To Each Their Own

 I’m surprised we don’t have an identity. There are 307,000 Brits living in Spain and perhaps a million stretched across the whole of EU (nobody seems to know how many). Then there are all those EU nationals who live in another EU country than their own, plus all those who came from somewhere else – South America, Northern Africa, China, The Ukraine and Timbuctoo.

How many is that?

In Spain, there are around 8,500,000 people who are foreign-born, and across the whole of European Union of 450 million souls, we are talking about some 60 million ausländers of one sort or another who have chosen a (new) EU country to make their home.

Begging the question, who are they?

Broadly speaking – we foreigners have come here either to work or to retire.

The workers may be those poor folk who arrived here through economic necessity, sometimes risking their very life for the chance of a better future, or maybe they flew here with just a good job-offer in their pocket.

The retired folk, perhaps because we live better over here (I’m thinking of – oh my Lord: it’s the PIGS countries with their good food, friendly neighbours and warm winters!).

But all of us, we do rather pass without much notice from the local people. There are a few wealthy Hollywood or sporting (probably football) types who grace the pages of the gossip magazines, as we wander through their palatial homes in Mallorca or Majadahonda, accompanied by some bearer of purple-prose; then there are a handful of tame foreigners who have been accepted by the local population (in Spain, we have James Rhodes, Ian Gibson, Viggo Mortensen and the late Michael Robinson); the odd homage for standout political leaders (there’s no Churchill Square but Madrid does have its sublime Plaza de Margaret Thatcher). A few other foreigners from an earlier time are remembered – the various sherry families and the Dr Fleming barrio also in Madrid (he discovered penicillin).

There’s no Glorieta de Francis Drake though… There’s someone who needs a publicist.

Wouldn’t it be fun, if one of our current number became known for his or her literary or musical endeavours, or because he (we!) invented a cure for cancer.

That would make all of us ghosts walk a little taller.

The largely invisible foreigners: whether expats, immigrants, guiris, émigrés, piratas, hijos de la Pérfida Albión or those people who for various reasons find themselves on the run – are all living a better life while admittedly suffering from certain absences; whether family, traditions or a decent pot of Scottish marmalade in the fridge.

What do you miss, the social media sometimes asks.

Me? Nothing, I’ve been here too long.

A useful page to help get through the bureaucracy here in Spain is one called Brexpats in Spain International. The name probably came about thanks to the Brexit (which affected us EU Brits far more than it did you UK Brits). The other day, this worthy organisation decided to change its name to Expat Support in Spain – and were strongly criticised for doing so by many of its supporters. The Facebook announcement quickly got 203 comments before being turned off. The first one said: ‘Whilst I understand that the group no longer fit its previous name, Expat is not a good catch-all either, I and many others are NOT expats, we are immigrants and proud to be so!’

It seems that the Brits have put their foot down – no longer merely indignant about bullfights and uncastrated feral cats, they now have a new bugbear – being called an expat.

The word comes from expatriate, which means ‘a person who lives outside their native country’. An immigrant means something similar, without being as specific. The Brexpat people serve, from their page on Facebook, the northern Europeans (that’s to say, pretty much the Brits, since no doubt the Swedes have their own page) and we all understand the meaning of the word. An immigrant – usually one who moves for economic reasons – will probably be aiming for a passport from his host country, will certainly aim to speak the language, and will most probably be working in some menial position, such as in the plastic farms or on a building site.

In short, we know what the word ‘expat’ means when we hear it.

But what do the Spanish think? Are we guiris immigrants and nothing wrong with that?

I asked a few journalist friends.

·‘It sounds inappropriate. The concept of immigrant in Spain is associated with ethnicity, culture, and, above all, integration. The English, as Europeans, don't consider themselves to be immigrants’. José María (note here he uses another name for the British: los ingleses).

·‘The English who consider themselves immigrants are right, because they've migrated from their country to settle here. That's what immigration is. Coming from one country to settle in another. But you're right too. For a Spaniard, it sounds strange to call a Western European an immigrant, because we have a subconscious understanding that immigration is linked to poverty, to flight, to leaving developing countries to come to more developed ones. So, technically, an immigrant is both a Moroccan and an English person, but in everyday language, an English person isn't called an immigrant, but a Moroccan is’. Miguel Ángel.

·‘I'd laugh. I often defend the English. As you know, some Spaniards are prejudiced against the English. It's also true that they don't usually make much of an effort to integrate’. Says José Antonio.

·‘The meaning of "immigrant" is another’. From Ángel.

·‘No, the term is correct, from the perspective that they are immigrants in Spain and emigrants from the United Kingdom, although they are not strictly emigrants in the economic sense. Nowadays, the word "expat" has become fashionable to differentiate economic immigrants from those who aren't’. Writes Diego.

Why we must label ourselves as anything at all is another question – unless they happened to be handing out a new passport.

Censorship, the Opus Dei and a Brand New SEAT

 Here's a story from Ángel Medina. We used to run a newspaper together called El Indálico.
 ...

It was the year 1974. Franco was still alive, and the regime was tightening in the face of the imminent death of the ghastly old Caudillo. It was rumoured that the borders were heavily guarded against any possible infiltrations of 'revolutionary material'.

Yes, we knew all too well what was meant by that.

Even so, a feeling that everything was soon going to change was in the air. People were already preparing for a major adjustment and the desire for freedom was manifested in all social orders: in the press and on the radio, on the state-controlled television... and also at the cinema.

Censorship continued to prohibit numerous films that were shown around the world and those of us Spaniards who could travelled to France to see them. Several French towns near the Spanish border (Perpignan, Céret, Amélie les Bains…) specialised in organising some weekend film marathons in which, over three days, you could watch films that were not permitted in Spain.

Stuff like The Kama Sutra, The Last Tango in Paris, La Grande Bouffe, Paths of Glory, Emmanuelle…

I had just bought a Seat 133 and decided to give it a good run by going to one of these film events, and so I travelled north with a friend to the neighbouring country with the intention of stuffing ourselves with cinema and at the same time bringing back some anti-Franco press and literature.

We saw a dozen films, bought Che Guevara t-shirts, some communist and libertarian newspapers and also several copies of the book that was on everyone's lips and that apparently brought to light the machinations and internal struggles for power within the Franco regime: “The Holy Mafia”, the history and situation in those days of the fiercely dreadful Opus Dei.

I bought five copies, although I had heard that carrying more than one could mean arrest and even imprisonment.

The night of our return to Spain, we cunningly planned to cross the border in the early hours of the morning, assuming that the civil guards at customs would be half asleep and would not be very interested in searching our luggage. I had the books in question lying on the back seat, casually covered by a trench coat.

A member of the Guardia Civil approached, and after looking carefully through the window, he spoke to me in a placid voice: ‘Would you be so kind as to get out of the car?’

I felt my intestines churning (what is commonly known in Spanish as shitting myself with fear) and putting my hands together as if I were going to be handcuffed, I slowly got out of the vehicle. The cop climbed into the car, sat down, took the wheel and pressed the accelerator and brake, while I was silent, standing at the door of my brand-new Seat, and he said to me:
‘I’m planning to buy a car, and I wanted to see if I fit well and was comfortable in this new model. And yes, I like it. Thanks for letting me try it. You can continue. Have a good trip!’ 

I just made it around the next corner…

The Train-ride

We were talking over a bottle of wine about some of the old times and I remembered this story about one of the many differences that exist between Spain and the UK; and while we should celebrate and encourage those differences - after all, Spain is a wonderful place to live and Britain isn't - this particular item may not be the finest example in Spain's quiver of attractions and curiosities. 

I refer to the humble suppository.

Chris had long hair and a thin moustache. He favoured pink shirts and kept his things in an off-the-shoulder handbag. His girlfriend was a pretty looking Danish girl, and we find her seated beside him on a train chugging slowly north towards Madrid.

They had arrived in Mojácar that summer of 1968 in a purple mini-moke, a type of low-slung jeep – much to the understandable horror of the small group of foreigners seated outside the village’s only bar and enjoying their early-morning brandies. Chris, it emerged, was a writer doing research on Carlos, the murderous ex-bodyguard of Rafael Trujillo, the assassinated dictator from the Dominican Republic, whose disgraced minder was now running a beach-bar in our quiet resort. According to my dad, Carlos made a good Cuba Libre and anyway, one should always try to forgive and forget.

Chris’ research, once he got around to it, involved a few talks over a glass of rum with Carlos Evertsz about his ghastly experiences as a torturer, inquisitor and bodyguard and Carlos, a short black fellow with a nasty look to him, must have taken offence at one of Chris’ questions on a particular occasion.

Or perhaps he just had a hangover that day.

The jeep was found, smashed to pieces.

Chris and his girlfriend, Gitte, decided to take off to Madrid for a week for some research and a release from the volatile Carlos. On the way to the train, Chris visited a farmacia to get something for a cold he’d picked up.

We are in the train again. It’s just left Linares where it had stopped for lunch. In those days, the conductor would go through the carriages asking what everyone wanted to eat and would then phone through to the station, where twenty-seven portions of meat and fifteen of fish would be waiting in the restaurant: along with chips, salad and wine, followed by a small plate of membrillo (a lump of quince jelly) for ‘afters’.

Not bad for sixty pesetas.

Back on the train, Chris sniffled again and remembered his package from the chemist. He opened it up and extracted a metal-foil-wrapped bomb-shaped item. The carriage, drowsy from its lunch, watched with mild interest.

Chris had never seen a suppository before and, as he peeled the foil off the plug (principal ingredient: cocoa butter), he decided he couldn’t eat it so, after a moment’s thought, decided to ram it up his nose.

The carriage stirred in anticipation. ‘No’ said some old girl in black.

No? thought Chris. Perhaps, since it’s a streamer, I should open another. He placed the second suppository, with its agreeable smell of cocoa butter, into his other nostril and sat back with a satisfied groan. The two suppositories dangled slightly from his nose, and he found that he had to hold them in place. His girlfriend tittered suddenly and the carriage, released, burst into laughter.

The man sat facing Chris lifted himself partway from his seat and made an explicit motion towards his backside. ‘Aquí’, here.

Chris, his face the colour of his favourite shirt, excused himself and went to find the lavatory. He told us afterwards that he could see the tracks flashing by when he looked down the pan, and that, after an embarrassing but successful operation hovering over the seatless commode, he unfortunately coughed, firing the luckless suppository down the hole and into the heart of the Andalusian countryside.

He eventually completed the book about Carlos, carefully waiting until that disagreeable fellow had been deported from Spain.

I think I must still have a copy somewhere.