.
His migration was part of the large wave of Spanish labour migration to West Germany during the 1960s. Following the bilateral recruitment agreement of 1960, the Ruhr region, West Germany’s centre of coal mining and heavy industry, became a major destination for Spanish workers recruited to address severe labour shortages during the economic boom. At the same time, limited economic opportunities and political repression under the Franco dictatorship encouraged many Spaniards to seek work abroad, often intending to return after a few years.
His wife, Ceferina García García, was born on 8 March 1931 in San Julián de Bimenes (Asturias). Born out of wedlock, she grew up under difficult circumstances. At the age of nine, she lost her mother and was raised by her grandmother and aunts. Although she enjoyed attending school, this was not always possible for her, as her help was needed in agricultural work, especially during harvest time. Her childhood was shaped by the Spanish Civil War and the hardships of the post-war years.
Ovidio and Ceferina were married on 20 January 1951 in San Julián de Bimenes. Their first daughter, Irene, was born the same year, followed by their second daughter, Cristina, in 1959 in La Camocha near Gijón. In 1960, the family purchased a plot of land and began building their own house.
In 1962,one year after her husband, Ceferina travelled to Germany by train with a friend. She initially left her two daughters with relatives in the family’s newly built house in Spain. In Essen, she worked as a seamstress in various companies. When it became clear that a quick return to Spain would not be possible, Ovidio and Ceferina brought their daughters to Germany. While Irene stayed with her parents in Essen, Cristina temporarily returned to Spain due to illness.
In April 1966, their son Ovidio was born at the Knappschaftskrankenhaus in Essen-Steele. Shortly afterward, the family travelled together to Spain for the younger daughter’s First Communion. They then returned to Essen, where, for the first time since Ovidio’s birth, the entire family lived together again, but only for a limited period.
After another stay in Spain, the older daughter Irene decided to return permanently to Gijón, where she found employment. Once again, the family was separated.
Ceferina García García continued working in various tailoring shops as well as in cleaning jobs, including for the Diocese of Essen. In addition to her work in textile factories and retail, she also took on private sewing work for neighbours and acquaintances.
Ceferina initially experienced unequal treatment in the workplace. Foreign workers were often assigned lower wage categories than their German colleagues despite performing the same tasks. These inequalities reflected broader structural practices within the West German labour market, where migrant workers frequently had limited opportunities to challenge their classification or negotiate better wages. Ceferina herself recalled receiving substantially lower pay than her German coworkers despite doing the same work. Only after raising the issue with management did she receive equal pay.
From the late 1980s onward, during retirement, the couple lived alternately in Spain and Germany. While Irene remained based in Gijón, Cristina and her brother Ovidio continued to live in Essen.
The family’s story is representative of many biographies of labour migrants, whose lives were shaped by work, separation, and the desire to create a better future for their families.
Cristina and Irene traveled from Spain to Germany with their aunt. While Irene stayed in Germany, Cristina had to return to Spain due to illness. A doctor told her that the climate in Germany was not suitable for her. Cristina remained in Spain until her First Holy Communion in May 1966, when she was seven years old. She wanted to come to Germany with her brother, who was born in April 1966. © Cristina Fernández-Moser
Making of
How and why did you decide to deal with and present this specific story?
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the recruitment agreement between Bonn and Ankara, the Ruhr Museum presented the exhibition “We Are from Here. Turkish-German Life 1990. Photographs by Ergun Çağatay” (2021), as well as “Mustafa’s Dream. Photographs by Henning Christoph on Turkish Life in Germany 1977–1989” (2021-2022).
Both exhibitions combined historical insights with personal stories and aimed to bring greater attention to the long-overlooked experiences of labour migration in Germany, while also encouraging dialogue between generations and communities.
The accompanying programs were also deliberately designed to be participatory. The decision to tell migration history not only from an institutional perspective, but also to actively involve the communities concerned, was based on the idea of making diverse experiences visible and sharing interpretive authority.
In this context, the Ruhr Museum is involved in the European project FeMig.Lab. Through its own interview project, it specifically focuses on the life stories of migrant women in order to raise the profile of female migration experiences, which have historically been less well documented. The focus is on intergenerational experiences of women from Spain, Greece, and Turkey. Its goal is to connect individual perspectives with broader historical and political contexts, offering a more nuanced view of female labour migration.
How did you negotiate and decide about the methodologies and processes in acquiring/giving the testimony?
The project is designed and carried out by the Ruhr Museum (Meltem Küçükyılmaz) in cooperation with the Spanischen Elternverein Essen e. V. (Cristina Fernández-Moser), HistAgoge | Geschichtsforschung (Spiridon Papaioannou), and the mitMach Agentur (Mustafa Mert). The questionnaire and thematic focus areas were developed jointly, and the selection of interview partners was also evaluated together. This participatory approach builds on the Ruhr Museum’s previous work.
In terms of content, the project focuses on two distinct generations of migration: women from the so-called recruitment agreement generation and a more recent wave of migrant women and expatriates who have arrived in Germany since around 2011. The selected interviewees are Anastasia Walden, Ceferina García García, and Neriman Yılmaz, representing the recruitment agreement generation, and Estre, Çağla Diner, and Maria Papadopoulou, representing the more recent wave. With two women from Spain, two from Greece, and two from Turkey, the project combines an intergenerational perspective with a comparative, transnational approach. Since all participants responded to the same set of interview questions, their experiences can be compared systematically. By examining their opportunities, challenges, legal status, employment experiences, and social acceptance in Germany, the project aims to highlight both continuities and changes in women’s migration experiences over time and across national contexts.
Prior to the interviews, preliminary personal conversations took place, during which the goals, process, and expectations were discussed transparently. The interviewees were actively involved and had a say in deciding which topics and aspects of their stories they wanted to share. The interviews were conducted in a safe environment within the museum and, where desired, in the participants’ native language in order to build trust and reduce barriers.
Sensitive topics were handled in close coordination with the participants; content could be omitted, anonymized, or adapted at any time.
How and why did you decide to publicly present the story this way?
For the presentation, a format was deliberately chosen that preserves the personal character of the stories and allows the women’s voices to be experienced directly. The combination of interviews, images, and personal materials creates a multi-layered approach that makes individual experiences visible and relatable.
The interviewees were involved in decisions regarding publication and were able to have a say in what content would be included and how their stories would be presented. This ensured that the representation reflected their perspectives and respected their autonomy.
At the same time, the project sees itself as a curatorial process that is always shaped by selection and classification. This responsibility is consciously reflected upon in order to present the stories in a respectful and context-sensitive way. In doing so, the project acknowledges existing power dynamics and seeks to reduce barriers through participation and transparency.
Particular emphasis is placed on protecting the participants: issues relating to data protection and publication are communicated clearly and agreed upon jointly. The aim is also to make the content as accessible as possible, especially for the communities involved, and to ensure open access to these stories.
What is the motivation and benefit for the person/community sharing the story? How did you negotiate this and take it into consideration?
Throughout the project, care was taken to ensure that both the cooperating partners and the interviewees benefited from their involvement. The cooperation partners received a fee for their conceptual and organizational contributions, recognizing their expertise and commitment. The interviewees were offered an expense allowance to acknowledge their time, their willingness to participate, and their openness in sharing personal stories.
In addition, the participating associations and institutions benefit from long-term networking with the museum, as well as from the opportunity to make their own perspectives and topics visible and to contribute them to cultural processes. For the interviewees, alongside the financial recognition, the main benefit lies in the visibility of their life stories.
Overall, the project aims to foster a partnership of equals that encompasses both intangible and tangible forms of recognition and strengthens sustainable relationships between institutions and communities.
What questions and challenges arose during the processes?
A key challenge in the project was multilingualism, which is also a major strength. The linguistic diversity of the interviewees reflects their different migration experiences and helped create a trusting and comfortable atmosphere during the conversations. At the same time, it presented practical challenges, particularly in terms of translation and subtitling. This process required a sensitive approach in order to convey meanings as accurately as possible. Thanks to close collaboration with the project partners, this process was successfully carried out as they contributed both their linguistic and cultural expertise.
Credits
Interview
Conducted on 11 February 2026 at the Ruhr Museum, Essen. © Ruhr Museum
Texts
The texts were created with the involvement of Cristina Fernández-Moser, the daughter of Ceferina García García.
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Ceferina García García for sharing her story and memories with us. Together with five other interviewees from Spain, Greece, and Turkey, she contributes to an intergenerational and transnational interview project exploring women’s migration experiences in Germany.
The conception and implementation of the interview project were carried out by the Ruhr Museum (Meltem Küçükyılmaz) in cooperation with Spanischer Elternverein Essen e. V. (Cristina Fernández-Moser), HistAgoge | Geschichtsforschung (Spiridon Papaioannou), and mitMach Agentur (Mustafa Mert).
Photos
Copyright of all photos except for the radio: © Cristina Fernández-Moser
Copyright for the radio photo: © Ruhr Museum, Foto: Rainer Rothenberg
Transcript PDF here
Partner involved
Ruhr Museum
An orange-glowing staircase and 6,000 exhibits in a spectacular industrial setting: The Ruhr Museum’s permanent exhibition at the Zollverein UNESCO World Heritage Site shows the fascinating natural and cultural history of one of the world’s largest industrial regions.
The Regional Museum of the Ruhr Area shows in its permanent exhibition the entire natural and cultural history of the region from the formation of coal over 300 million years ago to today’s structural change to the Ruhr metropolis. Visitors follow the former path of the coal and descend deeper and deeper from the present into the history of the Ruhr region. Over three levels, they pass through windowless bunkers, huge industrial machines, raw concrete walls and conveyor belts. In between, 6,000 exhibits show in often fascinating detail how a formerly agricultural region developed into Europe’s largest coal and steel production area and then became the Metropole Ruhr.