After a year living in Spain, Graham Keeley, editor of Expatica Spain, reflects on life as an expat.

Arriving in Spain a year ago, it felt like driving a car without brakes – scary but exhilarating.
 Stepping off the plane, with three ancient suitcases at Barcelona airport, I should have had my heart in my mouth. Here I was at last coming to live abroad, a dream I had harboured for years.

But instead of being filled with excitement of coming to live in the land of Cervantes, I had more pressing worries.
 
I was due to start a new job editing this website and working in Spanish –something I had never done - a week after arriving. It would be more than an understatement to say my Spanish was not as good as it is now.

I was saved by a small team of translators, who transformed what were then almost incomprehensible Spanish news stories into 'ingles'. All I had to do was to craft them into 'journalese'.

Aside from the new job, I had the everyday shock which everyone experiences abroad; people, strangely enough, don't speak English.

Thankfully, having previously studied Spanish, I could struggle through everyday encounters. But I started Spanish lessons and had the unfamiliar experience of going back to 'school' every day for the first time in 15 years.

Immediately, my brain was bombarded with new sounds, words and ideas.

This was complicated by the fact that, lest we forget, Barcelona, according to some, is not in Spain – but Catalonia.

You are never left in any doubt, as most people never lose any opportunity to talk to you in Catalan, not Spanish.

In practice, this means there is a law which protects the survival of Catalan and some books, like Harry Potter, have to be translated into this language which still sounds like a Spanish version of German – all hard sounds, without the mellifluous flow of Castilian.     

Like most people, I had the strange sensation of ‘forgetting’ English words simply as there was so much Spanish bubbling around in my brain. 

I treasured the small triumphs as I climbed the Everest that is learning a language; one day I could understand the radio news, which had seemed like listening to verbal machine-gun fire for so long.
 
Aside from this, simple things you take for granted in your own country, like getting a mobile phone or registering with the doctor,  become a struggle, an adventure, and – if successful – a triumph.

One memory perhaps sums this up. I spent an entire day speeding round Barcelona as a passenger on the back of a motorbike in search of the best mobile deal; the speed, fun and exhilaration represented all that is best of Spain, while the endless paperwork, complicated contracts and gobbledegook, the worst.

The Spanish bureaucracy is notorious and still seems based on endless form-filling, to the ire of all foreigners.

After one paper chase to get the prized NIE number (identity number for foreigners), I emerged from a police station mentally exhausted, but pathetically elated.

Then I realised I had achieved exactly what? I was officially a foreigner, not just another guiri. Fantastic.

The editor conducting an interview

But, after another particularly abrasive encounter with the Office for Foreigners, I did reflect on how the British, American or Australian equivalent might seem to a Spaniard with a limited vocabulary and little experience of these countries. 

As I allowed myself to relax, that sense of excitement at being in Spain took over.

Everyone will say that living abroad feels like a holiday. To my mind, this is the glossy version of the truth. But speeding around the streets of the Catalan capital in a bright red cabriolet in the sun - in January - takes some beating.

And I must admit to having to pinch myself at times as I realised I wasn't getting back on a plane, but actually living in a city where late night partying is not an exception but the rule. Sometimes, I even craved a rest.

The simple differences also continue to amuse.

For someone like me, who is two metres tall and a veritable Gulliver in a country like Spain, the sheer size – or lack of it – of the people, is something which still raises a smile.

Other surprises were the noise (no-one speaks, they just shout…all at the same time), the smoking (everywhere), the outdoor life (having lunch in the sun in November), and time-keeping (everyone is late, no-one cares).

For a polite Brit, interrupting mid-conversation is anathema, but here it is a survival technique; you are forced to butt-in with everyone else or become wallpaper.

And coming from a country where a glass of wine is full to the brim, the dribbles you are served in Spain take some getting used to.

But once you learn to take your drink (or lack of it) Spanish-style, it makes more sense and those mind-numbing hangovers seem distant, unlamented memories.  

Living in Barcelona, there is no distinct expat community - I think because most people who come here want to join in the Spanish way of life, learn the language, and integrate.

It might be very different in other parts of Spain, particularly the south, where the expat community is more established. But in my small corner of Spain, mixing with expats seemed, at first, to defeat the object of coming here.

Later, I realised you need some friends who speak your language as otherwise life can be lonely - or at least your friendships will be on a different level, with Spaniards, because of the language barrier.
 
Thankfully, I have a mixed group of friends, both Spaniards and guiris.

As for understanding my new home, I have come to realise this is a very slow process. It is easy to reach quick conclusions, based mostly on clichés; some may be true.

The spontaneity, optimism and laid-back nature of the people is something you might read about in A Cliched Guide to Spaniards, if such a guide existed. Perhaps we find these clichés comforting, but these three do tend to be true. 

That said, coming from Britain, you are also struck by the lack of a 'culture of complaint' among Spaniards. And it is easier to put this down to a hangover from the Franco era.

Many Spaniards will agree with this conclusion, saying there is still no faith that things will get done if they complain.

But then something happens to challenge your conclusions.

The extraordinary reaction to the Madrid bombings in March, in which 191 people were killed, confounded all expectations.

Instead of accepting what they were told by their government, the Spanish promptly voted out the conservative Popular Party - who had insisted ETA were the culprits - despite all opinion polls predicting they would win easily just days before.

Either way, my ancient 1950s suitcases still sit under the bed, ready in case it all becomes too much.

[Copyright Expatica]

[November 2004]

Subject: My year in Spain; Life in Spain