Reticent, mistrustful and slow to commit

The other day, on the phone, an old friend, due to visit from the UK next month, asked if I wanted her to bring anything — she was thinking teabags, mint imperials, Horlicks, and the like. I did think of something, but my initial reaction was a simple "no."

It’s not that we’ve become Spanish — we’ll always be immigrant Britons here; but choosing oil on toast over butter is hardly akin to burning my Union Flag boxers. It's just that so many things have become so normalised and routine that, ironically, it’s the British way that I now find a bit strange.

Many still imagine Spain as somewhat "Third World." We notice when our guests try to haggle over the price of things on a market stall or doubt the drinkability of the tap water. It's true that water from a well, a storage tank, or irrigation water is not, necessarily, safe — but that's equally true in rural Cambridgeshire. The mains water in Spain, the stuff that flows from the taps in 98% of urban homes and 93% of rural ones, is certainly as safe as anything Thames Water produces. It's not just the visitors. A while ago I was the passenger in a car that was driven the wrong way down a one-way road — "Nobody worries about rules like that here," opined my driver.

So, what other stereotypes are there? Maybe that Spaniards are lazy and take three-hour siestas daily. Obviously, they are unprofessional, slovenly, disorganised, and late. What about old-fashioned and cruel, as they flock to bullfights to see a bit of blood and torture? Everyone knows Spain is technologically backward, with most people employed in the service industries—especially for tourists—or maybe as farmers producing olive oil and wine. Oh, and, of course, Catalonia. As the Catalans take to the barricades to protect themselves against the high-handed Castilians, the country is on the brink of total meltdown.

It's true that, in the 1960s, Spain was backward in European terms. Back then, agriculture was still the primary source of wealth, and a peasant class lived on a very basic, things-to-hand diet. Even in the 1980s, it wasn’t unusual to see donkey carts on the streets. A key milestone was Spain’s entry into the European Economic Community in 1986, which sped up modernisation of infrastructure, government and institutions. That’s when dirt roads gave way to motorways, espadrilles and oxen gave way to Air Jordans, and feudal overlords gave way to elected politicians. But it wasn't until the 1990s that Spain finally reached the high development category of the UN's Human Development Index. By 2025, Spain ranked as the 28th most developed country in the world, just behind Belgium and Denmark. By comparison, the UK comes in at 17 and the United States at 21.

People often hark back to an imagined past without considering present reality. Only a few weeks ago, someone confidently told me Spain was Europe’s most corrupt country. Francoist Spain may have been, but modern Spain isn’t. Perhaps my informant read it on Instagram or Facebook, but, according to the Corruption Perceptions Index, Spain ranks as the 46th least corrupt of 180 countries. Nine EU nations are perceived as more corrupt, and 17 less.

Actually I have to say I was a bit disappointed with that placing; I thought Spain would do better but it seems that I'm remembering the past too. Back in 2011 Spain was ranked the 20th least corrupt country in the world. Since then the way of calculating the points on the Corruption Index has changed and Spain's position has worsened as a result. The Corruption Index marks out of 100 - 100 is good, 0 is bad. Denmark, the least corrupt country in the world scored 90 this year. Spain scored 56. The UK scored 71 (Making the UK the 20th least corrupt country in the world.). 

To paraphrase Wet Wet Wet, corruption is all around. Ask a plumber if they’ll take cash and skip the VAT/IVA, and chances are they’ll say yes. That's not quite the folded banknote tucked into a cigarette packet in the glovebox for when the police stop you for a non-existent motoring offence. Try bribing a Guardia Civil officer or a Town Hall paper pusher only if you fancy an overnight stay in police cells.

Political corruption is another matter: there’s a constant flow of cases in the news. Most Spaniards believe that the majority of Spanish politicians are corrupt; in it to line their own pockets. Worse still, they believe that political and administrative corruption is inevitable. Still, the sheer number of cases making headlines may be a sign that it’s not quite as easy, as accepted or as safe as it used to be.

I’m sure that, as a general rule, Spain’s bureaucracy is more complex, more unwieldy and more time-consuming than the UK’s. Spain’s online procedures are notoriously complex, and the division of the country into seventeen different autonomous regions with their own systems does nothing to help. The websites try to handle too many variables, making failure almost inevitable at some point. Spanish systems are better than they were, but they are still very clanky. They have the added disadvantage that Spaniards seem to think that official bodies should use formal, often obscure, language to give the process gravitas. So, that even for native speakers the language of officialdom can be obtuse. For struggling foreigners, it can be impossible.

While I'm happy to agree that Spain’s bureaucracy can be a pain in the proverbial, I do wonder if my fellow immigrant Britons are sometimes a bit unfair in their criticisms and remember a utopic British bureaucracy. Someone arriving new to the country suddenly has to deal with an enormous number of processes, often with curved ball cultural differences. The tasks might include buying or renting a property, registering children for school, buying a car, signing up for electricity, opening a bank account, taking on a new phone contract, sorting out healthcare, applying for relevant identity documentation, maybe exchanging driving licences, etc. I suspect that doing that, all together, all at once, even in the most streamlined bureaucracy in the world would have its hiccoughs.

Some things do not work as they should, that’s clear, but then some things do. It took me about ten minutes to register with Social Security here that I had married. I did it online. For the UK, I had to ring. I waited 50 minutes on the phone, and when I asked the bloke what I should do, his suggestion was to maybe send “a little note” with a copy of the marriage certificate to a physical mailing address he gave me, because he wasn’t quite sure of the process. I could cite several other examples, but this blog is getting very, very long.

And what about the points I raised earlier? Paradoxically Spain works some of the longest hours in Europe and sleeps less than most. The siesta exists for the retired but otherwise survives mostly as a weekend or holiday indulgence. The idea of Spaniards as unprofessional or disorganised hardly squares with the fact that Spanish companies compete globally, and while punctuality may not be Prussian, it fits Mediterranean norms. Far from being a nation enthralled by blood sports, most Spaniards oppose bullfighting and regard it as a relic of another age. Nor is the country technologically backward: it is a leader in renewable energy, exports high-speed rail systems, makes serious contributions in aerospace and biomedical research and even in these convulsive times is still the second largest car maker in Europe. Neither is the situation in Catalonia new. Spain has managed such tensions through for decades, a resilience that undercuts the caricature of political chaos.

Today, Spain is simply another European country. It's true that the biscuits are different, that you have to do a tax return and you might not be able to find a club to join if you take up a new hobby. The differences are real, but so are the similarities — it's simply that the challenges are approached in different ways. The old caricature of Spain as some slightly drowsy banana republic just doesn’t hold up. Most Spaniards are urban animals and live in towns and cities. We're a bit of an exception living in a rural area where the past is much more present and the living is more relaxed. I suppose that nobody in London's Financial District worries too much about their allotment, but I hear it's still a big thing in Ambridge.