Spain: The Pictures in Our Heads

Stereotypes, something we all have. We base them from where we are standing, our culture and from whatҀs in our head. Then we keep them alive through confirmation bias. We look around and notice a few examples that fit the stereotype we entertain and overlook the examples that do not.

Prior to arriving in Spain, I accumulated a pocket full of stereotypes about Spaniards from my family, friends, college professors, and personal research. I was under the impression that all Spaniards were ӀperezososԀ (lazy) and liked to party. I also saw them as confrontational, passionate, loud, catholic and traditional.

After crossing the Atlantic and nestling into my temporary home, I found myself needing to affirm the preconceptions I had packed with me. I was curious to find out if they held any water.

For the first couple of weeks I felt like I had discovered some kind of truth in all of them. I had partied with Spaniards and endured dancing from 2 - 6 in the morning. I saw a sign on a business that said, Ӏclosed for a personal day.Ԁ I saw fights between Spaniards where the disputes were confrontational and so passionate that their hands gestures helped translate the words I did not understand. The churches were full of believers. Old traditions were being passed on to the next generation.

But as the months began adding up, I started noticing more exceptions to these generalizations. I noticed the hard working spaniard next to me in class, who spent endless hours making his advertising campaign perfect for his client. I started noticing that family and tradition was what is important to the Spaniard and not so much religion. In fact, a recent study conducted by the Center for Sociological Studies in Spain showed that 70 percent of Spaniards identify themselves as Catholic and only 13.6 percent say they practice their faith and attend services on Sunday and holy days.

When meeting other travelers from all over Europe  and the Americas our conversations always seems to touch the topic of what we think about Spain and the Spanish culture. What we have witnessed that is different from our native norms. It is an exchanging of ideas and stereotypes. We try to understand where the other is coming from by putting ourselves in what we think are their shoes, the idea of which manifests based on the stereotypes that we have already collected about the country they are from, and they do the same.

As my time in Spain is coming to an end, I am realizing that there could have been a truth to some of the stereotypes I had in the past, but they are not necessarily true anymore. Stereotypes evolve with our history like language. They are planted and spread by individuals who return to their homes with perceptions that are massively over-simplified but which are easy to remember and fall back upon.  This, ultimately, is what allows for their perpetuation.