12 Things I HATE about Living in Spain

so I'm a 44 year old man I know I don't look it and thank you for saying so I have spent 12 years living in Spain which is a quarter of my life half of my adult life so I think and I hope you can tell me if I have earned the right to be pissed off about a few things in Spain the right to complain today I'm going to share 12 of the things that piss me off about Spain one for each year I have spent in this incredible wonderful country now I make this video with a little trepidation because I do genuinely love living in Spain and I hope my almost 150 videos celebrating this country prove that but anytime I respectfully call out something that annoys me about this country I inevitably get the go home comments so I'm excited to see how many go home comments I get today but let's begin and I'm going to ease you in gently okay so I love Christmas in Spain from the impossible to understand Lottery [Music] to the huge beasts to making myself sick daily with Duron mantecados and Paul borones AKA dust cakes but Christmas always takes a turn for the worse when these guys pop up not this brand in particular but this product if I had an arch nemesis it would be canned white asparagus they're invariably served by my mother-in-law on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve or if I'm lucky both you get a massive pile of them on your plate and to make matters worse they're served with this big gooey dollop of mayonnaise and the whole family is groaning at how delicious they are while I eat them one by one closing my eyes and thinking of mother New Zealand oh even the smell makes me want to hide and to make matters worse they come in a variety of sizes but including really big so they come from normal to Fat to very fat we agreso and the big ones are called noodles which kind of loosely translate says the dog's bollocks because it's apparently what the former King said when he was served a plate of delicious and enormous canned white asparagus presumably at Christmas Eve on New Year's Eve or if he was lucky both but anyway that's some light hateful entertainment to sort of kick us off and get us in the mood but now let's move on to some more serious topics welcome to the bosom of Spanish democracy this is the Spanish Parliament where the laws of the land are made and yes I have a beef with the men and women inside you see there are a few things more frustrating than living in a country loving a country having a family in a country paying taxes starting businesses in a country and yet you cannot vote in the national elections because that is a privilege that is reserved for Spanish citizens and I am a lowly permanent resident fair enough you say James just go ahead and get your span of citizenship what's the big deal well the thing is to take Spanish citizenship by Spanish law I would have to renounce my New Zealand citizenship and I don't really want to do that to my mother look in a practical sense I could have both citizenships and nobody would really care but should I have to to be able to vote and as I looked into this more I learned it's actually a thing there's a whole Wikipedia page on what's called non-citizen suffrage and it turns out that requiring people to be citizens in order to vote is more the rule than the exception see here I am as a as a naive New Zealander thinking that was how it was everywhere because in New Zealand you only have to be a permanent resident to vote but these guys in the Spanish Parliament aren't going to change it so let's see what my fellow Spaniards think generalities so there you have it the people of Spain have spoken I should be able to vote along with my fellow permanent residents so come on guys change the law now okay so there is nothing quite like sitting down in a Spanish bar in the morning for breakfast and soaking up the atmosphere the buzz of the patrons the shouts of the waiters the hiss of the coffee machine the smell of churros everything in the world is perfect until you take a sip of the coffee [Music] welcome to the wonderful world facto if you've never heard of it it's a historically fascinating yet gastronomically terrifying process whereby sugar is burned onto the outside of the Coffee Bean it originated I believe in Mexico where miners would use this process to preserve their coffee when they were taking it down underground for months at a time and it was brought to Spain because it was a great way to ship coffee around the country without it spoiling and the tradition for our sins continues today in Spain meaning that when you drink straight black espresso coffee in a in a bar it'll taste bitter kind of accurate with hints of the apocalypse and in fact I believe that the fact that most spaniels will drink their black coffee with sugar or with milk Cafe Con Leche is to mask the flavor the true flavor of the coffee because without either of those things you really are exposed to the true Taste of the Abomination I don't want to cast shade on this fantastic they're just serving the coffee that's traditional here in Spain but if you're in Madrid and you want a spot to grab a vermouth and an excellent plate of Harmony Acorn fit hand this is your spot to be fair the coffee in Spain is getting better for my taste anyway listen less torrefacto so much so that I fear that one day I might actually miss the flavor of torrefacto because it will be the flavor however bitter of the Spain that I fell in love with which brings me to my next hate that I have about Spain and that is change [Music] [Applause] foreign so when I first moved to Spain I fell in love deeply in love not just with yali but with Madrid I loved wandering this historic Center this quiet historic Center sort of a mysterious part of the city and stumbling across old man bars that were full of locals and and little shops that were selling you know things that the neighbors needed little idiosyncratic shops little Curiosities like this one this fantastic second-hand Bookshop that's just tucked away here in short what I loved was Madrid's idiosyncrasy but over the years I've watched as that that idiosyncrasy has been eroded as a lot of chains and franchises have moved in and the mom and pop shops those small neighborhood shops have been pushed out for example when I used to give tours here Food Tours about eight or so years ago this money changing here on the corner was just a tiny little old man bar a local old man bar just like you see all over Spain it was right here in the Porta Del Sol and the idea of an old man bar here in the Puerto Del Sol now is just Unthinkable or this place here this was one of my favorite bars in the center of Madrid February that they sold the best tortilla in the city you can almost see the name up there and now it's a premier Burger Bar because it's right here right by the Mercado at San Miguel right in the center of Madrid look I know what you're thinking or at least what you should be thinking you're thinking but James this is touristification that causes this and you're partly to blame for that and also you benefit from it look in the videos that I make and in Devourer tours as well I've always tried to celebrate the idiosyncratic places the mom and pop Shops and and help those Thrive and I think to some extent I've been successful at that but I realize there's an undesired spillover effect it's part of the reason that from now on I want to make more videos that celebrate the off the beaten path parts of Spain the less known parts so now you're thinking James you're going to destroy those as well look it's not overplay my influence here but I did want to share this because I felt like it's the elephant in the room and I love making videos about this country and celebrating my love for this country but it still frustrates me the changes that I see in Madrid foreign [Music] okay that was a terrible reenactment but I can't handle the spam phone calls in Spain they're out of control so it'll generally play out like this you're in the middle of something that is really hard to do at the same time and speak on the phone such as cooking dinner or changing the baby's nappy and someone will call you pick up there'll be silence for a moment then a click and then a voice that sounds like they're 10 000 miles away and in a room with ten thousand other muffled voices will greet you overly politely and then try and sell you the world's best mobile phone offer and sometimes there's nobody there and you just listen to silence saying hola hola as if somewhere someone is watching you but spam phone calls have increased massively in Spain since the pandemic we're now ranked five in the world with the average person receiving 18 a month which is nothing quite like the Brazilians they get 50 a month I mean the Brazilians must be on the phone listening to silence and being watched and being sold mobile phone contract effects all the time there is a list you can sign up for called the Robinson list that legal economies should check it before they call you it's to it's to opt out of these calls but it worked a little bit for me but it didn't really work for yali at all and the Insidious part is that sometimes these aren't just Spam phone calls they're scam phone calls often trying to trick people into changing electricity companies and often they get older people who aren't as Savvy with this kind of thing but funny story I actually received a spam phone call Just When I Was preparing this part of the video I tried to explain the irony to the person who called me but sadly they didn't get it okay okay so the next topic is an important one and that's racism look Spain is a country where casual racism is relatively common and perhaps more frustrating is the inability or unwillingness of a lot of people to see racism for what it is when it's right in front of them let me give you a couple of examples one this famous candy here this much loved candy called gongitos this brand was created in the early 60s you know in a totally different time actually just after Congo achieved Independence now the name of the candy conquitoes doesn't really mean anything but it suggests a diminutive form of people from the Congo sort of little Congolese or little people from the Congo and the mascot is a black man a sort of a round chubby black man with big red lips so in other words it's a branding that's from a total different time and should be retired now there was pushback against this in 2020 about the same time as the black lives matter protests and the brand La Casa responded to the criticism system they said a couple of things one was that the actual mascot doesn't represent a person from the Congo or even a person they said it just represents two candies on top of each other which obviously is ridiculous and they also said we also have white gongito's white chocolate conquitoes and those are represented by a white character and there's a parallel to that response in this next story about Spain's Christmas parade so every year in Spain there are Christmas parades and it's the three wise men who brought the gifts to Jesus who parade through the the town dressed up now traditionally one of these men baltazar is is represented as a black man uh the idea is he's a black man or a middle eastern man and there's a tradition in Spain there's a practice of a white man dressing up in blackface to represent baltazar now this happens a lot less than it used to rightly so but it still happens and so it happened this year and in some places in one place iwalada a town in Catalunya a white man dressed up in blackface to represent this this character now there was protest about this there was outrage and the organizers of the parade responded which I think again is is telling they said participation for this celebration is open to the entire population without any type of Distinction or discrimination they went on say for those that dress up I.E in blackface it's an honor it's not a degrading thing now let me be really clear because when I talk about this topic it always kind of blows up in the comments understandably I am not saying that all Spaniards are racist but I'm giving two clear examples where where racism is allowed to pass muster today in Spain on a corporate level and on an Institutional level and where the people who are propagating that don't make a change and actually push back against it showing this sort of inability or unwillingness to recognize it for what it is now having said that I do want to hear what your thoughts are and your perspectives in the comments particularly people who live in Spain so drop your thoughts in the comments and let's try and have a civil conversation about it so recently on Instagram I said that one of the things I find frustrating about Spain is the level of customer service that it's not good and I got some pushback and that was fair enough because people said rightly that not all customer service is bad in Spain so if you go to your local Corner Bar your local Corner hardware store your local Corner hairdressers it's going to be great anything in your neighborhood is going to be great and personal but the minute you have to deal with a big company in Spain namely internet companies mobile phone companies insurance companies Banks it's going to be horrendous now recently I've had some really negative experiences with banks so I'm going to single those guys out for this one so in short I hate dealing with banks in Spain okay first example so recently Yoli had a question about an insurance policy that we have with an insurance company but through our bank effectively her question was about a specific thing I want to know do I deal directly with the insurance company or do I go through them bank and so she called up our personal banker at banking there our bank now no this is not our actual Branch to protect the identity of the very rude person that Yoli spoke to so Yoli called the personal banker and asked innocently who she should be dealing with in this situation note that the job of the personal banker is to answer questions but the personal banker completely rung her out Yoli should have known that she should have called the info line of the bank directly and not called and bothered the personal banker she scolded her and told her off ironically she also answered Yoli's question but what this illustrates is no matter how asinine or innocent or banal you're dealing with a bank might be or your question might be invariably it will end in confrontation also the banks have incredibly short hours in which you can actually do things at the branches inevitably when you go it will be too late to do that thing that you needed to do so if you arrive at 11 05 am you could only have done that thing that you needed to do between 9am and 11AM it's as if the bank staff work with such angry intensity that they can only sustain it for short periods of time so there's something strange that happens sometimes when I get my hair cut in Spain I'll be chatting to the hairdresser and you know at some point they will say invariably oh where are you from and I will say New Zealand Nueva fell under and at that point they'll pause for a moment and they'll say oh it must be very cold up there and I'll think up there and then I realize and I say this has happened about three times while I'm getting my hair cut that they think that New Zealand is somewhere in northern Europe deep in northern Europe you know it could be the Netherlands it's not quite clear and this doesn't just happen with hairdressers I don't mean to pick on hairdressers it happens with bartenders taxi drivers you know the kind of people who you don't know them but you just engage in a little bit of Chit Chat and you know open up a little bit about yourself and so what I say now when they ask is I say I'm from New Zealand next to Australia they pause for a moment and say oh it must be really hot down there but to be honest this doesn't really bother me that much I know New Zealand is a small place and there's plenty of countries that I couldn't place on a map or wouldn't be quite sure where they're from but there is a variation of this that does get my goat a little bit and this often happens with people who maybe I've been working with them a little bit and at some point they will ask me a question about where I'm from or they'll introduce me to a colleague of theirs and they'll say this is James he's English so next up nepotism now nepotism is Rife in Spanish Society in all levels of Spanish Society from the corner store small businesses right up to the highest echelons of government and why it really frustrates me is because I see a lot of businesses struggle in this country and although nepotism isn't the only reason it's like they're not putting their best foot forward if they're hiring cousins to do their translations or their website instead of getting the best person for the job but it's quite hard to hate this aspect of Spanish Society because it comes from a good place in the end this is a society where family networks and friend networks are really strong and if someone in a family is struggling then it's kind of the whole family's problem to gather around and try and provide help to that person but to understand nepotism in Spain properly I feel like we should talk to a Spaniard so let's cross live to our Spanish correspondent [Music] early [Music] question do you think uh Spanish people think nepotism is a problem I don't think they find a problem like I'm just interfer everywhere in this country so it's like they see it over normal like why would I give this job to anyone else but my cousin you know they will see the problem only if maybe politicians do it like someone in Parliament they will be very critical about that but they don't realize that they did that last week with their cousin you know I mean do you have a problem with um with nepotism yeah totally and I've never practiced it very good that I can recall correct okay huddle up because there's a cultural phenomenon in this country that really drives me nuts and it's something that I think degrades the quality of our society and impacts significantly on Spain's productivity here's the thing in Spain employers and employees okay what I was about to say and what I regret saying was that employers and employees hate each other but that's not true that's too strong what there is is deep mistrust between employees and employers okay back to the video all too often employers think that employees are lazy and trying to rip them off and employees think that employers are greedy and trying to take advantage of them case in point I have a friend who was recently working at a deli in Madrid it got to the end of the first month and it was payday she got her pay slip and it was 30 short she went to her boss and she was like Hey I'm missing some money here the boss pulled out an envelope of cash and handed it to her that was the missing 30 he paid her in cash now she knew exactly what was going on because this is a very common occurrence what he was doing was paying her the 30 percent in cash so that he didn't have to pay the Social Security contributions on that 30 the upshot is she doesn't get that 30 put towards her retirement or unemployment fund but again she knew exactly what was going on because it happened so often now I know what some people are thinking they're thinking James Social Security contributions are so high in Spain the company the small company couldn't afford it this was a big company a big company that is all over the country they should have paid her properly right but for me the whole skimping on the pay thing and the fact that it's really common is just indicative of how screwed up the employment relationships are in this country so did you know that Spain invented red tape literally Charles the first of Spain in the 16th century decided that he needed to modernize the bureaucracy of the country and so he started wrapping important documents that needed high level attention in red tape ironically it didn't work so it means that Spain as well as being the granddaddy of red tape continues to excel at making people's lives miserable with it and bureaucracy in Spain is such a cliche that I almost didn't include it but then I stumbled across something I stumbled across this email and I just thought I need to get this email into this video it is remarkable more about that email in a moment you see I as many of you know run a course and online course that helps people move to Spain helps people relocate Spain called the move to Spain master class and I experienced through the people who taped the course at all levels of Spanish bureaucracy at its most miserable and so so I wanted to share with you three aspects of Spanish bureaucracy that really do piss me off first of all nobody ever knows the answer to your question and it could be the most simple question about how to do some sort of bureaucratic process but nobody knows the answer in fact it almost seems like the answer doesn't exist and so if you ask someone in the bureaucracy for how to do that thing what is the list of documents that I need it's always kind of like well it depends they'll kind of Dodge the answer and you're like well what does it depend on and they'll be like maybe it depends on the region of Spain you live in maybe it depends on the time of day and maybe it depends or often it depends on the person you're dealing with the actual bureaucrat you're dealing with but it means that every process is kind of shrouded in mystery and the second one is that any bureaucratic document or website is always written in the most cryptic formal language so that people have no ability even if they're native Spanish speakers who you know have studied philosophy and and technical writing they can't understand it it's it's a mixture of vagueness and highly formal writing and it's almost as if that the bureaucrats think that by writing in clear Spanish they'll be giving up some sort of power which of course they don't want to do or maybe they think that if they write it in normal Spanish then you know in a way they're not doing their job their job is to write like bureaucrats third and this is where we return to this email here this wonderful email the Spanish bureaucracy is incredibly and fascinatingly technologically inept so this email is an automatic reply that I received uh to an email I sent to a Spanish Consulate in the United States although it's outside of Spain it's still part of the Spanish bureaucracy a core part of the Spanish bureaucracy and I would like to meet the person who wrote this email I would like to get into their mind I think they should be studied it is wonderful don't you think it's only missing emojis and Comic Sans okay last one and if you don't already you're gonna think on a bit of Grinch after this one but I think it's something that would drive you crazy too so I love how gregarious Spanish culture is this is a this is a country where people will stop and chat and spend the time without looking at their watch and and really really be happy in your company but there's an aspect of this gregariousness that I just can't handle and it's called The Long Spanish goodbye so picture this you're at a party with your friends or maybe your partner and you agree as a group or with your partner that's time to leave it's time to get going now International custom dictates that from the moment of agreeing to leave as a group or as a couple you have about 10 minutes to get out the door but that rule doesn't apply in Spain here the Spaniard will spend the next hour slowly inching towards the door and engaging in any potential conversation that comes their way maybe they'll see someone they haven't spoken to yet while they're on their way to the bathroom for for a Wii before they go or they'll realize there's something they haven't mentioned to that person that been talking to for the last four hours and look I wouldn't mind this if it was agreed that we're not going to leave for another hour and I would just get another drink and enjoy myself but what I can't handle is living for an hour in this kind of goodbye no man's land okay but I do remind you after all of this I do love living in this wonderful country in fact there was only one thing one thing that I hate about Spain that I couldn't fit into this list it's those really long pillows that you get in hotel rooms almost medieval pillows we you can't kind of get your arm under it to get comfortable yeah I hate those too but this is not going to be a long goodbye I'll see you in the next video and I promise it's going to be full of Spain love butterflies and joy bye-bye

Channel: Spain Revealed

Views: 256,241

Keywords: james black spain, james blake spain, yoly james, spain revealed, yoly spain, spain couple, spain guide, yolly james, yoli james

Id: aRablU35bOI

Length: 25min 37sec (1537 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 25 2023