Spanish nationals form just over 3 per cent of Dell's 4,500 workforce in Limerick but represent the largest nationality, after the Irish.
Currently 150 Spaniards work at the two plants on the Raheen Industrial Estate and in Castletroy, 100 of them since January. Key documentation has been translated into Spanish.
The Iberian influence in the city is apparent when workers change shift at 3.30 p.m. This week there were some muted if incorrect references to vacas locas (mad cows) as they walked over the disinfectant mats outside the factories.
Vicente Garcia and Carmen Ferrer are from Bilbao in northern Spain, and, since arriving in Limerick, have been home to get married. Vicente, a production line worker on Dell's laptops, has also been home to collect his car and make the long return journey by road.
He was joined by his then girlfriend last October and she also got a job in the same section of Dell. "Every day we had to call each other. It was expensive," Carmen Ferrer said.
She already had a brother and sister in Limerick after they followed the first wave of Spanish workers who responded to a TV and newspaper recruitment campaign. She said the weather was very similar in Bilbao. "It is raining a lot."
Today Carmen began English classes organised by the company. Vicente, who is more fluent in English, is doing a programming course in his spare time.
He has a diploma in computer programming from Spain and was working as a security man in an explosives factory when he emigrated. "You earn more money here but things are more expensive," he said.
He arrived in Shannon a year ago and started working in McDonald's. He avoided Dublin, he said, because he believed it would be stressful.
"I prefer a city that is not too small and not too big."
In Limerick, they know more Irish than Spanish people, they say, and they enjoy the proximity of Kerry, Clare and Galway.
"The people make a beautiful country, and I think in Ireland the people are very nice. In my personal opinion, I find the Irish people very helpful," Vicente Garcia said.
Contact number
Readers who want to contact Eibhir Mulqueen can leave messages for him by phoning 01-6707711, ext 6544. emulqueen@irish-times.ie