BBC World Service

How to sharpen a knife: A disappearing job

Tom Burridge Jan 15, 2014
HTML EMBED:
COPY
BBC World Service

How to sharpen a knife: A disappearing job

Tom Burridge Jan 15, 2014
HTML EMBED:
COPY

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.

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.