Unemployment in Spain is at 11 percent. Romanians at a hiring hall outside Madrid.

By VICTORIA BURNETT


MADRID - When Camelia Condurat could not muster the change to buy bread for her three young daughters, she found some flour and yeast in the cupboard and made it herself.

“If you do not even have 50 cents to buy a loaf of bread, what can you do-” she said recently.“You scrape by.”

Getting by has become a grueling daily mission for Mrs.Condurat, a 24-year-old Romanian. When her husband, Costel, who came to Spain in 2003, lost his job as a bricklayer in October, she sought work for the first time since following him here four years ago. She prepares food and cleans at a local restaurant, working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, for 700 euros, about $900, a month.

Half her wage pays the rent for the tiny three-bedroom apartment her family shares with two lodgers. What is left does not cover the family’s needs, so Mrs.Condurat spends rare free moments standing in line for handouts at the government welfare office, the Red Cross and the local church.

Mr.Condurat, 39, a former Romanian policeman who earned about 1,000 euros a month as a bricklayer, stays home with their children.

“It is so, so hard,” she said in fluent Spanish, looking down at her callused hands as her girls, ages 3, 5 and 6, clambered onto her lap.“I’m ashamed to ask for help. But I have three girls, so I leave my pride at home.”In working-class suburbs with large immigrant populations like Coslada, on the outskirts of Madrid, stories like this have become common in the economic slide. Spain created more jobs and drew more immigrants than any other country in Europe in the past decade, largely because of a construction boom. As the economy shrinks, employers are disgorging workers at an alarming rate - unemployment soared to more than 11 percent in the third quarter, the highest in the European Union and up from 8 percent at the end of 2007. Among immigrants, unemployment is estimated at 17 percent. About five million immigrants are registered as living in Spain, a country of 46 million, with Moroccans, Romanians and Ecuadoreans topping the list.

For Rene Bonilla, 33, a painter and decorator from Colombia, the economic crisis crushed a life built over seven hard years. In November 2007, Mr.Bonilla began the process of bringing his wife, Iuli, and their 2-year-old daughter, Arancha, from Colombia. He was earning 1,100 euros a month and was confident he could support them.

By the time they arrived in September, Mr.Bonilla had been out of work for a month. He had spent his 4,000 euros in savings bringing them to Madrid. Now the three spend their days cooped up in a room in an apartment in Alcorcon, a tough suburb with a high proportion of Latin American immigrants. They are surviving on loans from their landlord, an elderly Spaniard.

“Now, I am back to where I started,” said Mr.Bonilla, his eyes puffy from lack of sleep.“Actually, I am worse off. I am seven years older, and now there are three of us to feed.”

The authorities have cracked down on businesses that employ undocumented workers, and immigrants say plainclothes police officers prowl commuter trains, arresting those without papers. Prime Minister Jose Rodriguez Zapatero has said he supports the European Union’s tough Return Directive, which would allow illegal migrants to be held for as long as 18 months.

In November, the government began a return program that allows immigrants to take unemployment benefits in a lump sum if they go home and give up the right to return to Spain for three years.

“Spain saw really strong growth over the past five years, and we could not have done this with our own citizens,”the labor minister, Celestino Corbacho, said in an interview.“But now we’re in a very different situation.”