Not having to frequently dive into the confines of a stuffed to bursting bag to fetch out a ridiculously large map in the middle of an area like Las Ramblas in Barcelona leaves you looking, and feeling, a bit like you belong. It also increases the odds of avoiding the attention of pickpockets and muggers, but then so does not stumbling about in the faintly lit narrow streets of Raval in a drunken stupor while singing away in a cockney accent.
This adherence to getting about incognito means I've yet to be the victim of petty theft after ten months in my new home, which is something even the most entrenched expat usually experiences at least once; a sort of right of passage. However, it's not completely problem free. Presenting the façade of being a local in a city with two common languages, neither of which you're any bloody good at speaking, can leave you looking like a fool when a true local falls for the ruse and speaks to you in rapid fire Catalan, or Castellano, exposing you for the guiri you are.
Guiri is a local word to describe a tourist, primarily of British or German origin, though now it could be applied to myriad other European or North American sun seekers across Spain, not to mention the growing throngs of Japanese visitors as well. You won't find it in a standard dictionary. I hadn't heard the word until eight months in, and when I finally did it came from the mouth of another guiri, discussing the sort of jobs expats usually fall into in Spain; our guiri jobs. The word became common as a way for locals to poke a bit of fun at tourists without them knowing. As more and more expats became permanent residents in the city, they caught on to what it meant, and now use it themselves, often accompanied with a wry little grin.
For the most part, the long term guiris are in on the joke.
The jobs we take, the guiri jobs, tend to fall into the mind numbing, soul crushing realm of customer service. We make calls or take calls for companies taking advantage of the low cost of doing business in Barcelona. They range in degrees of horror, but they are all generally awful jobs. We are the punching bags for multi-nationals. We work them because most of us arrive without really knowing much Spanish, beyond the crucial "una cerveza, por favor." These jobs afford us the chance to work and live in a city we quickly fall in love with, and to do so in our native tongue, be it English, German, Dutch or Italian.
This sort of work, though, is a bit like making a deal with the devil.
We make the deal as it's the easiest way to stay, and start living in the city like a local, rather than sampling it as a tourist, but it also makes the process of learning Spanish more difficult, particularly for native English speakers. It becomes an ordeal to put off after speaking solely in your native tongue for eight hours a day, to go home and diligently work on improving your fluency in Spanish, or Catalan. You can suddenly find yourself not really learning at all, stuck in a rut, repeating the same words in the same situations.
You stall out, or you remove the need to learn altogether.
Barcelona truly is a cosmopolitan city. People from all over the world now call it home. There is a thriving British expat community here. English and Irish pubs are littered throughout Barcelona's many barrios. The temptation to immerse yourself in this familiar, comfortable world, with a language you already understand, and customs that you've trafficked in for years, is palpable. The more exotic, authentic world, the real Barcelona, falls back into the distance, and many expats don't notice because they're still having a damned fantastic time.
So far, I've avoided that particular trap. Early on I managed to meet a group of true locals, great people who happily invited me into their world. They keep me immersed in the language, the culture, the life. When I arrived in Barcelona I had planned to learn Catalan first; it was this group of new friends, all Catalans, who suggested tackling Spanish beforehand. For my part, I do what I can to help them improve their English, though most of them have a lengthy head start. I have taught them quite a lot of creative slang, though.
Attempting to learn a new language through immersion in the country, the culture and the community is a longer road to take. The rewards are less immediate, the frustrations constant. The truth is, you have to accept the reality that you will feel like an idiot more often than you won't, at least initially. After a series of mild embarrassments, the occasional breakthrough will occur; a moment of triumph. This tougher journey still seems the best for a full on adult with so much bad wiring in the skull, so much junk information clogging up the memory.
It is the difference between learning to speak, and learning to communicate.
Still, I can't help but think that all this could have been avoided; that it could be easier for the guiri's who want to make a life in Spain, or elsewhere. When I was in school, Spanish, along with German, finally popped up as an option for study midway through secondary school. French, the second official language in Canada, is mandatory when students are eight years old, but becomes a course one can drop by the time they are fifteen; many kids in English Canada do just that. The chance to learn other languages comes too late. As toddlers, when our minds are like sponges, hungry for knowledge, we will devour another language as eagerly as we would a slice of chocolate cake. For good or ill, we live in a world far smaller than it was just 30 years ago, yet we haven't really caught on to the idea that we should be learning to communicate with strangers half a world away at the same time as we do strangers around the corner.
As the months have passed here, I've become friends with quite a few guiri's as well. Most have made some attempt to learn Spanish, and some have added Catalan. Their knowledge of these languages vary; some have been here a few years and are nearly fluent, some have been here for a decade and are just getting by. The ease with which they adapt to the language is random, though English natives generally have a rougher time of it than their French, Italian, and German counterparts. Still, I have met more than a spattering of expats who've fallen into the trap of not bothering, or giving up.
In mid May, I was out with my wife and two friends visiting from London for the weekend to catch a Barça match at Camp Nou. We found ourselves in a little expat bar on Sant Joan just below Carrer Aragó, near where we were living at the time. A fairly intoxicated local fellow chose to strike up a very friendly conversation with me using a rapid fire mixture of Castellano and his native Catalan. At the time I understood very little of either, so the conversation amounted to me repeatedly saying "Lo siento, hablo poco español." A younger couple from Ireland were sitting near enough to catch the mildly absurd conversation. It gave them a good chuckle. Later into the night when the bar closed, I had the chance to speak with them while we all had a last cigarette before moving on. The man was younger than myself, but had been here for over ten years. He freely admitted that he understood the affable drunk less than I did, revealing that even after such a long time here, he didn't know much more than a few basics, and at this point, probably never would.
The other side of the coin is that, whatever struggles these lifer guiri's have in their attempts to learn the language, their children reap the benefits. A couple I know, the husband from England, the wife from France, have a young son who has spent his short life living in Barcelona. At barely six years old, he already speaks fluent English, French, Catalan and Spanish, and he is learning Mandarin, basically because he can. His father joked to me that, whatever happens, he knows his son will always be able to find work at the airport. As far as I'm concerned, the kid is a genius, and is likely to take over the world. I'm just glad I've made friends with our future potential leader.
Perhaps he'll give me a job as the cleaner someday.
Attempting to learn a new language through immersion in the country, the culture and the community is a longer road to take. The rewards are less immediate, the frustrations constant. The truth is, you have to accept the reality that you will feel like an idiot more often than you won't, at least initially. After a series of mild embarrassments, the occasional breakthrough will occur; a moment of triumph. This tougher journey still seems the best for a full on adult with so much bad wiring in the skull, so much junk information clogging up the memory.
It is the difference between learning to speak, and learning to communicate.
Still, I can't help but think that all this could have been avoided; that it could be easier for the guiri's who want to make a life in Spain, or elsewhere. When I was in school, Spanish, along with German, finally popped up as an option for study midway through secondary school. French, the second official language in Canada, is mandatory when students are eight years old, but becomes a course one can drop by the time they are fifteen; many kids in English Canada do just that. The chance to learn other languages comes too late. As toddlers, when our minds are like sponges, hungry for knowledge, we will devour another language as eagerly as we would a slice of chocolate cake. For good or ill, we live in a world far smaller than it was just 30 years ago, yet we haven't really caught on to the idea that we should be learning to communicate with strangers half a world away at the same time as we do strangers around the corner.
As the months have passed here, I've become friends with quite a few guiri's as well. Most have made some attempt to learn Spanish, and some have added Catalan. Their knowledge of these languages vary; some have been here a few years and are nearly fluent, some have been here for a decade and are just getting by. The ease with which they adapt to the language is random, though English natives generally have a rougher time of it than their French, Italian, and German counterparts. Still, I have met more than a spattering of expats who've fallen into the trap of not bothering, or giving up.
In mid May, I was out with my wife and two friends visiting from London for the weekend to catch a Barça match at Camp Nou. We found ourselves in a little expat bar on Sant Joan just below Carrer Aragó, near where we were living at the time. A fairly intoxicated local fellow chose to strike up a very friendly conversation with me using a rapid fire mixture of Castellano and his native Catalan. At the time I understood very little of either, so the conversation amounted to me repeatedly saying "Lo siento, hablo poco español." A younger couple from Ireland were sitting near enough to catch the mildly absurd conversation. It gave them a good chuckle. Later into the night when the bar closed, I had the chance to speak with them while we all had a last cigarette before moving on. The man was younger than myself, but had been here for over ten years. He freely admitted that he understood the affable drunk less than I did, revealing that even after such a long time here, he didn't know much more than a few basics, and at this point, probably never would.
The other side of the coin is that, whatever struggles these lifer guiri's have in their attempts to learn the language, their children reap the benefits. A couple I know, the husband from England, the wife from France, have a young son who has spent his short life living in Barcelona. At barely six years old, he already speaks fluent English, French, Catalan and Spanish, and he is learning Mandarin, basically because he can. His father joked to me that, whatever happens, he knows his son will always be able to find work at the airport. As far as I'm concerned, the kid is a genius, and is likely to take over the world. I'm just glad I've made friends with our future potential leader.
Perhaps he'll give me a job as the cleaner someday.
