If you take a walk around Madrid’s Retiro Park on a Tuesday afternoon, you are bound to come across one or two Chinese wedding parties. The bride and groom are being photographed in picturesque settings by a Chinese photographer, and videoed by a Chinese cameraman and his Chinese assistant. Amongst their party there is never a Spaniard to be seen.

Fair enough, you may say, but this is pretty much representative of the level of social integration that the Chinese have gone for in Spain: nada. On a scale of 1 to 100, I’d go for about 3. The Chinese have been here for years, yet their community is private, busy, and seemingly quite content. Yes, the children go to Spanish schools, speak better Spanish than their parents, and often work the tills in the numerous barrio corner shops, but in ten years I have yet to see a Chinese-Spanish couple holding hands in the street.

The Chinese run restaurants, corner shops, and One Euro (formely 100 peseta) shops. They allegedly make quite a lot of money from pirated music and movies, which you often see Chinese women flogging in busy bars until way past midnight. This fits in with reports of a large Chinese mafia at work in Spain, but you never hear of them interacting with any other bad guys, or flashing money at bent Spanish politicians. Once again, the Chinese keep themselves to themselves.

How long has there been a significant Chinese population in Spain? I have no idea, but certainly long enough for them to enter the Spanish vernacular: Trabajar como un chino, to work like a Chinaman, means you work damn hard, for example, and Suena a cuento chino, means something sounds like a tall story. I’m not sure the Chinese in Spain would be too offended by either of those. (Update: see comments for more on these phrases).

I suspect the case of the complete acceptance of the Chinese fits into the Spain and Racism debate somewhere. I’ve certainly never heard a bad word against them (suspicion of their privacy aside). In fact, most of the Spaniards I have met find their restaurants and shops extremely useful and are happy to have them in town. Perhaps there is hope for other immigrant groups yet!

(Above photo for the first and probably last time ©iStockphoto.com/Phil Date - I had a pic of my own from a wedding party in the park today, but if felt kind of rude to use it on the couple’s wedding night without asking first. Normal photographic service will resume forthwith.)

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.

Much has already been written about this in other blogs, our forum, and in the news in Spain and the UK, but I don’t think it can be given too much attention.

The fact that Lewis Hamilton endured the usual bout of racist remarks (puto negro etc) as he tested this weekend at Barcelona’s Montmelo circuit is bad enough, but the fact that in this day and age there are people who thought it acceptable to black-up boot-polish style and acutally appear in public in the stands (wearing T-shirts saying “Hamilton’s Family”) is quite astounding. It puts Spain about 20 years behind the UK in terms of what might be considered acceptable social human behavior.

Of course racism is still a problem in the UK and beyond, but nowadays most racist idiots have the wherewithal to keep it to private conversations, or behind closed doors.

The regulatory body behind Formula 1 has apparently threatened to pull out of at least one of the two races planned for Spain later in the year (in Barcelona and Valencia) if there is any more of this nonsense, but I’m willing to bet that 1) there will be, and 2) absolutely nothing will happen as a result.

In terms of preparing and developing intelligent, open attitudes for the integrated, plural society that Spain has no choice but to accept it is fast becoming, it seems there is still a very very long way to go. There is trouble ahead, but hard and fast punitive action now could make a substantial difference. Let’s see if Formula 1, for a start, has the balls to put it’s money where it’s mouth is.