Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?

[Brandenburger Toro]

Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?

But I didn't make any claims about UK emigrants to Spain. I made a joking reference to how they are perceived.

Perhaps I should have been clearer about that - but I did clarify it explicitly.

[Guest]

Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?

But how could you possibly make a claim about how UK emigrants to Spain are perceived by Spaniards without (a) having lived here for a serious length of time or (b) actually being a Spaniard? I just don't see what you're getting at, or where your legitimacy for your claims comes from ...

[Brandenburger Toro]

Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?

But I said this, it's a perception here. In Britain. I said it was a running joke on this board, and I suggested looking at the letters page of national newspapers.

I mean, this is actually something I actually wrote. That's why I've found your umbrage bewildering, it seems to be about something I haven't said anything even a bit like.

[Guest]

Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?

It seems we are going round in circles. What has how some people in the UK regard UK emigrants to Spain got to do with how thick-headed the Spanish athletes were to do their controversial photos? The two things are completely unrelated.

And, I would respectfully suggest, that the stereotyping of UK emigrants to Spain is as ignorant as any other type of ethnic profiling, unless you have either first hand experience, or serious true evidence, of the matters in hand. So, Toro de France, if you don't have either of those two things, then you should most definitely not be raising those incorrect (in my experience and opinion - I mean, I've lived here for seven years, I couldn't possibly be more Spanish if I tried) stereotypes up as being valid general pictures. That's just wrong, and OTF should do better than that, especially when it's possibly interpreted as offensive to other OTFers. I mean, I wouldn't dream of saying how Polish emigrants to Ireland, say, were perceived, unless I had shedloads more info than I do now, even despite the fact that I'm Irish and have lived in Poland for two years. Just be a bit less sweeping with your generalisations unless you have info to back it up ..

[Brandenburger Toro]

Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?

I absolutely give up. What you appear to think I wrote, and why, bears no apparent relation to what I think I wrote, and why.

[Guest]

Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?

OK, fine. But you should be sensitive about 'publishing' tabloid stereotypes of ethnic groups of people as if they were your opinion - it's no more 'acceptable' to produce bile about the UK emigrants in Spain than it is to produce Daily Mail-style nastiness about Poles in the UK. Perhaps this would be something we could sort out face-to-face, or perhaps not.

[sharon]

Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?


http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/aug/19/olympics2008.olympicsfootball


The Spanish may not be racist but the ones posting on this subject on the internet are astonishingly thick and nationalistic. And that's just the bilingual ones I've read.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?

Lodz - if I had done that, or anything remotely like it, then your advice about "sensitivity" when doing so would be well taken.

But I haven't.

There really is not anything else to say.

[Wyatt Earp]

Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?

I've been agonising a bit about whether to wade into this one, because it's none of my business, but listen: I'm a regular tourist in Spain, which isn't the same thing as an expat but which is similar enough as far as the relevant stereotypes are concerned. And I must admit I think Lozubelieveit is being far too thin-skinned here.

What's more, many of the Spanish do think we're all lobster-skinned bebedores. They've often said as much to me, in a spirit of "Of course, we don't mean you." (They don't know me very well, you see.)

I don't think the British are in a position, politically, where we need to get indignant about humorous stereotypes of us. Irritated, perhaps, especially when they're hackneyed ones (I must admit the Fat Geordies With No Tops On on the magpies thread made me think "Oh here we fucking go" a bit). But not angry.

I'm wading in because at its best OTF has avoided the two messageboard extremes of (a) incoherent trash-talking and (b) a general oversensitivity to slight, of the "I actually find that very offensive" variety. If we can continue to steer that middle course that would be good.

[Guest]

Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?

I think you both have misunderstood me slightly. I don't dispute for a moment that many Spaniards have an impression of British tourists as being drunken louts (e.g. they use the word 'hooligans' for any group of football fans who come over here) (though, incidentally, I haven't ever detected that they would incorporate 'Brits are xenophobes' into that stereotype, just that they are drunk tossers). I myself cringe slightly at 'lobster-coloured' families in football shirts loudly singing in pubs, or swanning about Barcelona.

However, in the first place, that only goes for Spaniards' impression of tourists, not people from the UK who actually live here. I feel it's important do draw a distinction between the two, for the reasons I've droned on about above.

In the second place, no doubt there are some UK expats who are very right wing and have 'ironic' views on immigration and have published letters in the Daily Mail expousing their opinions, but that is not representative in any way, shape or form of the many internationally-minded, lovely Brits I've met in my time here; even if it's a 'joke' to present this stereotype, it's not a very nice, and actually quite hurtful, joke (in the same way as, when I lived in England, I didn't take 'thick drunken Irish Paddy' jokes too well - which I guess most of OTF would back me up on).

In the third place, even if it were true that Brits in Spain were a bunch of total xenophobic tossers, it wouldn't excuse the Spanish people who appeared in the controversial photos.

Sorry if my views on this thread have offended anyone, or the spirit of OTF.

[Wyatt Earp]

Have we done the "Spaniards are at it again" yet?

Well, they haven't, but I guess my point is that even if they had...