Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis

The local government in the Autonomous Region of Valencia has come up with a bright idea: immigrants should be made to sign a contract promising to follow Spanish customs and principles (“las leyes, los principios y las costumbres españolas y valencianas“). Only two problems: no one has actually bothered to define exactly what these typical Spanish customs are, and secondly, the Valencian Generalitat (government) has admitted, eventually, that nothing will happen to those that refuse to sign.

“What we are trying to achieve here,” said Rafael Blasco, minister for immigration and citizenship (and silly plans) in the Valencian Government, “is that people that come here integrate themselves not only work-wise, but also that they become fundamentally integrated in our values, our system of living together, our customs, our traditions, and that this integration results in continuing social cohesion…”

So basically, either immigrants to the Valencia region do as the locals do, or the very fabric of society is at risk! Which in turn can easily be taken to mean, “don’t bring your funny customs over here, we’re having none of that, be like us or back you go.” Now there’s a message that’s bound to lead to increased social cohesion!

Fortunately Zapatero’s central government has been quick to tell their Valencian counterparts to shut up, that the only thing that matters is that immigrants comply with Spanish law, which seems fair enough, but one big unknown still remains… what does it mean to follow Spanish customs, principles and traditions?

That’s the question I was tested on this morning on Radio M80’s ‘No somos nadie‘ programme. As a typical foreigner who’s had plenty of time to adapt to Spanish ways, I was put to the test to see whether I’d be up to scratch with the Valencian regime, and had to answer the following key “how Spanish are you?” questions (see how you do too!):

Q. Do you throw cigarette butts, olive stones, serviettes etc on the floor in bars?
A. All the time! (except the cigarette butts…)

Q. Lack of punctuality?
A. I’m still a bit English on that one… so, no.

Q. Do you drunkenly dance Paquito el Chocolatero at fiestas?
A. Ah… Yes!

Q. Do you walk out of restaurants with a wooden toothpick in your mouth?
A. No! (I’m always afraid I’d bump into someone and swallow it!)

Q. Do you slag off your neighbours?
A. Yes 🙂

So how did I do? … They said I failed and should be deported immediately! Vaya…

You can listen to the full radio interview via this mp3 link, read more about the Valencian contract mess in El Pais, and please let me know in the comments:

Would you have passed Radio M80’s test? What Spanish customs are you most fond of that they could have added to the test?

How hard is it in the 21st Century to run a decent postal service? The UK has managed it for years, yet in Spain everyone accepts that Correos, the national postal service, simply cannot be relied on to work.

Let me give you an example. This week I phoned RENFE (the train operator) to make a reservation for some tickets to Toledo. They asked as usual at the end of the call whether I would like the tickets sent to me in the post, or would collect them from the station. Like any sensible person used to living in this country, I opted to collect the tickets in person, knowing not to trust that they would arrive in time by post.

So instead of picking them up in my mail box this morning (when in an ideal world they might have arrived), I have just spent one hour going to the station to pick them up. So, there’s one hour lost for a start, due to my friends at Correos. No doubt similar time is being wasted all over Spain every day of the week.

Marina always says that there is no culture of buying on-line here in Spain as a result of the fact that people don’t trust the whole mail-order concept. In the UK, it was easy to go from phone ordering (with postal delivery) to internet ordering (with postal delivery). Yet here in Spain mail order never took off, and even now, 5 to 10 years after people have happily been ordering online in the rest of the world, Spain still has to get everything from the shops. No one trusts the post.

That means no Amazon.es, and nothing remotely as efficient as US DVD postal-rental service Netflix, two services I would really love to see here in Spain and am very jealous of. But my frustrations aside, hardly any online commerce must mean less spending in general – not good for the nation’s budget.

Speaking of Netflix, there are Spanish copycat services, where you book films online and they supposedly arrive at your house, but guess what, they are widely slandered online (in Spanish forums etc), and I, like many, didn’t risk signing up. While researching such online-postal DVD rental services last year, I came across the following report:

Logistics: Correos, the Spanish postal service, presents two clear problems for the online sector in Spain – reliability and the incidence of loss of discs. So great are these difficulties that one key player has developed an alternative delivery system and is keen to abandon postal delivery altogether. For the remaining competitor using the system, delivery times cannot be guaranteed to customers, with average turnaround at three to four days. During the summer months the average becomes considerably higher […] The importance of a reliable postal service is underlined by the fact that the Spanish company that still depends on it told Screen Digest that unhappiness with the postal service is one of the main reasons that customers give for canceling subscriptions.

I think it’s going to be an awfully long time before we see an Amazon.es operating fruitfully in Spain.