More than 20 firms respond to pensioner’s advert in local paper seeking employment for son who has been out of work for a year

More than 20 companies have responded after a pensioner in Zaragoza, in north-east Spain, placed an advert in the local paper offering €5,000 (£3,700) to anyone who would give his 39-year-old son a job.

The ad in the Heraldo de Aragón read: “Pensioner offers €5,000 to a firm that will employ his unemployed son who is qualified, responsible, hardworking and has a good professional record.”

The pensioner, a retired lawyer who has chosen to remain anonymous, said his son, who has a five-year-old child, had had a series of temporary contracts, the last of which expired in September last year.

He said he didn’t mind if the responses were concrete job offers or simply opportunities – anything to get his son out of the hole he was in. He said none of the 20 firms that had called had asked about the money, only about his son’s CV.

The pensioner hadn’t consulted his son before placing the ad, and he told El País that when his son found out “he was very angry with me and was afraid that someone in Zaragoza would realise who he was. He said it was shameful. But after a long chat he told me I was the best father in the world.”

Unemployment in Spain is around 23%, equating to about five million people out of work, and 134,000 jobs were lost in August. Figures for September will be worse when they take in the 333,107 people whose temporary contracts – mainly in the tourism and other service sectors – expired last Monday, the last day of August. These were the worst job losses in a single day on record.

Pensioners have been propping up three generations during Spain’s double-dip recession. A report by the Comisiones Obreras trade union revealed that in 2014 an old-age pension was the only income in 20% of households, as many Spaniards had been forced to move back into their parents’ or grandparents’ homes to save money.

“Before, we pensioners helped out with our grandchildren, but now unfortunately we have to look after our children as well,” the Zaragoza pensioner said, adding that his other four children did not earn enough to make ends meet.