The BBC’s Today Programme has an interesting interview with an ex-pat theartre group based on the Costa del Sol. Listen to the programme (Real Player required), and let us know what you think.
Are these people the scurge of the Costa del Sol? Is it OK to move to Spain and make little or no effort to learn the language?
Join the debate in the Notes from Spain Forum!
Londinense
3 Aug 06 at 2:18 pm
Well, I have very strong feelings when I hear attitudes like that as Spaniard living in the UK and more or less working hard and fighting everyday with the new language and culture.
What the very f…, f…, f…, f…, and f…., are these Gentuza doing in Spain?
I know that it was quite fashionable for British Criminals in the Thatcherian Era to fly themselves right away from Wandsworth to the Costa del Sol when they were released or that they fleed to Spain to evade the British Law. All right, they were criminals, gentuza even. See the film ‘The Business by Nick love’
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0429715/
But, what should I say about wealthy people, many of them educated with university degrees that don’t bother to behave as conquerors just because they have money.
What do you recommend us to do, Ben? Should we do like the Germans or the Corsicans do, burning their houses? Should we spitt them on the face?
May be they should find another place where they are not so foreigners, please, go to Australia, forget Spain, for ever!
Edith
3 Aug 06 at 6:26 pm
Hola Londinense,
The people in the theater group didn’t sound like gentuza to me, they actually seemed to be nice folks. IMO, many pensionados have a problem because they are already well past middle age when they move to Spain, and this means they have become too old to become truly fluent in another language. On the other hand, this shouldn’t be an excuse for not trying at all and the interviewee who hardly knew a phrase or two after having lived in Spain for six years probably doesn’t give a toss. How someone can live in a foreign country without trying to learn the language is just beyond me. But the Brits are not the only ones to blame – many German and Dutch expats also cling together, and they are not always willing to learn Spanish, either.
Elderly people are often more prone to conservatism, i.e. they are not always willing to try out new foods or to adapt to new surroundings. They may be another reason why many pensionados do not really fit in well. The irony being, of course, that some of the very same people who always complain about immigrants in their home country, behave in exactly the same way by clinging to their own language, food, and customs while living in Spain!
Ben
3 Aug 06 at 8:19 pm
Londoniense, you are a bit harsh really, these Brits are pouring money into the Spanish economy and at the end of the day this is Europe, and people can live wherever they like. You choose to live in the UK, probably for economic reasons, they choose to live there for social and climatic reasons. So what? I don’t think the millions of Spaniards on the Costa del Sol that make money off these expats would like to burn the Brits’ houses as they would immediately go into a huge economic depression…
greytop
4 Aug 06 at 10:34 am
Comment from English expat of my aquaintance “I won’t go to the free (i.e. paid for by ayuntamiento) Spanish lessons because they only speak Spanish & won’t explain things in English”
Londinense
4 Aug 06 at 11:19 am
Spaniards living in the Costa del Sol don’t behave like animals because they have in the blood ‘vive y deja vivir’. Therefore they might not like the expats at all but they can live side by side with them and just ignore them.
I wonder what would be the reaction of the British people of the newly sunny English South if the situation were the reverse. Rich Spaniards taken over the best places, being noisy and eating their oily food… Well, I know, something like the Brixton riots…
Expats are not to blame, Spaniards are to blame for their ‘pasotismo’ and neil willingness to confront these ‘invadors’. At least they don’t have children…
You might be right when you say that they make money out of them, that might be the reason why they allow their missbehavior. But to say that they would go into a huge economic depression is a litte bit too much.
Edith, you are wise! How right you are when you say that the same people that speak about ‘íœberfremdung’ in their countries try to repeat the same patterns when they reside abroad. Really interesting.
Age is not an excuse not to do anything intelectual. It may be difficult if you want to perform physically, but learning the language of the country you live in is a MUST and a JOY.
I chose to live in the UK, not for economic reasons, I could work all over Europe, but for sentimental reasons and I will be here for a while, although I’m quite sure that this is not going to be my place of burial. I like very much the UK for many reasons, I enjoy my life here and appreciate the huge opportunity of this, as you very right say, Europe and I add, OUR EUROPE.
The European Union is the best incomplete and succesful experiment that the ages have seen. The European people of our generation, I mean 0 to 40 years, really see this COMMON HOME as one but that is the case ‘in the Continent’ not in the British Isles. The youth here is as ignorant and not interested in Europe as their parents were. That’s a pity and that is what makes Britain so boring and predictable, sometimes.
Ben, don’t take my words so literal. I’m harsh only ‘de boquilla’. If Spaniards begin to burn houses or begin to be openly racist or rude to foreigners as they do in other parts of Europe, I would be more than ashamed. But that won’t happen, I’m sure. If after the 11M bombings no moroccan shop or moroccan national was hurt, hit, harmed or blamed, no other nationality has anything to fear in Spain. Spaniards approach to foreigners is what you have recently seen on Las Tejitas beach in Tenerife and I’m proud of it.
Edith
4 Aug 06 at 1:50 pm
I still believe those people in the BBC interview were not a bad sort. They are not like those hoi polloi who descend on Spain’s beaches every summer to bother others with their drinking, shouting and puking.
Some people just do not seem able to adapt themselves to foreign surroundings and I don’t agree with that attitude at all, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they are antisocial. I know an elderly Spanish man, a man of very humble peasant origin who has been living in Holland for more than forty years, and who doesn’t speak a word of Dutch… at least he refuses to speak it. Unlike most Spanish people he’s a bit scruffy. He often frequents my favorite café and he always addresses the waiters in Spanish. BTW, he only speaks a Spanish dialect which I hardly understand, let alone the waiters who only know a few standard phrases in Spanish. I addressed him once and he told me he didn’t Holland, which left me quite dumbfounded because I wouldn’t want to spend my old age in a country which I didn’t like. His behavior is annoying to say the least, but he’s not a threat to anyone. He probably worked hard all his life, doing the kind of work the Dutch didn’t want to do like so many other ‘guest laborers’ from the Mediterranean.
It’s true that the Dutch people can be a bit cold and aloof, but his isolation seems to be the result of his own actions. Bottom line, some people are just like that and you’ll find them in many countries. They suffer from tunnel vision and probably can’t help themselves.
Londinense
4 Aug 06 at 2:16 pm
Well, the case of that peasant is quite different of the wealthy, educated people like the kind that would be part of a theater group.
I couldn’t ever blame a bengali farmer who emigrates to England and leaves his country without education, even illiterate in his own language. How can he possible learn English or any other language properly? He’s got enough with the daily fight to survive.
But, sorry about that, the expats are inexcusable. Yo es que no los puedo ni ver.
Pauline Mitchell
9 Aug 06 at 4:56 pm
I cannot understand how anybody can set up residence in any country without at least learning a little of the language and customs of that country. For one thing, they are cocooned from the life around them, and for another, what happens when they become ill, or have a crisis when they need to speak the language?
But more importantly, it is so rude to take advantage of the good things offered by the chosen country without giving back the courtesies of everyday life. It is not difficult to
master the basic phrases; all you have to do is listen and repeat them!
L.Wallis
8 Jul 08 at 11:11 am
Does anybody know if Patrick Adams is living in Spain voluntarily, of if he cannot set foot in England?
Juanjo
8 Jul 08 at 1:27 pm
Read the seminal academic study on this subject “The British on the Costa del Sol- Transnational Identities and Local Communities” (Karen O’Reilly, 2000) ISBN 1-84142-047-6.
The BBC program exemplifies what Dr. O’Reilly found out in the 90s.
Wolfgang Brand
28 Nov 08 at 2:30 pm
Londinense
Where did you get the idea from Germans would burn houses when in a different country? Watching too many war movies? We don’t burn them we buy them nowadays.
I am German, and actually most of us do make the effort to learn the language. Not because of courtesy or respect, just because its smarter.
Try to get a phoneline in Spain, or argue with a supplier about prices or worse. guarantee issues and you know what I mean.
For me, somebody who moves permanantly to another country and refuses to learn the language, is either totally ignorant , an arrogant nacionalist who thinks everybody has to speak English just because, or is just plain stupid and hasn’t got the intelectual capacity to learn a language.
Regards
Wolfgang Brand