Original subtitles

Look at that.

I'm starting my journey in the Dodecanese islands.

It's a part of Greece that is visited and loved by millions of

travellers every year.

There are thousands of islands in Greece,

scattered across the Eastern Mediterranean.

Sand and sea like this on the island of Kos

helps to lure around 25 million foreign holiday-makers to Greece

every year, more than twice the actual population of the country.

Now, we all know that Greece is in a bit of a pickle at the moment,

but this is an amazing place.

I have to personally confess to being a big fan of Greece.

I love the beaches, the people, the mountains, the ruins,

the food, the way of life.

I love Greece.

As Greece endures an economic crisis,

tourism is one of the few industries keeping the country afloat.

Tourism accounts for 20% of the national economy,

but it's 60% for islands like Kos.

Of course, it's only in the last few decades that tourism has become such

a phenomenon, and many islands in the Aegean Sea

used to rely on a very different trade.

Look at these.

Not artificial. Real sponges.

You see these for sale around the islands in this area.

The sponge-fishing industry

dominated these islands for centuries.

Sponge merchants made fortunes.

One even dined at the court of Queen Victoria.

Agelis? Agelis! Kalimera!

I met up with Agelis Trakelis.

He's one of the last remaining sponge fishermen.

Sponges can't be fished using rods or nets.

Agelis has to dive for them.

AGELIS SPEAKS IN GREEK

We're going to go down onto a shipwreck,

and you can see the top of it just there.

So, he's going to use this tank of compressed air

with a hose attached,

a very basic, rudimentary way of diving.

It's also extremely dangerous.

Hundreds of Greek fishermen have died diving like this,

from decompression sickness, or the bends.

Two of Agelis's brothers fell victim.

By using a compressor,

Agelis can stay underwater for much longer than if he was using

scuba tanks on his back.

Sponges are actually one of the simplest animal organisms.

They're vital to the global marine eco-system,

pumping and filtering sea water through their pores

and providing a refuge for other sea-life.

Some live for more than 100 years.

In the past, there were millions

covering the sea-bed in the Mediterranean,

helping to keep the water healthy.

Oh, he's gone really deep.

Oh, much deeper than I can free-drive.

With a compressor, Agelis can dive to 70 or 80 metres.

He's sucking air through a thin hose,

and at those depths it can tear or get tangled.

If something goes wrong and he surfaces too quickly,

he could die from decompression sickness.

It's dangerous, but the introduction of compressor diving

in the 1800s enabled Greek divers to strip the sea of sponges.

Wow.

These are sponges in their raw state.

Astonishing. Look at them, they look disgusting.

How do you turn it into a sponge that people would recognise?

You tread on it?

God.

Over the last couple of decades,

a disease has devastated the remaining sponge population.

Scientists and fishermen like Agelis

believe that climate change and pollution

have contributed to the spread of the disease.

How is the sea different now to when you first started?

It's very depressing to hear,

and it's happened in such a short space of time, as well.

Just a generation.

Just a couple of decades.

The Mediterranean's been emptied of life.

To gather enough sponges to survive, Agelis now sails hundreds of miles,

staying away from home for months at a time.

And as the industry has collapsed,

so has the population of many of these small Greek islands.

One of them is Pserimos,

the tiny place Agelis and his children call home.

The island's also been hit hard by Greece's financial crisis.

Even tourism isn't saving them.

If more tourists don't start visiting,

some fear this current generation of islanders could be the last.

The next morning, I said farewell to Agelis and his family.

I'm heading on to another island.

I'm going to take a taxi.

Little Pserimos relies on small boats to connect it to the rest of

the Aegean.

Pottering between Greek islands by sea

still feels like an exotic adventure,

however large the ferry.

I was on my way to Lesvos, one of the biggest Greek islands.

Like every Greek island,

it's got its own character and traditions,

along with fantastic beaches and wonderful tavernas

that pull in the tourists.

But it's also Europe's eastern border,

and its position puts it on the front line

of a humanitarian and political crisis.

Look at that view!

Straight ahead, look at that!

That is Turkey.

Greece has been receiving an influx of refugees and migrants,

many of them coming from,

or fleeing, the conflict in Syria.

My God.

Look at this.

Thousands of life jackets spoke of the scale of what was happening.

It was summer and the flow of refugees

and migrants into Greece was just starting to soar.

Around 2,000 had been arriving on Lesvos most nights.

But I'd arrived at a turning point,

as people began crossing in broad daylight in huge numbers.

Oh, my God.

They're coming now.

They're crossing now!

I've got a slightly sick feeling in my stomach

because some of these boats do not make it.

If they don't, there is absolutely nothing we can do standing here.

In 2015, more than 500 people drowned

trying to cross from Turkey to Europe.

I would say there's 40 people on that boat.

There's some women, there's children as well on board.

Water! Water!

My God, maybe...

...look at this.

You've come from Syria?

Where in Syria? Aleppo, or...?

HE SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE

How long has it taken you to come across?

How long to come...?One hour.

One hour across the water.

How much money did it cost?$1,000.

To go from there to here?

Yes. From, from Turkey.

What do you think Europe will give you?

I am studying pharmacy.

You are studying to be a pharmacist?

I am pharmacist.

What have you brought with you?

What do you have? Your possessions?

You have this.

Everything else has gone?

Everything. Yes, yes.

It was overwhelming.

Good luck.

This crisis was part of the world's biggest wave of mass migration

since the Second World War.

There's just more and more coming.

This is the edge of Europe and there are hundreds of people coming.

Assalaamu alaikum.

- Assalaamu alaikum. - Alleluia.

Water, find more water...

It was particularly upsetting to see so many young children,

their lives in complete upheaval.

He's very tired.

I bet they are.

I am cameraman.

You're a cameraman?

- Thanks. - Thanks.

HE SNIFFS

- Good luck to you. - Thank you.

HE SPEAKS IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE

Thank you.

I have no words, just good luck, OK?

- Thank you. - Good luck.

- Whatever you do. - Good luck.

Most of the arrivals I met were Syrians fleeing conflict,

but there were also many other nationalities.

One Afghan lad told me how he and his classmates had left school in

Kabul a month earlier when they heard how easy it suddenly was to

get into Europe.

When we were in Afghanistan, we were hearing that...

...the border is free, yeah?

Everybody can go freely to the European country.

I was stunned.

Thousands of miles away people were being told that Europe was open.

There is another boat just coming, just here,

and there is nobody here helping them, stopping them...

...doing anything.

There is no sign of the authorities, there is no European force,

there is no Greek border patrol, there is...

...there are just holiday-makers,

and there are hundreds of people coming in.

Most arrivals were refugees from conflict.

Some were economic migrants.

Europeans often focus either on their right to sanctuary and asylum,

or their impact on us.

Rarely do we debate the consequences of migration

on societies people have left,

and the old, sick and poor who can remain behind.

But if we absorb millions of people from struggling countries,

we may never give those struggling countries a chance

to stabilise and succeed,

because so often the people who make it here...

...it's like an obstacle course, it's the brightest and the best who often

are the ones who make it, the ones who would be most likely to...

...help build a country...

...are the ones who quite naturally...

...need, want to leave.

Many of the new arrivals were young men travelling alone.

Often they come from traditional conservative communities.

They were heading into a Europe increasingly adopting values

like gay marriage and women's rights.

I wondered if they knew what lay ahead.

The next stage of their journey is the 40 miles to the port where

ferries go to Athens.

Many refugees walk in 35-degree heat.

I saw a woman struggling with a child.

I have to stop.

How old is this one?

He's five.

Five years old.

Are you OK?No.

- No. - I will die.

- Have some water. - Thank you.

Just breathe slow.

We'll put you in the car.

- Breathe slow. - Thank you.

SHE GASPS

We're giving a lift to a mum and her son and daughter.

They don't want their faces shown, quite understandably.

- Is that from, from Syria? - Yes.

- Terrazul. - Terrazul.

Her English-speaking sister was also in the back.

We caught up with some men from her family.

We're not sure what's going on.

We think it's possible that one of the men is saying

that she cannot travel with men.

But the woman's sister explained what happened.

The men forced the children and their mother out of the car

and back into the heat and the long walk

because the mother hadn't sought their permission to accept my help.

SIMON EXHALES DEEPLY

In that crazy little situation,

you have a sense of cultures...

...colliding, I think,

in a way that frightens some people and worries them.

Europeans, it concerns them, and I can completely understand why.

Just a few miles down the road was a popular tourist town.

Well, now, this gets really surreal.

Them coming into Molyvos now.

Castle on top of the hill,

beautiful houses scattered around it.

Now, you get Syrian refugees meets Greek...

...holiday village.

The next morning, refugee boats kept coming.

Lesvos depends on farming and tourism,

and locals were worried holiday-makers would stay away.

I went for breakfast...

...and found a local boat moored in the harbour.

Are you still running boat trips?

Yes, I do.

And are you still going out regularly during the day?

I'm trying.

- Can I come on board? - Please.

Stratis Kabanos earns his living

taking tourists on snorkelling trips.

- Have a seat. - Thank you.

- Stay in the sun. - Stay out of the sun, I think.

You paid for it!

THEY LAUGH

I'm not sure I have, to be honest.

How does this season, this summer compare to summers over the last

20 years?

I don't have numbers, but it's definitely down, much down.

I don't know, maybe, 50% down or something.

To my feeling.50% down?

To my feeling. I'm going to check.

Does that make it one of the worst? I think so, yes.

How have people here in the community reacted

and responded to the migrants and the refugees coming in?

Majority of the people, they see it negatively.

The majority of Greeks here?

Yes. I mean...

...yes, please, sorry.

Say it in English. Say it...

Say it in English.

This is exactly what I was describing to you.

That's the feeling of the people, - is they're worried. - Mm.

My feeling is, I have to deal with it, because...

You see people suffering, guys.

What are you doing?

STRATIS EXHALES DEEPLY

I just, I can't do much.

Just yesterday, I saw a boat with 33 people,

I had a couple of ladies from Holland, we stopped, we helped them.

We cleaned the beach, we gave directions to the people.

What do you say to people who would say,

look, by helping them, you are encouraging more to come?

If you are desperate, you will come.

You will swim, you will walk.

We can't stop them.

That's for sure.

They can't be stopped.

Either we are helping them or not.

They will keep coming.

If I keep running behind you with a knife,

you will keep running too.

You find a wall, you will try to climb it. This is how it is.

For me, it's that simple, you know.

- Yeah, fair point. - Yes.

Unless the crisis in the Middle East is resolved,

along with poverty, repression, population pressure

and conflict even further away,

these small islands will remain a beacon for the desperate.

With 60 million people displaced by conflict around the world,

more than ever before, it seems likely the flow of refugees

and migrants trying to get into Europe isn't going to stop.

Migrants and refugees here want to get a ferry

from the port down there to take them on to Athens,

from where they can continue their journeys on to western and northern

Europe, which is where most of them seem to want to go to.

I continued my journey south, to the island of Crete,

the largest Greek island, sitting halfway between Athens and Africa.

Crete has its own unique history and geography.

While most tourists stay by the beaches,

the distinctive character of the people here

has been forged up in the mountains.

I'm excited about this.

SIMON LAUGHS

It's a flying trike.

Bonkers but brilliant.

- This is Jogas. - Hello.

AKA Big George.

Working the guns there.

Yeah, sorry, we're just about to take off. Yeah, that's a parachute.

Wow.

I can't believe I'm going to take off on the road.

SIMON LAUGHS

Oh, my good God!

600,000 people live on Crete.

The biggest cities are on the coast,

but thousands still live in remote villages up in the mountains.

These mountains, this extraordinary landscape,

this has helped to define the people of Crete.

It's tough to move around in.

Hard to farm.

It's a harsh land.

The mountains, the lonely position of the island in the Med

and Crete's history have hardened the locals.

They breed them tough here.

Here's a sweeping statement,

people in the Mediterranean are just a little bit more passionate

and fiery than most northern Europeans.

People of Greece are more passionate and fiery

than most Mediterranean types.

And the people of Crete

are even more passionate and fiery than most Greeks.

But luckily, the calming influence of the church

plays an important role in Cretan life.

BELL RINGS IN BACKGROUND

I was off to meet a local priest.

Father Andreas!

Kalimera.

Kalimera.

Very nice to meet you, sir.

So, this is Father Andreas.

ANDREAS LAUGHS

CHORAL SINGING

Geia sas. Geia sas, geia sas...

- Hello. - Hello.

As well as being the local priest,

Father Andreas is also a trained bodyguard

and president of the gun club.

He was keen to show off his skills on the club's urban warfare course.

GUNSHOTS AND CHORAL SINGING

So, Father, can we ask...?

You're a priest with a gun.

How normal is that in Crete?

How normal is in that in Greece?

I mean, you don't carry one, do you?

You don't normally carry a weapon with you

when you're ministering to your flock?

To really understand why guns mean so much to Cretans,

you have to look back to history.

For centuries, Crete's position in the Med

made it strategically vital.

It's been attacked and invaded endlessly

by the Romans, Arabs, Vandals, Slavs, the Ottomans.

But it's the Germans during the Second World War

that locals really remember.

When they invaded in 1941,

Cretans attacked them with old rifles and clubs.

The first time the Germans encountered serious

civilian resistance.

Father Andreas took me to his village, Anogia,

a base of the resistance movement.

From here, fighters attacked Nazi troops

and helped British agents kidnap a Nazi general,

acts for which the Germans took brutal revenge.

So, it's got an order from the German general commander of the

garrison of Crete, "We order the complete destruction of Anogia

"and the execution of every male person of Anogia

"who would happen to be within the village and around it

"within a distance of 1km."

Villagers were killed and every house in the village was burnt down

or blown up.

Goodness me.

That's your family name, is it?

Yes, and another. Oh...

More than ten members of Father Andreas' own family

were killed during the occupation.

The German occupation of Greece was savage.

Up to 300,000 Greeks died of starvation alone during the war.

What would happen if a person came here and defaced the flag?

So, they wouldn't leave the village alive?

What happened here during the war

still affects the way many Greeks feel about Germany.

Father Andreas took me to meet some younger men from the area.

These shepherds spend much of the year up here in the mountains.

Shepherds' huts like this were used as hideouts

by resistance fighters during the Nazi occupation.

Do you think it is, it is the land

that has made Cretans tough,

or is it events that have happened here?

The people of Crete fought heroically in the war.

Even after the Germans massacred locals,

the Cretans carried on fighting.

It's not surprising that Crete

and the whole of Greece is dominated by its past.

I headed to one of the most extraordinary

archaeological sites in the country.

The Palace of Knossos was the centre of the Minoan civilisation,

which was at its peak around 4,000 years ago.

Back then, around 100,000 people lived here.

It was Europe's first city.

Much of what was built here was constructed

1,000 years before the heyday of classical Greece.

Many scholars think this was the first great European civilisation.

Knossos and countless other wonders across the country

are why Greece is considered the bedrock of Western civilisation.

And it was very that sense of history that meant Europe

was desperate to incorporate Greece into the eurozone, the euro project.

Even the euro symbol was based on a Greek letter,

and that was to give a sense that this was the inevitable

consequence of the evolution of European civilisation.

So Europe wanted Greece inside the euro project.

The trouble was, many now think

Greece wasn't economically or politically ready.

When Greece gained entry to the single currency in 2001,

its economy was still relatively undeveloped.

Greece didn't actually meet the requirements for membership of the

euro, but Europe turned a blind eye.

I headed to Athens, Greece's capital, to see the consequences.

Once inside the euro,

Greece was able to borrow money at very low rates

from bankers who were only too keen to peddle huge loans.

The ancient city of Athens had huge sums spent on it as the country

went on an astonishing spree of borrowing and spending.

Successive governments spent as much money as they could get hold of.

Hospitals, roads and airports were all upgraded,

and the Athens subway got a costly makeover.

So, this is the very clean, very cool Athens subway system,

built for the 2004 Olympics at enormous cost,

you will not be surprised to know.

Very well air-conditioned down here.

It's like a fridge compared to the furnace outside.

It's got one very peculiar characteristic

that you notice immediately as a traveller from abroad,

which is that it's basically run on a sort of honesty system.

There are no turnstiles here.

You get your ticket over there and then you validate it,

but strangely, not everybody seems to get a ticket.

Many massive projects like this cost a fortune, were run badly and racked

up huge losses.

Between 2000 and 2010, government spending rocketed.

The public sector wage bill doubled.

Almost everyone wanted a piece of the pie.

Politicians and the media completely failed to alert the public

to what was going on as the country went a bit bonkers.

One of the biggest drains on the public purse

became the ludicrously generous pension system.

Millions of Greeks got caught up in this system, in this madness,

because hundreds of professions

managed to get themselves classified as arduous,

including hairdressers, musicians,

waiters, even TV presenters.

And that classification meant they could retire

much earlier than normal and with most of their final salary.

It's a fantastic idea, but how the hell do you pay for it?

Sadly, they couldn't.

People didn't pay their taxes, especially the wealthy,

and there was rampant corruption.

The Greek financial crisis really got going in 2009

when the government finally admitted its vast debt

was hundreds of billions of euros, much more than anyone realised.

The Greek government needed a bail-out,

and in return, European creditors demanded swingeing austerity.

Pensions and benefits for the poorest were cut.

Riots and strikes followed.

Unemployment in Greece has soared to 25%.

Among the young, it's even higher.

Goodness me, look at this place!

A fifth of the population now live below the poverty line.

I headed to the outskirts of Athens to a community of homes

made largely from shipping containers.

Many residents here rely on donations of bread to survive.

How would you describe the health of this community at the moment?

IN GREEK:

Irini and Petros live in a converted shipping container

with their children.

And this is the home?

So, you've got the shipping container there

and then you've built out from it?

IN GREEK:

But this is where you're sleeping in here? Can we have a look?

The entire family sleep in this tiny home.

So you can see you've got beds here, a couple of beds here.

Are people sleeping here?

IN GREEK:

Obviously, on planet Earth, I have seen worse,

but not, frankly, in Europe.

IN GREEK:

It's the poor and the weak who are suffering most in this crisis.

The rich elites are insulated in wealthy suburbs.

Meanwhile, the city of Athens has seen its budget slashed by 40% in

five years and some of its essential services are starting to crumble.

I went to visit a local landmark, a symbol of the rotten state of

the Greek establishment, a hill that's been steadily growing.

I can't quite believe this,

but I'm starting to think we might be driving up a mountain of waste.

Oh, my God!

6,000 tonnes of rubbish arrive here every day.

So, this is one of the largest landfill sites in the world.

Shambolic political leadership is a major reason

Greece has one of the lowest recycling rates in Europe.

The Greeks send 80% of their waste to landfill, double the EU average.

The most extraordinary thing happens here when a lorry goes past.

Just look, watch the earth underneath it.

Look at that!

The ground is bouncing, because the ground isn't earth.

It's compacted rubbish,

it's thousands of plastic bottles under there.

This site's an environmental disaster

that should have been closed long ago.

Greece has a national rubbish problem,

with scores of huge illegal dumps.

The government isn't forcing Greeks to recycle,

so, this mountain of rubbish just keeps getting bigger and bigger

and bigger.

The scale of this place is extraordinary.

It covers square miles, and it is said to be half a kilometre deep.

Imagine that!

This is not a country in Sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia.

This is Europe, 2015.

As the Greek establishment fails to resolve the country's problems

and austerity measures bite deep, people are getting angry.

I headed to an area of Athens called Exarcheia,

the heart of the city's protest movement.

I met up with an activist called Antonis.

If you think of the way democracy has, you know, been involved

and what has become of it in terms of nonsense and parliaments,

people with no respect to their voters and so on, it's very easy

to understand that there are some hundreds of people deciding

for millions.

So people say, no, we need to decide for ourselves!

The anger many people feel with the status quo has led to a growth in

support for the anarchist movement, which is centred in Exarcheia.

Riots and clashes with police have become common here.

Exarcheia's central square is a kind of spiritual home

for anarchists, and this area's played a huge role

in bringing change to Greece in the past.

Would you say, actually, some of the most important events

in modern Greek history happened around here, then?

It's a place that combines all that political thought

with all that history,

and it's very difficult for someone to see...

IN GREEK:

Can we ask what he's upset about?

Because of the camera.

We should, we should, we should, we should, we should...

- ...we should leave now. - OK.OK?

A few rich people control almost all of Greece's media,

ensuring even a foreign TV crew are hated by many here.

We've basically just been run out of Exarcheia by a couple of...

...teenage scumbags, frankly,

threatening to, threatening to kill our cameraman.

Is there a significant part of young people in Greece who are heading

in that direction, who are so angry, they're just raging against it?

Of course it is, of course it is, of course it is.

Because when you have all these pillars of the establishment

being torn away and being rotten,

whatever relates to the establishment is automatically a

target to attack.

- The enemy? - Of course.

That evening, I headed with Antonis to a different part of the city

where a protest march had been planned.

Yeah, we need to be careful with the camera now, guys.

And are we OK here or shall we stop?

- We should stop now. - OK.

The protest had already turned violent.

We're holding the camera down because there are, God knows who,

demonstrators with petrol bombs and a lot of young masked men.

The protesters headed up the street, starting fires.

Athens had seen a lot of this.

Normal life is going on around us and there's, you know,

even a bar on my left.

The cafes are open here.

So, now we're going to have a confrontation.

They're ready to do stuff.

Here we go!

Petrol bombs are being thrown.

EXPLOSION

CHANTING

Watch this side.

Those police are going in for an attack now.

Police running in, bottles being thrown.

PROTESTOR:Zito!

This is the sort of story of Athens at the moment, isn't it?

I mean, there is a lot of chaos

and lawlessness, in the conventional sense.

People are raging from all sides against everything, it appears.

The youth unemployment rate in Greece is more than 50%.

It's not hard to see why so many young Greeks are lashing out.

Many of the young are very politicised.

They are very angry and particularly angry at the older generation here

who they think have screwed up Greece.

SIRENS BLARE

If any one group's mostly to blame for Greece's situation,

I'd pin it on the wealthy elite who helped themselves to vast

portions from the Greek gravy train.

The crisis has hardly touched the rich.

The gap between wealthy and poor here has actually widened recently.

Greece now has the highest income inequality in Europe.

God, this is a nice-looking area.

Lovely houses.

Good smattering of pretty expensive vehicles.

A very nice place.

To get a sense of how much the elite have taken this country for a ride,

I wanted to take a look in their back gardens,

but they don't make it easy.

This is discreet wealth.

Lots of fencing and quite high bushes

slightly obscuring the view in.

It's difficult to get a sense of what lies behind,

but we have a way.

Since the crisis began,

the wealthy have been a bit more reluctant to show off their cash.

So, we're just going past a place here

that's got CCTV cameras outside and a security booth.

I'm just seeing, I want to go somewhere in the middle.

OK, OK.Somewhere on the left.

So, we go left here, then?

Yeah, left here.

Hopefully, we won't get spotted.

I think we're good here.

We're going to try and have a look at this area from up high...

...over the fences.

I'd enlisted the help of a drone pilot called Tassos.

This is already giving us

a quite extraordinary view of the neighbourhood.

The houses are massive!

Flipping 'eck!

Of course, there's no suggestion anyone here has done anything wrong.

Look at the size of that swimming pool!

So, just in that frame,

I can see one, two, three, four swimming pools.

Now, that is interesting because there is a tax

or effectively a tax on swimming pools in Greece,

and one of the revelations that came out during and after the financial

crisis was that only 300 households in this area, in Kifissia,

had admitted, declared,

that they had a swimming pool and paid the proper fee.

And when investigators started looking,

they started to realise there were considerably more.

MUSIC: Summer Holiday by Cliff Richard and The Shadows

♪ We're all going on a summer holiday

♪ No more working for a week or two... ♪

Look at this! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

11, 12, 13, 14, 15!

More are coming in.

Looks like every house here has got a pool.

The estimate now is that there are 20,000 in this area.

So, just a few hundred households of those tens of thousands

were paying the appropriate tax to the state.

When the economic crisis hit the country, the response of many rich

Greeks wasn't exactly patriotic.

They shifted billions out of the country,

buying property in London or stuffing it into tax havens.

The reaction of many of the elite who live in this sort of area

wasn't, "All right, fair cop, we haven't paid the tax, we will now."

No! What they did was go and cover them

with artificial turf or plywood to disguise them.

The financial crisis here exposed the many failings of the state.

It's clear to me Greece needs profound political and social change

to recover and thrive.

And now, the traditional ruling parties here,

which mismanaged the country and the economy so badly for so long,

have been thrown out of power.

Greece is trying to move on.

I've come to the end of the first leg of my journey around Greece.

It's been a real surprise for me.

The place is more beautiful and the people are more passionate

and angry than I realised.

I'm really looking forward to the next leg of my journey,

which is going to take me to the rugged, mountainous north.