The other day I was reading an article about immigration and how people fail to integrate or settle into the countries they move to and it made me think about my situation. Have I really managed to integrate fully into the Spanish society? Fifteen or so years on and I would certainly say, yes, others may disagree but really it depends on what you define as “integrated” doesn’t it?
Being able to communicate correctly, understanding, respecting and being comfortable with the culture, socialising with the Spanish and allowing yourself to even feel Spanish at times, are all fundamental parts of the “integration process”. However you can fulfil all of these goals and still not be integrated. If you don’t love the country you are living in, no matter where it is, you will never truly integrate. It all starts there.
I love Spain, for a whole number of reasons and really I was very fortunate to have some fantastic friends on my arrival, which I had met previously in the UK. That was my first taster of what living in Spain was going be like, the people! On the whole my experience with the Spanish people has been simply amazing. Yes, there are idiots in every country, but generally I can truly say that after all my travels, and I’ve travelled a fair bit, that the Spanish are by far the most generous and helpful people you can come across, so much so that if you make a little effort they will integrate you into the local society themselves. Now I’m not trying to be funny but I can’t say the same for the French, who seem to carry an anti-integration gene in their make-up and no matter how long you live in France or how well you speak French, you will always be a foreigner. I know from my parents who retired there and often ask me how I did it. The funny thing with Spain was that I stopped feeling a foreigner very quickly and you just get on with life.
In my particular case, being young and hungry to learn made it easier for me to socialise and get a foot in, the fact that I returned “home” so few times you inevitably start to disconnect from your past way of life and very quickly get used to a new rhythm and new customs, it just sort of happens: Siesta breaks at midday, banks closed in the afternoons, dinner at 10pm, young kids playing outside at 11 O’clock at night and later! Hell, you come from abroad and the first thing you think, “Shouldn’t they be in bed? Up playing till midnight? I was tucked up and lights out 3 hours ago! What time will they get up? Well that’s just it. …They get up much later!
To foreign eyes this is a bit tough to get used to, especially with my British side of the family when they come to visit. But once you’ve been in Spain a while you quickly understand the difference - naturally I’m referring to holidays, during the school term it’s a stricter routine and early to bed to be fresh for the next day - but when the holidays come all hell breaks loose and the kids put YOU to bed and lock up at night! Even the seven year olds and I speak from experience. But that’s another underlying issue with the Spanish culture, the Family.
Having been a boarder at school maybe I missed out on a thing or two but having observed friends and families close to me in the UK I can certainly say that although family is obviously important to the British, it’s different here. The British tend to get their kids to bed early, to get them out of the way so you can enjoy some “downtime” with your wife or husband, and you educate them to be independent and find their way in life as quickly as possible. Not in Spain. Oh no. If you’re lucky… your “downtime” will be in the early hours of the morning just before the British “get-up time”, you’ll have the kids running around until they physically collapse, they’ll leave home just before their thirtieth birthday, your wife will only be on the phone for a couple of hours a day to her sister (having just spent the day together) and you’ll only have one in-law living with you! But that’s Spain, and the children and the grand parents are at the centre of everything. It just becomes a generational shift of responsibility almost like a 40 year relay, the Grand parents pass on the baton to their kids and they are now responsible for the “team”, and this inbuilt responsibility, gives for a very caring nation, making Spain a prime example of solidarity.
You either love it or it gets really on your nerves, and some times both. But on the whole it’s a sound upbringing for any child and a lesson in values. On the down side it has made the Spanish less independent, less eager to travel or move to other cities, let alone other countries, so not to break ties. So there is a whole different concept of distances and comfort zones, and it is one of the thing’s I’ll never really understand.
Now it is certainly a different story with the crisis, but in the past I’ve seen friends turn down jobs because they would have to move to another town or commute 40km to work, madness I know, but it is normal for a child to grow up in a town, go to university in the same town, get a job around the corner and buy a house a stone’s throw from Mum, so she can help you with the kids when you desperately need that “downtime”.
This family tradition is one of the great Spanish attributes but the one that attracts everyone at first is the most obvious and I wasn’t any different; the weather! I live in Valencia with an average of 30 to 40 days of rain a year, compared to the UK which averages in many cases way over 150, it’s not surprising the Spanish climate is attractive. You have to admit, that eating outside under the sun in December is quite something and eating is what the Spanish do best.
Although most of my favourite Spanish dishes are in fact regional to Valencia, Spain as a country has a wealth of culinary assets from great wines to olive oils, cured meats and vegetables bursting with flavour, all thanks to it’s privileged climate and varied terrains. It is probably the only country in Europe that has landscapes that range from deserts to ski slopes and green hills to Caribbean style beaches, so it’s not a wonder they don’t go abroad much.
Initially I found Spanish cuisine very basic and rustic. Everything seemed to be “a la plancha”; fish, meat, vegetables and not a sauce in sight, didn’t seem too sophisticated and that’s just it, it isn’t. Spanish cuisine relies entirely on fresh seasonal produce to get good results. If the ingredients aren’t good quality you’ll end up eating bread and lot’s of it, but when it is right, it’s fantastic. However I still find a large proportion of Spanish dishes to be too simple and too basic for my liking, but there are jewels in the crown that I could not live without such as Valencian Paella or Lobster Paella, Clochinas (mussels), Puntilla, Gazpacho, Jamon de Jabugo and Manchego cheese, fresh vegetables and fruit, all make for a stunning meal. Actually the lobster paella would now be up their with “my top meals to die for”, when it is done to perfection.
However its not all sun, sand and sea in Spain, it does have it draw backs which you never get used to but just have to live with, which is even much harder to live with if you are actually working in the country. Spain’s cumbersome bureaucracy and red tape is something no one escapes when coming to Spain and is just another example of its poor efficiency in many areas of business and every day life. Opening a company, refinancing a loan, suing someone for a bounced cheque or simply changing your company’s address can turn into a such a epic nightmare you begin to wonder if its worth it. But hey! Lucky for some you can still buy efficiency in Spain, it’s a wonder what a little brown envelope can do from time to time! But if you’re like me and don’t have many brown envelopes, you carry on, pass the hurdles, get down to work and then they go on holiday…again! This time a local holiday, but only for the ones that live within the boundary of the traditional city limits!
Well, let’s not talk about the summer… you can feel it in the air, the people start thinking about it in June and start preparing for it mid July, even though their bodies are still at work their brains took a two-week head start, then in August the country comes to a halt. Bodies back at the end of the month and the brains catch up mid September, only for the whole process to start again in December with Christmas. Don’t get me wrong I love the Spanish and I love Spain but it’s a bit much and certainly isn’t going to help the country get back on it’s feet. The Spanish do work hard and do eventually get the job done but they need a few more hours to reach their targets, so while the Brits are enjoying their “down time” the Spanish are playing catch-up.
Another thing that I can’t get used to is Spanish television. Ok, there are a couple decent programmes, but come on, as soon as they hit on a good idea and it’s successful they turn it into five hour programme to fill the entire evening, and creativity and choice goes out the window. What was potentially interesting becomes insanely boring and tedious. So if you don’t have cable or satellite you’re better off reading a book. The same thing seems to happen with the presenters; as soon as one presenter is becoming popular some genius says “Hey! let him present everything” and he does. Then the other channels start to catch on to the success and start to copy one another with similar formats and it turns into what seems a childish game, “Oh If they’re doing a music programme, we’ll do one too” instead of trying to innovate and bring fresh and varied content to the little screen.
But anyway, I could go on for ages telling you about the ups and downs of Spain but in a nutshell there are more ups than downs, if you have a job! I certainly feel that Spain has “accepted” me and I feel part of the society, sometimes so much so that I find myself supporting the Spanish football team over the English football team, but I suppose as I’m Scottish that doesn’t really count. What I’m trying to say is that when you feel and share the euphoria of winning a world cup final as if it was your country of birth, well then I think you can say you are completely integrated within a country and you aren’t just a long term visitor. All I can say is that I’m glad Scotland’s unlikely to meet Spain in a world cup final, that would be a dilemma.
So do you feel integrated? Cast your vote in the next poll!