How to sharpen a knife: A disappearing job
You go to the drawer in the kitchen, pull out a knife, notice it’s a bit dull, and you run it through that knife-sharpener thing you have in that same drawer. In Spain, it doesn’t quite work that way. The job of knife sharpener is a tradition over there.
53-year-old Rafael Romero del Campo first took up his trade, as a knife sharpener, 40 years ago. He has no intention of quitting his job, but this trade is dying and he thinks that when he calls it a day, nobody will succeed him.
“I have five children and four grandchildren, and my job as a knife sharpener feeds them all,” Romero del Campo says. “The truth is there’s no other work. I’ve been doing it so many years, because I love it.”
As part of a BBC series on disappearing jobs, we visit Seville, in Southern Spain, to look at the life of a knife sharpener.
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