Clicking with the Spanish
I’ve been in Spain for just about a week now, and it’s quite an adjustment.
Moving from France to Spain is a larger leap than England to France. Equally, I am trying to make the transition from the workplace to the classroom.
My first impressions have been formed, and they tell you more about me than they do the locals.
Principally, I feel much more foreign here than I ever did in France. In Nice, my nationality was more like a funny hat that I would bring out and wear from time to time. Here, it’s a lot more permanent simply because of genetics; I don’t (as far as I know) look even the remotest bit Spanish, the locals react as such.
Even thus, my identity is still a bit confused. In Nice, I was so connected through my job to the town and the region PACA that I feel much more at home speaking with the French students than I do the English.
Then when you add my personality into the mix it becomes even more complex. Friend and colleague Jack Penrose, well known for his linguistic elegance and amateur poetry (rumoured) described me as “someone who flushes before he’s finished pissing.” I would translate that phrase as “time-efficient”. My life is divided into hour-long blocks of time; I enjoy darting from one meeting to another, getting from A to B. I love my Blackberry, I hate downtime.
This “time-efficiency” trait is a direct contradiction with the Spanish way of life.
Everything is closed, all the time, and nobody cares about anything. If it is agreed to meet at 1200, may god help the person who turns up at 1210, particularly if they find we’ve already left.
At the risk of being compared to Hugh Abbot, I find it’s much more difficult to click with Spanish people as we don’t seem to have very much in common. Hopefully that will change once classes start and I get involved with the PSOE (that the Spanish Labour / Socialist party… you know… the one with Zapatero in it.)
Of course it’s early to start making wild generalisations, but there really is a key difference in the mood of this part of my placement. In France, I was integrated and absorbed in the culture, ethic and identity. In Spain, I feel like I am looking at society through a lens.
February 1st, 2010 at 11:58 am
Amateur poetry? Do elaborate please!
I believe the cleaned up (and more accurate) version was
“Christ, you´re the type of guy who flushes the toilet before he´s finished urinating”
Although looking back, perhaps I did say “pissing”…
[Reply]
February 1st, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Haha me and Alex, thought that it might be a bit of culture shock. The amount of days where Alex’s university was just shut for such random reasons (eg the conception of christ)
[Reply]
Hadleigh Roberts Reply:
February 2nd, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Your comments are always a good laugh Bev. “Random reason like the conception.” Keep them coming!
[Reply]
Bevan Reply:
February 5th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Ok I know its not random for their catholic society. However I do find it rather inconsistent, Conception in september, birth in december…hmmm. It kind of makes you wonder, why some people don’t take the idea that christmas is a pagan festival rather than catholic seriously. Then there is the idea of celebrating the life of every saint, usually with a day off. You start to realise why Spain is rather unproductive for a western european country, compared to say the efficiency at which Germany works at or even Britain for that matter.
Either way, yeah Alex even got fed up of some of the problems with laziness and lack of organisation in the university (I am sure you would be even more annoyed at it). For example, the erasmus tutor person only being available twice a week (or something along those lines) which isn’t helpful when you have a bunch of forms to hand in.
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February 2nd, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Remember Hadleigh, you have only been in Spain for a week. I felt exactly the same in september: irritated by siesta times and shop closures; a distinct lack of punctuality (apparently there’s a 15 minutes ‘cortesy period’ of lateness, i.e. the idea of being on time doesn’t exist); and staring because I’m clearly – as you put it ‘genetically’ – different.
However, after a while I realised that not all of Madrid is like this. The big chains and many stores are ‘abierto a mediodía’, no-one is really madrilenyo (massive latino and eastern-european populations) and the Spanish just stare at everything.
Good luck for this semester!
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February 8th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
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