47-year-old Spaniard – Belén Serrano – knows the roads of the Spanish province of Castellon inside out. She spent almost half her life behind the wheel of a truck. She is one of the few women truck drivers who work in transport in Aragón.
Belén was born in Alcorisa and moved to Zaragoza to find a job. She has been driving a truck for 21 years now, has a husband and a 13-year-old daughter.
I do not know why there are so few female truck drivers. It is a fact that the work is hard – sometimes it requires a lot of physical effort and a lot of concentration behind the wheel. But everyone who likes to drive and has the strength and willingness to work, can be a driver” – says the 47-year-old Spanish woman in an interview for Heraldo, the Aragonian edition of the daily newspaper.
700 drivers, including only 14 women, belong to the Aragonian association of Transport employees.
Belén’s husband is also a trucker and thanks to him she became interested in working in the industry – reads Heraldo.
I decided to make a driving license for a truck. I gained the qualifications, I went to register as an unemployed person and found a job immidiately. The beginnings were difficult” – admits the Spanish woman.
Now it’s daily routine for her:
I get up at twenty to seven, I send my daughter to school and go to work. I load a truck and head to La Cartuja, El Burgo, Fuentes, Quinto, Gelsa, Belchite, Mediana de Aragón, la Puebla de Alborton, Valmadrid, Torrecilla de Valmadrid … And in the evening I’m with my daughter, at home, where I’m busy with other duties. My husband spends the entire week on the road between France and Spain” – she adds.
Belén would prefer to work like her husband but foreign travels, until the daughter grows up, are unfeasible. „One of us has to be at home,” she says.
Although women behind the wheel of a truck or a supplier is a rarity, the Belén has never encountered any unpleasantness along the route.
Women and men are equal on the road” – she emphasizes.
Fig. Twitter.com/heraldoes