Beneath the clock in Madrid's Sol square where Spaniards gather to count in the New Year, an increasingly common sight are men walking around wearing sandwich boards or luminous jackets saying "I buy gold."
Echoing images of men in sandwich-boards that encapsulated the hard times of the Great Depression, in Spain immigrants or people laid off from construction are picking up a small daily rate working as advertisers for pawnbrokers.
Whereas the Depression-era archetype often wore a raincoat and trilby and his board proclaimed his war service and hardship, the men in Madrid dress casually and advertise for bosses ready to buy gold and jewellery.
Besides pawnbrokers, cobblers, betting shops and cheap mobile phone services are doing a good trade as consumers become more thrifty and companies across most of Spain's struggling economy slash jobs and investment.
In and around Madrid's central, landmark square Sol, the men hand out leaflets and show potential customers the way to pawnbrokers' premises, many of them in upper-floor flats.
"The other day a woman came by with a whole bag of gold," said David Santos, a 38-year-old man wearing a sandwich board. "She said she had missed payments on her mortgage and was going to lose her house."
"A business-owner came the other day with four Rolexes to pawn," said Jose Bautista, a 45-year-old Dominican working nearby. "He got €18,000. He did it to do the right thing and pay his workers."
Walking advertisers are paid around €30 a day and do not get commissions, but with unemployment in Spain at almost 13 per cent - by far the highest rate in the European Union, according to EU figures - many are willing to fill the posts.
Mr Bautista and Mr Santos said some customers are gypsy families. Customers are paid €9-13 per gram, depending on whether they sell their gold objects outright or just pawn them: they get less if they want up to three months to reclaim the goods.
That price compares with a value for gold on world markets of about €19 per gram in early December.
"All classes of people come here," said Mr Santos, who used to work as a security guard on construction sites. "There are people who pull up in a Mercedes who are very well dressed and have to pawn things, and others who you'd say haven't got two pennies to rub together, but they have gold."
Shops buying second-hand goods are also doing well. So are cobblers, long spurned by Spaniards who just threw old shoes away and bought new pairs during the boom years, but now want ageing soles repaired.
On the same Madrid square, people queue to buy tickets for Spain's state-run lotteries. Unlike in some other countries where gambling has suffered as a more discretionary activity, these are also getting a fillip from the downturn.
As more Spaniards buy lottery tickets in the hope a win could make losing their job less of a worry, lottery prizes have reached record levels. In the first half of this year, just one of the state lotteries, the Primitiva, made sales of €1.9 billion, a 4.6 per cent hike on 2007.
"I'm selling almost double," said lottery kiosk owner Isabel Gonzalez whose family has run the kiosk since 1950. She has been selling tickets here for the last 11 years.
Mercedes Gonzalez, a 33-year-old property valuer in the queue, said she and her partner started playing the lottery a year ago: "It started as a joke with us. You say 'oh well, if we lose our jobs, it doesn't matter because we're going to win the lottery.'"
Now they spend €15 a week between them on lottery tickets, hoping they can net a jackpot.
The largest win in the first half was a player in Granada who won €76.6 million in the EuroMillones lottery, one of nine state lotteries which include football betting and the traditional Christmas Gordo lottery.
Spanish gambling firm Codere also said its new betting shops Victoria, run under a joint-venture with Britain's William Hill, were doing good business despite launching in a crisis.
Echoing images of men in sandwich-boards that encapsulated the hard times of the Great Depression, in Spain immigrants or people laid off from construction are picking up a small daily rate working as advertisers for pawnbrokers.
Whereas the Depression-era archetype often wore a raincoat and trilby and his board proclaimed his war service and hardship, the men in Madrid dress casually and advertise for bosses ready to buy gold and jewellery.
Besides pawnbrokers, cobblers, betting shops and cheap mobile phone services are doing a good trade as consumers become more thrifty and companies across most of Spain's struggling economy slash jobs and investment.
In and around Madrid's central, landmark square Sol, the men hand out leaflets and show potential customers the way to pawnbrokers' premises, many of them in upper-floor flats.
"The other day a woman came by with a whole bag of gold," said David Santos, a 38-year-old man wearing a sandwich board. "She said she had missed payments on her mortgage and was going to lose her house."
"A business-owner came the other day with four Rolexes to pawn," said Jose Bautista, a 45-year-old Dominican working nearby. "He got €18,000. He did it to do the right thing and pay his workers."
Walking advertisers are paid around €30 a day and do not get commissions, but with unemployment in Spain at almost 13 per cent - by far the highest rate in the European Union, according to EU figures - many are willing to fill the posts.
Mr Bautista and Mr Santos said some customers are gypsy families. Customers are paid €9-13 per gram, depending on whether they sell their gold objects outright or just pawn them: they get less if they want up to three months to reclaim the goods.
That price compares with a value for gold on world markets of about €19 per gram in early December.
"All classes of people come here," said Mr Santos, who used to work as a security guard on construction sites. "There are people who pull up in a Mercedes who are very well dressed and have to pawn things, and others who you'd say haven't got two pennies to rub together, but they have gold."
Shops buying second-hand goods are also doing well. So are cobblers, long spurned by Spaniards who just threw old shoes away and bought new pairs during the boom years, but now want ageing soles repaired.
On the same Madrid square, people queue to buy tickets for Spain's state-run lotteries. Unlike in some other countries where gambling has suffered as a more discretionary activity, these are also getting a fillip from the downturn.
As more Spaniards buy lottery tickets in the hope a win could make losing their job less of a worry, lottery prizes have reached record levels. In the first half of this year, just one of the state lotteries, the Primitiva, made sales of €1.9 billion, a 4.6 per cent hike on 2007.
"I'm selling almost double," said lottery kiosk owner Isabel Gonzalez whose family has run the kiosk since 1950. She has been selling tickets here for the last 11 years.
Mercedes Gonzalez, a 33-year-old property valuer in the queue, said she and her partner started playing the lottery a year ago: "It started as a joke with us. You say 'oh well, if we lose our jobs, it doesn't matter because we're going to win the lottery.'"
Now they spend €15 a week between them on lottery tickets, hoping they can net a jackpot.
The largest win in the first half was a player in Granada who won €76.6 million in the EuroMillones lottery, one of nine state lotteries which include football betting and the traditional Christmas Gordo lottery.
Spanish gambling firm Codere also said its new betting shops Victoria, run under a joint-venture with Britain's William Hill, were doing good business despite launching in a crisis.