Los estereotipos (Regional stereotypes)

With each passing day I learn that you underestimate Spain’s diversity at your peril. From the fog-enshrouded cliffs of the North-East to the completely barren deserts of the centre, the richness of this country goes far beyond the stereotypes seen on the Brit-infested Costa del Sol.

Last week I was given a crash course in Spanish regional stereotypes, so I thought I’d share. Never mind Geordie vs. Mancunian – here people look different, talk differently and behave very differently.  

(Included below is a handy map, in case your geographical knowledge of the Iberian Peninsula isn’t what it once was.)

Spain is divided into 17 Comunidades Autónomas (Autonomous Regions), self-ruling provinces with independent governments and local laws. Some have more power than others – Cataluña has famously been seeking independence for some time, spurred on by the prevalence of the local dialect (Catalan) and the fact it’s Spain’s economic powerhouse.

Let’s start with the madrileños. Residents of Spain´s capital city are most typically immigrants to the region. True locals (third-generation or more) are distinguished with the coveted title of gatos (‘cats’). Through the eyes of the rest of Spain, madrileños are arrogant spendthrifts, prone to consider themselves better than everyone else. This phenomenon doesn’t seem too surprising, as capital city dwellers in many countries often have this reputation. Yet here it’s also curiously mixed with a general acknowledgement of what welcoming people they are too – something I’ve experienced first-hand.

Heading south we find the andaluces (from Andalucía). These conform to the foreigner’s stereotype of Spaniards – lazy, cheerful, often laughing and always exaggerating. They also seem to have a strong aversion to the final syllable of words, so that elsewhere in Spain their accent is rarely understood. People from the East (catalanes) are, by contrast, said to be extremely tight with money. They often have a gift for business too, which may explain why the vast majority of Spain’s industry can be found in or around Barcelona.

Gallegos are from Galicia, Spain’s freezing Northwestern wasteland (I jest – although the terrain may come as a surprise to those expecting sandy beaches). Elsewhere in Spain, gallegos are considered highly superstitious and generally quite odd. They’re also unafraid of getting stuck in with hard work (unlike their southern counterparts!). Strangely, those that I’ve met can be very affectionate and open with their close friends, whilst remaining closed to foreigners.

The tiny País Vasco (‘Basque Country’) is home to the vascos, who are fiercely proud of their regional heritage. Racial tension has been bubbling away for generations, fuelled in the 20^th century by Basque separatist terrorists ETA. A stereotypical vasco is frank and brusque, to the point of being rude. Not ones to cross, then. 

Further down the Spanish border lies the province of Aragón. The locals, aragoneses, are notorious for answering questions with questions – from my experience, a friendly “How are you?” can be greeted by the roundabout response, “Why are you asking?” They’re also known to be unafraid of hard work.

Last but not least, castellano is the adjective referring to the spiritual, linguistic and ideological heartland of Spain, and it also describes the inhabitants of the central regions. Traditional in their ideas and customs, the castellanos laugh little and spend even less. Austerity rules in these empty desert lands... yet only several hundred kilometres to the south and east, the coastline bubbles away with life all summer, thanks to Spain’s still-strong tourist industry.

If only half the tourists would head inland a bit, where old Spain can still be found, sitting around a dusty card table in the midday sun.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come...

Spain's 17 Autonomous Regions

Spanish of the Day

meter la pata - to put your foot in it. Literally.

cantar las cuarenta a alguien - to give someone a right telling off (Lit. 'to count 40 at someone' - originating from the traditional Spanish passion for card games).

Touchy-feely

The concept of ‘personal space’ simply does not exist in the Mediterranean mindset. From amiable slaps on the back to the typical cheek-kissing greetings, everyday life between friends and family is filled with this phenomenon of ‘interpersonal touching’.

There’s far more of this here than in the UK. It’s not something you’d normally perceive, but the invasion of personal space is something we feel more acutely. It’s simply not normal to go around touching people, especially strangers or people you’ve just met. Unless you want a slap/punch.

Robin Dunbar (of “Dunbar’s number” fame – 150 is apparently the number of people with whom our brain is capable of having meaningful connections at once) constantly stresses how interpersonal touch conveys emotion more powerfully than language. We’re hard-wired for touch. So why do we run away from it, when our European counterparts do not?

It’s a classic comedy scenario: the British guy dying from awkwardness, surrounded by his ‘touchy-feely’ European counterparts (this guy is most commonly me). It doesn’t matter if they’re from Spain, Italy, Brazil... people may never have met before but within minutes, out comes the affectionate shoulder-patting.

Several months after I moved to Paris, one of my French friends decided I was ready to be greeted à la française. I nearly died as he walked up to me and confidently planted a kiss on one cheek and then the other. Having only ever followed this custom with the fairer sex, my reaction was apparently ‘a classic’.

Some Spaniards and Brazilians I spoke to today could not understand how something as natural as touching could’ve disappeared from Northern European (and to an extent, US) culture. They have a point.

I’ve lived outside of the UK for 12 months now. Each time I return, that game of people-dodging we play in busy airports and stations seems more and more ridiculous, an awkward ballet routine performed to a backing chorus of muttered “sorrys”.

They had an extreme example, telling of how they watched an adorable, excited three-year-old in Norway get off a train to be greeted by a formal handshake from his grandma. Had the grandmother been Spanish, the kid would have been covered with kisses, whisked into the air and probably held aloft like the European football trophy.

I’ve made some extremely close friends out here in a very short space of time. From noisy bars to laughter-filled sessions around the guitar, I’m sure an awful lot of back-slapping was involved in there somewhere.

Next weekend, as I retake my position in the awkward ballet of Luton’s arrivals hall, I’m sure the whole thing will seem comical by comparison. 

Less rambling and more scribbling to come...

Spanish of the Day

estar constipado - to have a blocked nose. (No... not what you were thinking. I made that mistake today.)

estar en el séptimo cielo - to be on cloud nine. (Lit. 'seventh heaven')

El culture vulture (The culture vulture)

Another week has flown by under the Madrid sunshine... I had friends over to visit almost constantly, so this is my excuse for neglecting the blog!

Madrid is not the first place to come to mind on the list of the world’s great tourist cities. This is in fact a topic I highlighted back in my first post, unbelievably almost a month ago.

Yet Madrid’s crop of museums acts like a magnet for art lovers the world over. The art scene revolves around the ‘Golden Triangle’ in the south east of the city centre: the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and the world-renowned Prado.

Every day during these summer months, crowds of tourists and aficionados alike descend on these enormous, imposing buildings, to get their fill of everything from Canaletto to Velázquez. Somewhat surprisingly for large tourist attractions, I’ve found that each museum has a unique and memorable character. Rather than scribble in a vaguely informative manner – there are guidebooks for this and they do the job better than I can – I thought I’d share my personal impressions, now that I’ve become intimately acquainted with these three galleries (hooray for free student entry).

The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is a private collection of artworks that belonged to the esoteric German-Hungarian magnate, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza. (There’s even a garish glass-and-steel extension next door, built to house the copycat collection of his widow).

It doesn’t compete on the level of world-class museums such as the Prado or the Louvre, simply because it’s trying to do something altogether different. Here you won’t find the stereotypical museum curators engaged in their perpetual game of international one-upmanship, constantly striving for the most exhaustive assembly of works from a particular artist in one place. Instead you have before you the most comprehensive, high-quality overview of Western European art I’ve seen anywhere.

Ordered chronologically from early Renaissance through to the latest in pop art kitsch, movements in art are represented by two or three seminal works from the leading artists in a particular style. It’d be the perfect place to do a ‘beginner’s guide’ for the completely uninitiated. And for those more in the know, the names inscribed on the gallery plaques read like a ‘who’s who’... the big names are too many to mention. Such a high-altitude overview makes for an invigorating gallery experience – and for this alone, it’s my favourite.

The Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is best-known for being home to Picasso’s wartime masterpiece, Guernica. This enormous canvas is infinitely more moving in the flesh than it seemed when pasted into the pages of my year 8 art sketchbook. The rest of the second floor makes for a superb collection of modern art (often with a Spanish twist); so there’s plenty of wacky Picasso, disturbing Dalí, and the occasional splash of Kandinsky. As for the rest... well the third floor is like a mystery, an inaccessible slab of concrete bypassed by all elevators and stairwells. The remainder comprises a lukewarm collection of either extremely experimental or box-checking boring modern art – a sombre atmosphere to match the forbidding sheer walls of this cavernous old hospital.

The Prado is huge. Much like the Louvre, one day is impossible for a full appreciation (a three-day ‘tapas’ approach works much better). This self-satisfied cousin of its Madrid counterparts sits proudly on the Paseo del Prado in Antonio Villanueva’s purpose-built palace. It has all the swagger of a world-class gallery, not to mention better translated blurbs.

I happen to have acquired quite a taste for 16th and 17th century Italian art, as well as a mild obsession with El Greco. Both can be attributed to this classy landmark, in whose elegant corridors I’ve spent many an hour wandering, mildly incomprehensible guide map in hand.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come... 

El Prado

Spanish of the Day

me aburro como una ostra - I'm bored to death. (Lit. 'you're boring me like an oyster'.)

escurrir el bulto - to bury your head in the sand.

Siesta or sloth

I’ve been here over three weeks now and I still haven’t acclimatised to the heat.

It’s not a topic that will get much sympathy from anyone in northern Europe, although I hear the sun is rumoured to have recently come out for 5 minutes in Woking.

Here, the daily 12-hour baking seems unrelenting. The deeper we plunge into the infierno (hell) of summer, the worse it gets. It’s taking some getting used to – not just the heat, but the way it forces you to adapt your lifestyle.

In the UK, where (for most of the year) daylight hours are rarer than hen’s teeth, I run around trying to make the most of my time. Try running around here, and you’ll break into an instant sweat.

The sun forces you to live at a more relaxed pace (anyone who knows me well will doubtless reckon this is a good thing). Some afternoons, it’s so impossibly warm that lazing in a darkened room is as much as you can manage. In my first week, my language classes were conveniently in the afternoon, meaning I could find shelter in the air-conditioned inner sanctum of the school.

Recently I haven’t had this luxury. In general, air conditioning (particularly in private homes) is far less common than in the US. I think this is a good thing, though. Constantly changing temperature between blast furnace heat and a chilly 16 degrees never does your hypothalamus any favours.

Nevertheless with only six weeks to get under the skin of this city, this country, its people and its language, I have to work fast. But it can still feel like I’m not making good use of my time here. Every day I walk the precarious tightrope of energy level management; do too much and I risk utter exhaustion. It’s simply impossible to spend all day on your feet, running around in the sunshine.

As a solution, I’ve started giving in to the temptation of the siesta... the first step on the slippery slope to a destroyed body clock, no doubt. I’m far from having perfected the art, but so far I think the optimal length is around 2 hours. I figure that the siesta exists for a reason – living the Spanish way (up early and late to bed) is impossible without one.

The heat is as dry as a sauna, so madrileños are mercifully spared the perpetual stickiness of more humid climes. But it still saps energy, traps you indoors, and obliges you to keep your lips permanently glued to bottles of cold water. I even bought a sun hat this weekend, in Europe’s largest flea market, ‘El Rastro’. Apparently I look like an extra from a 90s boyband. Drastic steps.

I’m adapting to this slower rhythm of life, but only time will tell if I find the perfect balance before I leave.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come...

Spanish of the Day...

no tener pelos en la lengua - to be a straight talker. (Lit. 'not to have hairs on your tongue'.)

un quisquilloso - someone who is picky, moany or pessimistic (particularly relating to work).

El viajero (The traveller)

I’ve been known to ramble a bit about the Spanish high speed rail network. The thing is, it really is that good.

My recent weekend excursions allowed me to put to the test the very high impression of the AVE network that had been instilled in my mind since the sleepy afternoon back in 2005 when Mrs Cochrane tried to excite her Period 7 class about Spanish cosmopolitanism. At the time, it seemed improbable to my world-wise teenage brain that Spain would be able to beat the French or the Germans at their own game. (I’m overlooking the fact that the British in fact invented trains.)

The reality is as good as the PR makes it sound. The stations and the trains are impeccably clean, faultlessly punctual, and the service is with a smile. There are even airport scanners awaiting you before ‘boarding’, if only to further heighten the sense of adventure.

To take an example: for centuries an arduous trek through baking hot, barren desert (the same criticism could still be levelled at the gridlocked A-6 motorway), the 90km journey to Segovia has been reduced to a 20-minute commuter hop.

Unveiled at the peak of Spain’s rampant development in the so-called ‘noughties’, the network is a poignant reminder of the good years. Gleaming high-speed stations glare out across the plains from the outskirts of many Spanish cities, whose inhabitants complain about being unable to afford tickets. (In my experience these complaints aren’t always justified – at least not over short distances, which are around 20€ per return journey).

If you talk to locals you find that transport in Spain is a polemic issue. The journey from Madrid to Barcelona (about 600km) is served by a much-publicised AVE link, but everyone you speak to prefers to trek out to the airport and take a flight. Apparently it’s cheaper. While people complain the train tickets are too expensive, the AVE operators complain that the line is underused which keeps prices artificially high. Meanwhile, the fifteen flights a day between the two cities do a roaring trade. Not exactly a “green” state of affairs, then.

Out on Madrid’s streets there are no signs of the typically Parisian kamikaze scooters who risk their own lives and those of every pedestrian within 100m in a quest to nab the perfect parking space. People instead continue to use their cars to get everywhere – even for the most impractical of short hops. Noise pollution (and actual pollution) are rife in Madrid, particularly in the centre. No signs of a ‘congestion charge zone’ on Gran Vía, which is rumoured to see 55,000 vehicles a day.

The noise pollution is something that’s struck me the most about being here – but it’s a topic for another post.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come...

High-speed rail station in the middle of the desert, just outside Segovia

Spanish of the Day

poner a alguien a caldo - to give someone a piece of your mind. (Lit. 'to put someone in the soup')

sacar de quicio - to drive somenoe round the bend. (Lit. 'to unhinge')

El dominguero (The day-tripper)

A few days without a blog post I know... a busy weekend so now I’m playing catch-up.

I’ve spent my first two weekends in the Spanish capital visiting cities other than Madrid. This isn’t at all to say there’s a lack of stuff to do here; rather, that we are surrounded on all sides by some of the most beautiful cities in Spain... Segovia, Toledo, Aranjuez, Salamanca, Ávila (to name but a few). Spain has always been seen as a cultural treasure trove, and these are some of the country’s finest jewels. Collectively they represent the crucible of the Spanish language and culture we know them today.

Now they are within easy reach of the madrileño day tripper thanks to the wonders of Spanish high speed rail – the AVE network. AVE is one of those clever little acronyms of which large organisations are so fond these days. While the initials stand for Alta Velocidad Española (literally, ‘High Speed Spain’), the word ave itself means ‘bird’. Clever, that.

The two cities I’ve visited so far were Segovia and Toledo. They felt vastly different, yet both were similarly infused with the rugged, dusty beauty of Castile – Spain’s ideological and geographical heartland.

Segovia sits about 90km northwest of Madrid, on the high plains overlooked by the snow-capped Guadarrama mountains. Like most ancient Spanish sites, tourists are primarily lured to Segovia by its castle, the Alcázar (from the Arabic, ‘al-qasr’). The original castle, again like most ancient Spanish sites, was destroyed by Napoleon – but its 19^th century replacement has all the visual spectacle of a Disney castle, perched romantically on a high promontory with battlements, turrets and dreaming spires.

The city itself is something of a one-horse town, its main street essentially linking the castle at one end to the breathtaking Roman aqueduct at the other. As a tourist you stroll from the aqueduct to the castle, marvel at the sights, eat some nice food and then get on the train home. It felt like an unusually systematic environment, one which gave up its treasures perhaps too easily... both to the camera and the imagination.

Toledo was the complete opposite. Once you plunge into the winding medieval streets of this former capital, rarely does a camera-friendly vista open up before you. Navigation in the maze of alleys is a nightmare; the city does its utmost to hamper any kind of planned itinerary, preferring instead to traps the unsuspecting day-tripper in its atmospheric streets until you start to understand the silent, baking hot magic of the place.


Toledo was, incidentally, the home of celebrated Spanish painter El Greco. (He was, as the nickname suggests, more Greek than Spanish  – but this is kept largely quiet). I cannot recommend the El Greco Museum highly enough; located in a specially-restored replica of the artist’s house, it made for an intriguingly different setting in which to discover new works of art when compared the sterile, air conditioned galleries of the capital.

The problem with day trips is that they only last a day. You board the train and are whisked home to the concrete megalopolis before beauty and silence have had time to soak into you. I’m still looking for that patch of serenity here – I feel the Retiro park may be a good place to look.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come...

The fairytale spires of the Alcázar in Segovia

The silent, dusty magic of Toledo's narrow streets

Spanish of the Day

no estar católico - to feel unwell. Again, the influence of Catholicism on the Spanish language is evident.

otra manera de darle la vuelta a la tortilla - another way of looking at it. (Literally, 'another way of spinning the tortilla'.)

Nueve meses de invierno, tres de infierno...

'Nine months of winter, three months of hell...'

An old madrileño saying I heard the other day. It refers to the unforgiving climate I’m currently ‘enjoying’.

Europe´s highest capital sits 650m above sea level on Spain’s central plateau, from whence it is alternately frozen and baked each year. At the moment I’m experiencing the latter half of that phrase – the tres meses de infierno.

I’ve been here for 11 days now and I’ve yet to see a single cloud. It’s disorienting. Distressing, almost.

The week before I arrived, a heatwave trapped the city indoors, with temperatures still at 33 (91) at midnight. The July sun is something best feared, not worshipped. I’ve found it has this marvellous capacity to heat up the buildings, the pavements, the roads... so that by 7pm this concrete jungle literally becomes an oven, baking its unfortunate inhabitants from all sides. Coupled with the smells, the pollution and the other standard fare of any large city, it’s pretty unpleasant. (Though I doubt I’ll receive much sympathy from any drenched readers in the UK).

It would be frightfully English to write a post entirely about the weather – so that’s exactly NOT what I’m trying to do. It’s been interesting to hear different reactions from different cultures – the complaints and exhortations wafting past as I walk through the foyer each morning. Let me distil a few for you.

There are the Bulgarians, cruising along unfazed... the Taiwanese, overjoyed at the ‘dryness’ of the heat... the Germans, complaining about the pollution, the ‘glare’, the pollution again... the French, complaining generally... the Brazilians, still disoriented by the fact the days seem to go on forever (in Brazil the amount of daylight is uniform all year round)... and then there are the English, who, possessed at the mere sight of sunshine, frantically strip most items of clothing and hurry to plonk themselves on an available patch of grass like roast spuds in an oven. The madrileños look on knowingly, as the white slowly turns to pink.

Look at anyone who’s grown up in a hot climate and you’ll see they fear the summer sun, not worship it. In Spain, the siesta exists for a reason. Suffice it to say I won’t be hurrying to copy the baking Benidorm Brits anytime soon (I’d only turn a charming shade of pink anyway!)

Less rambling and more scribbling to come...

Just another day in Europe's most reliable urban furnace...

Spanish of the Day

hablar por los codos  - to talk a LOT. (Lit. 'to talk out of your elbows')

salir de cañas - to go out for drinks. A way of life.