Yesterday I linked to an article in the Telegraph by a young woman who didn’t like all the smoke she had to put up with while pregnant in Spain. The article mirrored sentiments of my own and, importantly, those of my wife Marina when she was pregnant here in Madrid.
What I found shocking, was the ferocity of the comments left on the Telegraph website, after the above-mentioned article (they were almost Daily Mail bad!) Most were along the lines of ‘stop complaining – if you don’t like it, leave Madrid – it’s not your country, so deal with it’.
But here’s the point. If the expat who wrote the article complains about the smoking in Madrid, she is lambasted as a moaning foreigner with no right to do so… no matter how long she’s been here…
If Marina, a Spaniard, moans about exactly the same thing, no-one would doubt that it’s her right to do so.
So the question is, how long do you have to live somewhere, be it Madrid, Sydney, or Bangkok, before you really do form part of the framework of your new home country, before you really can call it your own, and thus have the right to make the exact same complaints as the locals?
Just thinking out loud, but it’s a tricky one…
Hollis
15 Dec 09 at 2:23 pm
As an expatriate I’m not sure you ever earn the right to “complain” per se but “constructive criticism” should be welcome. Drawing from both England and Spain you offer a unique perspective towards envisioning a better country, by weighing what works and what doesn’t from each. Speaking up about how to improve a country or a government, a building community, or even the health of the air in a bar … is what makes the world go around. I applaud you for continuing to question and push for a better Spain. Like bullfighting, smoking in bars may not go away completely but I foresee big changes for both. Soon. Well OK, mañana, but still … keep speaking up Ben!
Mike CJ
15 Dec 09 at 2:37 pm
I’m not sure you ever earn that right in the eyes of the kind of biggots who write comments like that.
It makes me laugh that they would believe (as I’m a Brit) that I have those rights in UK, despite the fact that I’ve lived less than half my life there!
Tom
15 Dec 09 at 2:47 pm
In general it depends on whether you’re saying something that people might disagree with. Say something like “I love paella” or “Madrid’s a lovely city” and most Spaniards will agree with you (always providing a few caveats along the way, naturally).
It is only when you criticise something that someone holds dear that they start the ad hominem (and other fallacious) attacks. So criticising an article in Libertad Digital leads to the “you’re not even from here, what could you possibly know?” defence.
What I’ve observed is that even some expats here have tried to pull the same trick “Come back when you’ve been here for 10 years and tell me that”.
The truth is that people resort to these arguments when logic escapes them…. In the end, if you live here, work here and pay your taxes here then you should be entitled to say what you think, just like any worker.
Aloriel
15 Dec 09 at 3:12 pm
Hey, right now I’m also an expat in Düsseldorf, Germany, and I find here about the same law we have in Spain, however I thought they had a more restrictive one.
Anyway, being a Spaniard and a smoker I just can agree with you and Michaela, it sucks. We should have more restrictive laws, not only for pregnant women, for kids and so on, we really should, and a real one.
Cheers.
Justin Roberts
15 Dec 09 at 5:35 pm
If you live in a country and pay all your taxes then logically you have a right to complain from the off.
Smokers, a minority even in Spain, have no special right to pollute the air everyone else has to breathe, particularly indoors. I could not give a continental if someone wants to smoke, that’s their choice but as long as they go outside or somewhere else and take their foul and noxious fumes with them.
pippa
15 Dec 09 at 6:13 pm
I am a Spaniard living in Spain now, and only this morning had a massive argument with a smoker in a bar which is my local, but very small and the smoke builds up very quickly. The owners are hoping for the law to come quickly and this person started saying that it was against the freedom of the smokers, that they pay more tax than the non-smokers and similar nonsense. I had to stop the argument because you cannot discuss things with bigoted people like that.
Ashleigh
15 Dec 09 at 6:16 pm
I agree with most of the people here…never, unless, of course, you are speaking to ANOTHER foreigner. LOL
bill (Legazpi)
15 Dec 09 at 6:35 pm
Ben – I have a feeling that such barrages of extremely aggresive comments often appear because one “extremist” gets wind of an online article they don’t like, and they immediately tell their “extremist” mates, often via forums dedicated to promoting their “extremist” views. It therefore gives a misleading impression that many people share their “extremist” views, when the reality is somewhat different.
xoanwahn
15 Dec 09 at 7:07 pm
According to some natives of just about any country, you never have the right to complain unless you can magically make yourself stop being a foreigner (citizenship may or may not count depending on the people you’re dealing with). Still, if you live somewhere and you form an active part of the society, then it is your society too and you have a right to your opinion. Others have the right to ignore your opinion. I complain about Spain all the time. I like it here but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. If someone has a problem with my complaints, that’s fine. If they feel like telling me to go back to my own country, I can just wave my shiny DNI in their faces and that will be that.
Rai
15 Dec 09 at 9:06 pm
I’d say that from the moment you come back for your second vacation, or the moment you sign a lease, you have a “right” to complain about anything you want.
As with any argument, there will always be people who would rather avoid the actual topic being considered and they will always find a distraction to avoid logic, whether it be circular-thinking, ad hominem attacks, rabbit holes, etc. (all of which say more about the people who bring them to the discussion, than they do about the discussion itself.)
Diego
16 Dec 09 at 12:40 am
My Spanish Mom has lived in Venezuela for 50 odd years, she can still get the “go home treatment” once in a while, heck i´ve even gotten it a few times myself and i was born and raised there!
The sad thing is after 50 years she feels a lot more Venezuelan than Spanish.
ValenciaSon
16 Dec 09 at 1:25 am
Ben, pay them no mind, it’s the nicotine talking. I think if there were something else they could latch onto to deflect your criticism they would. Ignore the the nicotine speak and hopefully the minister of health delivers on her promise.
Moscow
16 Dec 09 at 7:17 am
Never. My experience as an Ex-pat in different countries is that you never earn that right, because no matter what you do you will always be a foreigner. Sad but true. It might be different in countries built my emigrants (i.e. the USA, Brazil, Australia) but in countries with a long established local culture with ancient roots (all of Europe, Asia and Africa) you are always a foreigner if you weren’t born and raised there, and you better learn to keep mum about certain things. Sorry if this depresses readers.
Richard
16 Dec 09 at 1:26 pm
I think that you have completely gone off at a tangent here with this one, although i maybe in danger of doing the same but this has wound me up a little.
Having lived in Madrid for 3 and a half years i can honestly say that, aside from a slight tongue in cheek jibe i felt, since day one, completely accepted within its society. Not to say that i did not experience cultural differences but these things soon grew to become the things that i actually miss now. So in that sense i can accept that Madrid, thus Spain, has been a little slow on the implementation of a totalitarian non smoking ban. Compared with some its neighbouring countries this just goes hand in hand with the liberalness of the country and especially the attitude and spirit of the Madreleños. We are talking here about a city which only in recent history was ruled under a strict dictatorship which could have understandably stripped away at the rich personality yet it has prevailed. I believe this can only be accounted for by the unique pueblo like feel you have in a city of 3.2 million that has since fuelled ¨la movida¨ in every form of is interpretation and understanding. From the blur of honking traffic in gran via, the large botellones in la Latina, perpetual drum banging in Retiro, the sometimes almost derelict hidden bars in Lavapiés, the dragging coats of fur and mustard trousers in Salamanca, make the backdrop for all of these amazing and interesting people that you meet all over the city. Right or Wrong, indifferent, this is what i came to know and love as Madrid.
Its almost the same way i feel of London, but i think the attributes lie differently, perhaps more for professional opportunity and a sense of being in the centre of it all but certainly not because i am English, what ever that word means these days anyway. Up until the recession we have seen the good old BRITS go over in their droves to get a second home in Spain, typically down south and learn (literally) a couple of words, get sun burnt, drink sangria, eat chips in pubs called the Red Lion run by people called Roy and Val and then what else… oh yeah that’s right, complain about the Spanish. Lazy, organised, slow, behind the times, too laid back, cowboys or even as Victoria Beckham ridiculously said, smelling of Garlic! Now stupidity enjoys its own company and such dense remarks can only incite the blatant reply of questioning why not return promptly to whence they came. I mean would we be as tolerant in England as the Spanish are to us? In the same vein, knowing of how wildly Spanish is spoken, being the 3rd most used language in the word, yet i wonder how many Spaniards have felt they could rock up in Englands fine shores with limited knowledge of English. Believing they can just bumble through or if all else fails by just resort to shouting DOS CERVEZAS AMIGO in the knowledge that the wide language must be understood everywhere when yelled slowly. Can you imagine what would be done in England if that happened, the Sun would drive a hate campaign while more “high brow” papers would put out over the top moral pieces on how we have let our rich history slip away as we merge into a faceless Europe.
Madrid though is different, this is not somewhere to come and hide you have to be seen and heard or else you just will not get what its all about. You are joining part of a great rich community that has a big impact on your life. Its exactly the reason why so many people go there and just fall in love with it enough to want to stay just one more year or to be inspired enough to feel the need to share it through many of the modern Internet networking forms. Since leaving i sincerely miss the place and not because its in Spain, but because it is Madrid. Its the people that make the place not the other way round, so i include and mean just that and i have far too many beautiful memories there to cheapen it with Mr EXpat views. Its the people who live there from whatever country, los madrileños, that are in this amazing environment thus being at their most creative, ambitious, confident, focused, whatever, this is for me the heart of Madrid and when you feel that you belong to it. So as soon as you are registered and empadronado you have a voice to change things as democracy and even in this case there are heaps of restaurants to go in Madrid where smoke will not be an issue. I really don’t know what run of bad luck this woman was having over there but really, jámas, nunca have i seen a taxi driver or bus driver!!!! light up a fag on the job. Pure drivel.
This article is heavily biased with a slanted view at a topic that will always provoke a heated split reaction. It was met with exactly that with people expressing their opinions on the boring mañana digs at the Spanish masked within a warped view of a pregnant woman’s misery in a non smokers hell of Madrid. Its the same banal crap that’s main object is probably so everyone in blighty can give them a jolly good old slap on the back and aren´t the Spanish so dirty and disgusting and aren´t we great living here and getting all the smokers outside so quick. If you really feel above the so called Daily Mail readers is this really your ¨high brow¨ article to show your superiority of them? This is exactly the shoddy kind of journalism that gives such false impressions and probably goes just that bit further to dent the already heavily damaged spanish tourism with the wide audience that it serves. I mean there are a few stereotypical remarks but that’s understandable with the undertone being almost borderline belligerent so it ruffled the feathers it wanted to with its comparison of ¨Vickie Pollard¨ charectors and blase attitudes to polite requests. Also the majority, if not all, of the go home comments were made and stated clearly by Brits of which i see as being completely different as if they were from Spanairds.
There is a saying that i have grown to like in my short time in OZ and thats “never let the truth get in way of a good yarn” and i think with that piece the shoe definitely fits. I was in Mexico City the day the Swine Flu epidemic exploded with a Mexican and Two Spanish people and the world wide pandemonium that was caused through in factual information and blatant lies reflected nothing of what was happening in the city. Nor of general public opinion only fueling some very distressing phone calls home and kicking a country that is already down even further.
The media is so polluted these days its hard to fathom the facts from the sensational half truths. I think this is why blogs are so popular. They inject a much needed truth, or sense of realism back into our lives, however this can become be done badly and be just too mundane for some and that is why only the well written and formulated blogs, such as this one, are eagerly followed. The ones that start and remain a labour of love often develop to reward as i truly believe that one cannot forge true passion as it is infectious. I for one have found great delight in listening to the podcasts and reading the opinions of a fellow Madrileno in these delicate times with la crisis back home (as Madrid is both where my home and heart remain) and am interested in even the slightest development however trivial. So i think that you should perhaps present a more balanced view of what are the actual possibilities of dining in a smoke free environment because that sounds like a very different Madrid to the one that left 8 months ago.
I personally don’t think there is are any more xenophobes in Madrid, nor Spain for that matter, as there are in the rest of the world. It just depends what you class yourself as, an Expat or a Madrieño and that is a fundamental difference. So in answer to your question, who has the right to complain. Everyone. Who has the right to slag off a system or society offering no form of solution or rectification. Again everyone, but if you do it as an Expat, write in English and have it published in a British focused website. Really what do you expect?
Also i suppose then you have to ask yourself not only when do you deserve the right to complain but when should you exercise the right to defend.
Keep up the good work, i really do enjoy your blog.
Richardksa
16 Dec 09 at 4:32 pm
Sr. Jimenez might have a fight on her hands: See http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j8WWOScDYn82YbD2XDERi9gvhbAg
To answer the main point, for those of us who live here, Spain, warts and all, is our home. We are part of the community as as such do have a voice and there os nothing wrong with using it. But expats should beware of comparing it with “back home” wherever that might be. Remember, you left “back home” to come here and if just once you utter that phrase, “Well, back home we would have done …” then you should rethink your choice.
Tom
16 Dec 09 at 4:40 pm
Ben’s question was about complaining, not whether you smoke or not. I rather think that question’s been done to death.
Londoner_at_heart
16 Dec 09 at 4:48 pm
I agree with most of the comments here. Like Bill pointed out, those comments are clearly fuelled by nicotine adiction and the expat component is just an extra silly argument to resort to when logic and science fails you (or rather when you refuse to listen to them). Go into any smokers vs non-smokers discussion online and you’ll find the same kind of comments. Literally using the same arguments, including “if you don’t like it here go elsewhere (other bar, other restaurant, other country).
Regarding the right to complaint, well. I nagged about the London underground from day one! Hell yeah. And I nag about stuff in Spain too. I also praise whatever I like about each city I’ve lived in. Who can tell you you’ve “earned” the right to have an opinion? You might not be elegible to vote, but that doesn’t mean you can’t speak your mind. As long as you’re respectful and fair, of course, but that really is common sense and applies to complaining about your city, the government, another person, etc. Otherwise you’re just bigoted, narrow-minded or just an idiot. And again, who can stop you from being just that. At the end of the day both the UK and Spain are democracies and we have -thankfully- freedom of speech. So let’s all debate and speak our minds. Worst case scenario, it is healthier than not doing it, even if we end up hating each other’s guts like in those smokers vs non-smokers forums!
And, Richard, I have to say Poss got it wrong. Spain doesn’t smell of garlic. Sadly it stinks of second hand smoke. Sorry to destroy your romantic view of anything-goes-movida-Madrid, we’ve had enough of that sorry excuse being used to justify the huge damage being made to public health by a minority’s vice and their habit of not caring about the consequences for those around them.
Ben Curtis
17 Dec 09 at 1:04 pm
Thanks for all the comments so far. The main consensus seems to be that one does have every right to complain if you a) pay taxes in your new country b) feel that it is your home (or just feel you have a right to!), but that you certainly can’t expect your new host countrymen agree with your right to do so!
Carlton Nettleton
19 Dec 09 at 4:46 am
10 years. That earns you the right to call yourself a local.
Chris
20 Dec 09 at 3:24 pm
Thank God there’s hope for Spain to join the civilized world soon. The optional smoking ban approach definitely hasn’t worked.
The 60% decrease in heart attacks after smoking bans should be enough in any rational society.
The “go home” way of ending arguments tends to be the ultimate sore loser here in Europe, so I don’t take it too seriously.
Bip
20 Dec 09 at 8:11 pm
I don’t think its about nationality: its about rabid-minded smokers who refuse to consider the facts, accept the right of others not to endure their stench, lie about its health hazards, and post tiresome unworkable nonsense about segregated areas etc.
I’ve seen it at UK based debates re. the ban – people showing precisely why the ban was necessary, when addicted smokers are so irrational, selfish and stupid (“there’s no evidence to show” blah blah blah besides which the STINK of smoking is reason enough to object to it).
MJChama
21 Dec 09 at 7:48 pm
I personally subscribe to the Toqueville school of cross-cultural criticism. It’s healthy to engage in civil discourse across all boundaries. And history, one way or the other, will be the judge. In the meantime, the U.S. has been living with an almost complete smoking ban for a few years now and no one, yet, has died from it.