Living in Spain

I asked for a café con leche, using as few words as possible because I was not in a talkative mood. My coffee arrived in a cup and saucer, and I thought nothing of it until my daughter walked into the bar and asked for the same. Hers arrived in a glass.
She is blond and blue eyed. She used more or less the same number of words to ask for her coffee. The difference, of course, was her accent, and the fact that she probably managed to make her request without saying ‘please’ and without it sounding unmannerly. It was evident that the waitress recognised me, who has been living in Spain for almost thirty years, as a foreigner, and failed to recognise my daughter as such, although she has been living out of Spain for the past decade. At least it was not a restaurant and I was not automatically seated in the sun, as often happens in Andalucía.
I wondered if there was something about my appearance that marks me out as more foreign than my daughter. She had been for a swim, and had asked me to hold her handbag, so I looked around the bar to see how many other men there were carrying a handbag and wearing five rings on their fingers. None were.
On trips back to Ireland over recent years, I’ve frequently been mistaken for a foreigner. Perhaps it’s the shoulder bag I carry and the rings on my fingers, or the clothes I wear to look less conspicuous here in Spain. In any case, the sad fact of the matter is that I am now forced to regard myself as a native of nowhere; a foreigner in my country and in the country of my adoption, and given my age, that’s the way it will always be.
None of this would be important were it not for the occasional comment I foolishly make on social or political issues, and then the you-know-what hits the fan. It happened on my last trip back to Ireland.
“A language test for buying a house in an Irish-speaking area?” I said. “They’ll never get away with that.”
“Well, if you were living in the area…” was the reply, meaning who do you think you are to comment on matters that do not concern you and that you obviously know nothing about?
“That would be illegal,” I go on. “Anybody in the EU is free to speak any language he likes without being penalised for it. It seems to me a typical case of the local government overstepping its authority.”
This is the wrong thing to say. I, perceived as a foreigner, have dared criticise the local government. The reaction is now of anger, whether in Ireland or in Spain. The wall of misunderstanding goes up. Anything else I say will be taken as an attack on the nation as a whole, and defended vigorously, if illogically. The conversation ends, and I have shown myself, once more, to be a foolish, meddling foreigner.
But I console myself, somewhat pathetically, with the fact that whenever I ask for coffee in Ojén, the Andalusian village I lived in for twenty years, it comes in a glass.

Filed under: General by Vivion O'Kelly