The Essence of Spain

An essay from a student in Málaga called Laura Moreno de Lara:

‘No, honey, you're not a Spaniard. To be Spanish is not to wave the flag, nor to scream like a bore phrases of hatred that I hope you do not feel. Nor is it to put a wristband on your wrist, or sing Cara al Sol (the fascist anthem). The concept of being Spanish is something totally different, or at least should be, because at this point, I do not know what else to tell you.
As a Spaniard, I’ll tell you what for me it is to be Spanish:
To be Spanish is to burn when Doñana burns or to tremble when the City of Lorca trembled; it is to sit and listen to folk stories in Galicia and to believe them; or to go to Valencia and not feel rage to read a poster in Valencian, but rather that you are pleased with yourself to be able to understand it. To be Spanish is to think that the Canaries are as good as the Caribbean.
To feel Spanish is to suffer for not having lived la movida madrileña; it’s to fall in love with the sea when hearing Mediterraneo by Serrat; it’s to ask while drunk if your Catalan friend would teach you to dance sardanas, to want to go to Albacete to check if their feria is better than the one in Málaga and to be surprised to see just how beautiful Ceuta is.
For me to be Spanish is to be proud that in Andalucía we have beach, desert and snow; to feel almost as if it were my doing that a Alicantino is so close to winning a Nobel, to ask an Asturian to teach me to pour cider properly and to die of love seeing the beaches of the Basque Country in ‘Game of Thrones’.
You know how Spanish it is to drink a beer in the early afternoon: the Galician orujo, the siesta, the calimotxo, the paella, the tarta de Santiago, grandmother’s croquettes and the tortilla de patatas. It is the desire to show you the best of your city to the one who comes from outside and that you ask him about his; it is to make friends with a Basque and ask him to teach you how to count up to ten in euskera, just in case you return for 2 or 3 more pintxos; it is to be proud of being the leader of the world in transplants, of being part of the land of a thousand cultures and of being from the country of good cheer.
There is nothing more Spanish that having the hairs on your neck stand on end with a saeta or with a copla bien cantá (well-sung flamenco verse); seeing the sunset on the beaches of Cádiz; to discover almost without wanting to some fresh paradisical cove in Mallorca; to walk the Camino de Santiago in September cursing the cold or learning in Salamanca or Segovia that you do not have to be big to be beautiful.
So, I think, my love, miarma, honey, darling, my child ... that is to be Spanish, the rest of it is politics. But if you want to insist on your view of politics, I also want to say that you are wrong: because being Spanish is not wishing to break the face of anyone, but to suffer the unemployment situation of your neighbour or those terrible scenes of eviction that you have seen on the TV. Being Spanish is not opposing the YES or NO supporters of an entire autonomous community, but rather it is to be angry when they treat us like arseholes with each new case of corruption. To be a good Spaniard is to wish that in your country there is no more poverty, no more ignorance, no patients being attended in hospital corridors and, Goddammit, to want to stay here to work and contribute everything that, for so long, you have learned.
That is to be Spanish, or at least, I hope so’.  Laura Moreno de Lara (The original is here).