Last week’s post about Racism in Spain has already generated over 100 comments, pretty good going for this site I can tell you. The point is it aroused a lot of passions, and quite rightly so, racism is just plain wrong.

But without defending racism for a minute, the one thing I learned from reading through the comments is that we have to be very careful about judging what happens here in Spain based on pre-conceived notions we bring from elsewhere.

I am not, I want to repeat, excusing what happened last week at the race track. But it is fascinating to note that quite a few Spanish commentators weren’t overly concerned by the application of boot-polish to cheeks to represent someone with different coloured skin, something which is just totally unheard of nowadays in, for example, the UK.

Yet in a country where 10 years ago there was hardly a black face to be seen, and where Moors and Christians fiestas along the coast still see whole armies of mock-up Arabs being chased out of town by the mock-up Christians, is it any wonder that a little bit of confusion now arises as important social changes creep in?

In the racism case I think it’s clear where right and wrong lies. If the person who any given attack is directed towards is likely to take offense or feel discriminated against as a result of that action, and the perpetrators are aware of that risk or doing it for that very reason, then it’s pretty obviously wrong.

But what about, say, Spanish comedy. It’s crap, isn’t it? Torrente aside, I have had occasion to think so. But hang on a minute, all the Spanish people are laughing!

And all Spanish waiter’s are rude, aren’t they? Ah, that’s right, they don’t have to be over-the-top nice to anyone. A reasonable base wage means that they don’t need to live from the tips that they generally never receive. If they’re having a bad day and want to be grumpy, then they have every right to be! Bar work often sucks, and if you don’t get paid more for being in an outrageously “Have a nice day!!” good mood…

So I guess the question is, who sets the cultural barometer? Who or what defines what is right, wrong, funny, or rude? And what I’d really like to know is, where else have you seen that barometric clash on your travels through Spain and Spanish culture? What just isn’t right, or doesn’t seem to work… and is it the fault of Spain or the Spanish, or, hang on a minute, may things are just judged differently here, and that’s OK?

Apologies for the unusually long post. Your comments will, as always, be very much appreciated.

The Spanish do not suffer fools gladly. Spanish women do not suffer fools in any way whatsoever! They know instinctively and immediately when someone is messing them around and they will not stand for it. Examples include setting a bill straight when a surly waiter has added one too many coca colas, dealing with someone who has pushed into a queue, and whipping useless customer service reps into shape when a phone call isn’t going to plan. Telefonica hasn’t sorted out your internet connection in time? Got a Spanish girlfriend/flatmate? Get her on the case!

Now this is by no means meant as criticism. As long as you aren’t on the sharp end of a determined Spaniard it’s a marvel to behold, and in my case, Marina’s abilities in this field have saved us hundreds if not thousands of Euros and sorted out endless problems.

But what is it that makes the Spanish woman so strong? It has been suggested that it’s a back-lash against years of macho oppression by the chauvinist Franco regime, or perhaps it’s just a Spanish version of feminism. It is almost certainly a reaction to the fact that Spanish women know they have to put up a good fight in a country where they still face promotion glass ceilings at work, and are usually paid one third less than their male counterparts, even in multinational companies.

Whatever the case, as you get deeper into Spanish culture, you will often hear reference to a person’s carácter, a word that doesn’t refer to personality as a whole, but that fiesty bit in all of us that wells up to sort out annoyances. “¡Qué carácter tienes, macho!“, Marina tells me when I’m in a bad mood, to which I’ll reply, “Carácter, me???”

But Carácter gets money knocked off bills and internet connections installed faster, and keeps husbands doing their share of the work in the kitchen. I hope this post celebrates the famous national carácter, but I’m still left wondering, will I get into trouble when my Spanish wife reads it?

Wow, Wednesday’s post on how the Spanish don’t tend to use please and thank you too much is looking like the most commented on post ever here at Notes from Spain, partly due to the incensed rantings of one who names himself simply ‘Spaniard’. Over at La-Madrid Carl asks “Am I alone in noticing that posts that are even remotely critical of the Spanish – just drives them crazy?”

No, you are not alone, funnily enough I noticed that too! I remember a post about Spanish stereotypes at the Big Chorizo blog that had the locals hopping mad and throwing insults around like, well, like tomatoes at the Tomatina fiesta! Meanwhile, at Thoughts from Galicia, Colin Davies notes “I’m occasionally taken to task by Spanish readers for being too negative about Spain” (and then goes on to tell two of the nicest Spain stories I have heard for a long time!)

So, the question is, are the Spanish very good at taking criticism? …and I think the answer is often No. Not when it comes to issues of national character and particularly not when the criticism seems to come from outsiders. I think this is the key. While many of the Spanish are happy to moan for hours about politicians, corruption, the obras in Madrid, electrical black outs, whatever, when a foreigner dares to say anything that appears even remotely critical about Spain, you can be sure there will be a ‘Spaniard’ who will turn up and fly totally off the handle. The fact that said foreigner has lived here for years and clearly loves their adoptive country becomes irrelevant - criticism shall not be allowed.

What does that mean? I don’t know, but I know that comments by the likes of our friend ‘Spaniard’ clearly don’t do the Spanish any favours. There are lots of ‘Spaniards’ in Spain, but let’s not assume they are all so over-sensitive. What do you think?

A while back we looked at different ways in which the Spanish might be defined as rude, an accusation that is commonly held against them. It is time to revisit the subject, and consider the often cited case of please and thank you.

Many visitors to Spain, and people that spend a while living in the country, can’t understand why the Spanish don’t appear to use por favor, please, and gracias, thank you, as often as say the British or the Americans do in everyday conversation. The result is that a simple request for the salt to be passed at the dinner table can seem to be rude when it isn’t accompanied by a ‘please’ at the end. Ever seen a Spaniard say please or thank you to a waiter, a barman or shop keep? You are most likely to hear something along the lines of ‘Give me a coffee’, or ‘Can you bring us the bill?’, with not a ‘please’ in sight.

The Spanish will argue that we, the anglo’s, use please and thank you so much as to make these words almost redundant, and that when they speak, the ‘please’ is usually implied. Lexical crutches such as anda, or cuando puedas, which might be added to a request for a coffee, or the bill, certainly do infer friendliness, but often these are forgotten as well.

Does this make the Spanish rude, or just different? I suspect the answer is the latter, but sometimes, when you find yourself on the end of a particularly direct and ‘please’-less request, it seems like they are as rude as hell. So, all I can do is echo a request that, paradoxically, is often used by the Spanish when they think someone could have shown a bit more respect: can we have un poquito de por favor? A little bit more please.

Thanks.

OK, it’s time to wrap up this ‘are the Spanish rude?’ thing. I think there are three more major points to cover, so let’s start today with parking…

Aparcar de oído, to park by ear, means reversing into a parking space until you hear, or more accurately ‘feel’, your rear bumper whack into the car behind, then going forward until you shunt the car in front, and repeating as necessary until the car more or less fits into the space provided. This method of parking, commonly seen on the streets of Spain, is obviously a lot quicker than the over-polite pussyfooting around you see in other countries (e.g. the UK) as drivers carefully ease themselves into empty spots in terror of being spotted nudging the car behind. And anyway, what are those big bumpers for, if not for a bit of harmless bumping? Rude? Not really. Lazy perhaps… and you can bet no-one in Spain is paying extra cash for those pointless systems that use radar or sonar or some such nonsense to tell you how close you are getting to the vehicle behind when reversing.

However, what IS rude is parking de oído when the owner of the car behind you is sitting in their car! It’s not as if I spend a lot of my time on the streets of Madrid doing just that, but on several occasions that I’ve been waiting for my other half to dash in an out of a shop, I have been interrupted from a brief siesta by a seismic shift of the whole vehicle as some idiot in a car twice the size of the available space in front of me seems to try to push my car backwards to open up the necessary extra room.

P.S. If you think this all sounds a bit unlikely, 80% of the trees planted on the streets of Valladolid (and you really know you can speak Spanish when you can pronounce that town properly!), have been damaged by fine de oído parking techniques.

P.P.S. Walk down any street in Spain and look at the sides of the cars parked on the road and you will clearly see that some people don’t always go bumper to bumper. Without doubt, parking de oído against the sides/doors/wings of other cars is definitely, 100%, 10 out of 10 Rude!

P.P.P.S. I don’t think this is Spain, but it might as well be (warning, very very very excruciating video):

A few of the comments on my last post about just how respectful the Spanish are, claimed that the Spaniards are, in fact, just plain rude. A major complaint was that the Spanish are incurable queue-jumpers…

Only the other day I was queuing with a friend to use a cafe toilet in the Retiro Park. In came a 70-something-year-old who pushed straight past us to the head of the line. Fair enough, we thought, he’s old, probably got a weak prostate, and anyway, he’s Spanish, and they often have no idea how to queue… or do they? Have you ever been into a grocer’s, butcher’s, or fruteria in Spain and seen how, despite the fact that no-one is forming any kind of line, everyone knows when it is their turn?

It works like this. The last person in asks ‘Quien es el ultimo?’, or ‘Quien da la vez?’, in order to establish who is last in turn. They then simply have to remember who that person is and step up to the counter when their marker is done with their shopping. Of course you get the occasional cheeky old codger who tries to push their way to the front, but have you seen the stick they get for it when they are caught? Wow, that’s when you know that the Spanish are serious about waiting in line. Second only to a near-beating by a bunch of skinheads outside Real Madrid’s Bernabeu station, one of the scariest things I’ve seen in Spain is a bunch of irate grannies turning on one of their own in the local post office when she surreptitiously tried to sneak his way through to the stamp counter.

Switch now from the post office to the Metro or commuter train platform, and let’s re-examine the whole concept of an orderly queue… have you ever seen Spaniards trying to get on or off a busy commuter train in Madrid? Just how complicated is this? If you want to get onto a train quickly, your best bet is to let those that want to get off depart the carriage first. Not only is plain and simple physics an issue here, it’s just polite! But no, that would be way too easy. Much more amusing is to form a solid cordon of bodies around the doors of the recently-arrived wagon and, as soon as they open, all try to pile in at once. Stuff those impatient idiots that would quite like to get off first, it’s 8 a.m., and this is war! In fact no matter what time of day it is, letting anyone off a train before you try to get on would just be plain absurd!

So the jury is out - you get queue jumpers all over the world after all and, once you get the hang of it, the systems (bizarre as they may seem) are in place in Spain to keep everyone orderly in shops… but the nonsense with the trains brings the rudeness score right back up, giving the Spanish a rudeness rating of 5 out of 10 (with 10 the rudest) when it comes to holding down a decent line. Or maybe that should be a 6. Am I being too kind?

I felt like talking instead of typing.

Photo: Toro de Cuerda, Gaucin, by John Harris
Last week there was a passionate response by Spanish readers of this blog to a post I wrote linking to a satirical article making fun of 24 hours in the life of a Spaniard. It made me think that it might be interesting to attempt a serious definition of the Spanish, and the question of passion and wild abandon (recklessness?) seemed an interesting place to start.

Are the Spanish passionate? Can they be reckless? They speed up at the site of orange (or recently red) traffic lights, let seven-year-olds play with fireworks (in Valencia at least) and run in front of bulls - all that suggests a recklessness to their character that you won’t find in, say, the UK - but that may just be because in the UK all the things that seem to make the Spanish wild and reckless have long ago been quashed by rules and regulations designed to put safety ahead of wild abandon and fun. A shame, as anyone who has been to a riotous Spanish fiesta will know that there is nothing better than a good dose of wild abandon once in a while.

And how about passion? The Spanish might not be as romantic as the French, but they have just as much national pride, and will defend their favourite national dish or corner of Spain tooth and nail… and boy can the guys at the bar talk about football. So passionate in fact are the Spanish when it comes to a healthy discussion about almost anything, that many newcomers to Spain often mistake a lively conversation on a street corner for a full scale argument - though the Spanish word for argument is ‘discusión‘, so I don’t know where that leaves us!

Before I am shot down, I would like to add that all this passion and recklessness is balanced by a seriousness of character and respect for correct manners, comportment, and indeed a respect for respect itself, that it is hard to find elsewhere, but we shall come back to that later. In the meantime I want to start two small lists, perhaps you can add to them below in the comments?

When the Spanish are at their most passionante:

• Talking about Spanish cuisine or the beauty of Spain
• Discussing politics
• Arguing with difficult or dishonest taxi drivers or waiters
• When someone has ‘faltado el respeto‘, shown a lack of respect, or been ill-mannered

…

…and reckless?

• Playing with bulls, while drunk, in town fiestas everywhere
• During Las Fallas, anywhere in the Valencia region
• Behind the wheel of a car (according to accident statistics - over 100 dead again this Easter)

…

Do the Spanish strike you as passionate or reckless? Is there a link between the two? What would you add to these lists?

Table manners in Spain can be a minefield for the uninitiated. Imagine, you are on a language program, sit down for the first meal with your host family, and wonder why they are doing those weird things with their bread…

Well, here are 5 quick rules to start with, perhaps you can add more in the comments:

1. Dipping your bread in the soup. Don’t you dare! Big faux pas (excuse my French, how do you say that in Spanish?) But…

2. Do use your bread as another piece of cutlery. Strange this one. Spanish people will often hold a fork in their right hand, and a small piece of bread in the left, which is then used to help push food gently onto the fork. Not really acceptable behavior in restaurants, but no problem en familia, and actually pretty handy - saves chasing those last few peas around the plate.

3. Get your elbows off the table! But put those hands where I can see them! Either side of your plate, muy bien. Hands left in laps are no friends to the Spanish dining table (and bad for your eyesight, or something).

4. Big spoons are for soups, lentils, beans etc (platos de cucharra), desert is to be eaten with something the size of a teaspoon. Very frustrating at times! Don’t be surprised to receive a small knife and fork with your croissant/morning tostada either - strange I know, but saves washing sticky hands afterwards.

5. Don’t stop talking for too long! Noise is key to any good family meal in Spain. Try to talk to the person diagonally opposite you, and shout if you have to make yourself heard, which is quite likely as everyone else in the room is also talking to the person diagonally opposite them as well. So rare is silence at a the Spanish table that they have an expression for such occasions based on an equally improbable event: “Ha pasado un angel!” - An angel has just flown over the table!

Any more Spanish table manners hints I’ve missed? What customs do you find strange in Spain?