Political Incorrectness, Spanish Style

I learn so many things about US pop culture through Spanish news sites, and I always enjoy the distinctly cultural approach which allows Spanish writers to describe my society in ways I myself would never dream of. And while I must openly condemn some of the things the Spanish say and do, I have to acknowledge my soft spot for the Spaniards’ innocent yet reckless disregard for any sense of political correctness.

I am sure many of you will remember this summer’s Spanish Olympic debacle, in which the world champion Spanish basketball team happily posed for an ad photo (see above) while deliberately making a “Chinese face” by using their fingers to make “slanty eyes”. This ad was then published in many major magazines, causing a huge public scandal and a lot of angry backlash from the global community. But ask most Spaniards why some people may have been offended by the photo and you will be met with a lot of bewildered looks.

This is because the whole idea of political correctness is completely foreign here. Now I am not suggesting there is no racism in Spain (on the contrary, there is a tremendous amount of prejudice towards the newly immigrated South Americans, North Africans and Eastern Europeans), but what may seem like a racist comment to the fine tuned, politically correct American ear may just sound like an innocent funny joke to a Spaniard. In the case of the aforementioned ad, the basketball team truly meant this as a harmless joke and was shocked to find that some were offended by it.

Just this morning I came across an article from a reverse guiri blog (Spanish guiris in the US), which totally illustrates this innocence. Apparently the American convenience store chain Seven Eleven is holding a mock presidential election in the US using two different coffee cup options, red for McCain and blue for Obama. In case you’re confused about how this works the Spaniards break down the entire process as follows:

If you like your coffee black, choose a blue cup with Obama’s name on it. If you prefer your coffee with cream, you’re better off serving it up in the red McCain cup. / Si a uno de le gusta el café negro, elige el vaso azul donde pone Obama. Si lo prefiere con leche, mejor servírselo en el rojo de McCain.

Ok, really? You know you could never get away with saying something like that in the States! And still I find this terribly amusing so I laugh, but then my American politically correct conscience kicks in and reminds me that this was a very inappropriate comment. Like all those who make their lives in a foreign land, there are certain aspects of my national character which are so firmly ingrained into my psyche that they will follow me around no matter what culture I decide to live in. I will never be able to just laugh at a simple joke like this without feeling a tad bit guilty. I'm honestly not sure whether that is a good thing or not. While I am pondering this, I will leave you with one last piece of information, just in case you were wondering. According to my Spanish blogger friends, the “black candidate” is winning the Seven Eleven elections with 57% of the votes. If this prediction proves true and the US has its first non-white president, could this be a first step towards bridging the racial gap which has caused all this political correctness to begin with?

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly for McCain

This morning while I was getting my daily news fix I came across an announcement for an open chat session with a representative from the group Spain for McCain. Since I had no previous knowledge of the existence of such a group, I decided to check out their website to see what this was all about. Apparently, as the name would suggest, a group of Spanish citizens and American residents in Spain have formed this group to support the McCain campaign. From what I can tell, they sell t-shirts and buttons and try to convince Americans to vote for you know who. There isn’t much to their site, but if you go to the Nosotros section and scroll down you can find all sorts of interesting comments, some supportive of the group but most very much against it. For those of you who read Spanish, José María’s comment on Sept. 18 was fairly interesting. Writing from Miami, he explains that while many Spanish people equate the Spanish Partido Popular with the Republicans and the PSOE with the Democrats, this couldn’t be any further from the truth. He believes that most American Democrats would actually fall towards the right of the Spanish political spectrum and the Republicans would be considered extreme right. Hmm…

The most fascinating thing for me about this group is the fact that American citizens seem to play a very secondary role. The site is almost completely in Spanish and the key organizers seem to have devoted all of this time and effort into campaigning for a person they are not entitled to vote for. The only pro Obama organization I know of in Spain is Democrats Abroad and they, of course, are American citizens with a vote to cast. But Spain for McCain has a facebook account (Spain X McCain) and even a flickr page which shows a photo of an ecstatic, presumably Spanish guy with his arm around a John McCain cut out. Truly bizarre. The chat starts in about 10 minutes so I think I’ll check it out.

Obama Spanks McCain in Defense of Spain

Last Friday night while I was asleep in my bed, dreaming of butterflies and rainbows and all things sublime, Barack Obama and John McCain were giving their all in the first official debate of this presidential campaign. I felt a little unpatriotic sleeping through the whole thing, but we are six hours ahead here and at 3:00 am on a Friday night I am either out on the town or asleep in my bed. Besides, I reasoned, if John McCain may or may not make this debate a priority, why should I? I resolved to download the debate on Saturday morning and happily turned in for the night. This was a sort of delusional wishful thinking, much like when I brought books along on weekend trips in college, knowing full well I wouldn’t be doing any studying. But my guilty conscience was appeased just as it was in my carefree college days, and I slept like a little baby.

After a lounging about a bit after breakfast the next day, I mustered up the courage to turn on the computer and see how things turned out. I expected to be disappointed by the candidates as I am generally am by all politicians, but I was hopeful that something productive could have come from the debate. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you folks with the American news reports, as I’m sure you’ve had your fill of them already. With a global financial crisis of potentially catastrophic proportions on the horizon, the world’s eyes would be looking to the two US presidential candidates for their take on things, and I was very interested in hearing what the Spanish press had to say about it. But nothing could have prepared me for the headlines, which were mostly along the same lines: Obama azota a McCain en el debate con su hostilidad hacía España. This oddly worded headline translates to something like: Obama Spanks McCain with His Own Hostility towards Spain in the Debate.

Upon recovering from the laughing fit which inevitably ensued from such a silly headline about such an important event, I was finally able to read on to find out how exactly McCain’s supposed hostility towards Spain was used by Obama in said spanking. You see, about a week before the debate McCain stated in an interview with a Miami radio station that he may or may not receive Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to the White House because “he wasn’t sure if (Spain) was on our side”. A chivalrous Obama apparently defended Spain’s honor as a NATO ally, making him the Spanish media’s knight in shining armor.

In case you were worried about Spain’s opinion on the rest of the debate, there was a slight mention of the economic crisis, the situation in the Middle East and the possibility of hunting down Bin Laden in Pakistan. But overall, several news sources were compelled to agree that the the debate was downright boring. In one Spanish newspaper’s exact words, the audience “was incredibly bored by two well behaved candidates who spoke about matters of little importance to an electorate which is not used to thinking about the rest of the world / se ha aburrido como una ostra ante dos candidatos muy comedidos que hablaban sobre temas que importan poco un electorado acostumbrado a no pensar en el mundo.” That’s right, the Spanish media totally bitchslapped both the presidential candidates AND the American people in one fell swoop. You didn’t think the Spanish media would actually praise the US, did you? I mean it’s one thing to give Obama props for defending the great nation of Spain, but the Spanish are anti-American after all. Except, of course, for the fact that they can’t get enough of American movies, music, literature, technology, etc…

So perhaps I'll have to rely on the CNN, FoxNews and the New York Times for my election coverage after all. Still , the Spanish viewpoint is undeniably entertaining...

Anything for a Chocolate Chip Cookie

As many of you know, I was married on June 12^th, which makes me a wife. Perhaps I’m no Susie Homemaker, but a wife nonetheless, and a very happy one at that. Thankfully, in addition to being monísimo, my husband Iñigo is anything but the stereotypical Spanish machista. That’s saying a lot in a country where you hear almost daily news reports about men killing their wives (wish I were exaggerating but I’m not). Íñigo is the main cook in our house and he pitches in with all the cleaning, except for the bathroom which I have stoically taken on in an attempt to compensate for my not so great cooking skills.

Anyway, as I struggle to come to grips with this new grown-up sounding label, every once in a while I feel the need to be a little more domestic. Last night was one of these times and, since Íñigo was out fulfilling a Spanish stereotype by playing soccer with his friends, I thought I’d try to fulfil an American one by baking some cookies. Now when I say baking I mean opening the box of Kroger brand chocolate chip cookie mix my parents brought us when they came over for the wedding, adding some butter and an egg, stirring the whole mess up a bit and lovingly placing spoonfuls of ooey gooey cookie dough on a makeshift cookie sheet (i.e. a piece of aluminium foil placed carefully on my oven rack). Then it’s off they go to the warm cocoon of my preheated oven, to be transformed in just 8-11 minutes into a chocolate melty delight. Sounds simple enough right? Yet with me in the kitchen, nothing is ever that simple.

You see there’s only one thing I like better than a nice warm freshly baked chocolate chip cookie, and that’s raw cookie dough. But alas, I am also a bit of a hypochondriac, which makes it increasingly difficult for me to enjoy the uncooked dough without obsessing about salmonella poisoning. So I decide to eat spoonfuls of the powder itself straight out of the box. It tastes almost just like the dough and eliminates the risk of an unpleasant aftermath. Except that while I’m eating the mix, I bite down on something which is obviously neither floury mix nor chocolate chip. I carefully extract the perpetrator from my mouth (so gross I know) and notice it looks a lot like part of a peanut. So I start inspecting the mix and eventually find about ten of his little buddies in there too. Now I’m really in a pickle: I want these cookies so bad, but is it smart to eat adulterated food products? If they truly are peanuts it’s ok because neither of us is allergic, but what if they’re not? The piece I crunched down on certainly didn’t taste like a peanut and the box said nothing about containing traces of nuts, but I am desperately reaching for any sort of logical reason to justify not throwing this box of cookie mix away.

I don’t think I have to tell you that we ate the cookies anyway, and they were actually pretty good. In such a modern home, beggars can’t be choosy and this was the last pack of chocolate chip cookie mix we are likely to receive for a while. Twelve hours later we’re still doing fine so I imagine it was not that big of a deal. Still, the next time I feel the need to be a stereotypical wife I think I’ll just snuggle up on the couch with a box of bon bons and watch some Oprah Winfrey. Except that we don’t get that here. Me cachís…

I’ll Take My Cherry Garcia with Breast Milk, Please

Yesterday everybody’s favorite animal loving/people hating group, PETA, sent a letter to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company, requesting that they please replace the cow’s milk in their ice cream with human breast milk. While I’ve never been a fan of PETA (the “Your Daddy is a Murderer” campaign clinched the deal for me ages ago) and this is obviously just another of their outrageous cries for attention, the most traumatizing part of the letter is that it refers to a restaurant in Switzerland which boasts menu items “made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk”. I’m sorry but ew. Again, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!

A part of me needed to know more about this Storchen Restaurant so I googled it and what do you know? The Swiss government shut them down almost a week ago due to the fact that "Humans are not on the list of authorised milk suppliers such as cows or sheep." But wait a minute-this article was released on a Swiss news web site on September 18^th and the letter PETA sent to Ben & Jerry’s is dated September 23^rd. Looks like somebody didn’t do their homework…or maybe telling half truths is what PETA is all about after all.

There is No Love Sincered That the Love of Food

One of my favorite hobbies here in Spain is collecting badly translated or poorly constructed English quotes. I found this little gem written on a roof beam in a bar called Covent Garden in Bilbao, our last stop after a jam packed day celebrating the loving union between two friends like only the Basques can. I thought this statement, which in layman’s terms would be something like “There is no more sincere love than the love of food”, was unusually fitting for the occasion since anyone who’s ever been to a Spanish wedding (especially in the north of Spain) knows that the true protagonists are not the bride and groom but rather the tasty treats you get to shovel down during the many hours following the actual ceremony. The first word that comes to mind is ABUNDANCE and the second is YUMMY. Saturday’s shindig kicked things off with an outdoor cocktail including a variety of pintxos (little Basque canapés), such as rape stuffed peppers and the all important jamón ibérico, without which no wedding celebration would be complete.

After about an hour of this, we moved into the dining room to enjoy an EIGHT COURSE MEAL (and I am so not exaggerating, not even a smidge). Lobster salad, rice with prawns, chipirones con cebolla confitada (cuttlefish with caramelized onion doesn’t sound nearly as nice does it?), a little codfish and mushroom stew (which I must admit I skipped due to my aversion to fungus), a salty pastry filled with shrimp and leeks (see what I mean about English names?), grilled rape with a clam sauce followed by several slices of meat raw enough to make you worried about getting a flesh eating bacteria but yummy enough to make you throw caution to the river. And then just when I thought I could eat no more, the happy couple cut that gorgeous chocolate cake and served it up with ice cream just to prove me wrong.

And of course you can’t talk about the food without mentioning its bosom buddy, the drink. You can rest assured that my cup runneth over well into the night. Red wine, white wine, rose wine, a Basque cider called txakoli, cava, all sorts of liquors and mixed drinks, the sky’s the limit at a Spanish wedding. And no need to worry about drinking and driving, that’s what the rental busses are for. Just hop right on the bus after the wedding is over and the driver will take you straight to another bar where our bride and groom await you with, you guessed it, more pintxos and wine so that you can continue to celebrate way into the night.

So here’s to Pulky and Vanessa. May you be the happiest of couples and always remember: There is no love sincered that the love of food.

Where do babies come from again?

Last Saturday night Madrid hosted its third annual Noche en Blanco (White Night). Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets of Madrid to enjoy the many free outdoor concerts, museum open houses and other cultural activities which took place under the watchful eye of the full moon. Qué bonito…

I wasn’t able to attend any of these activities because my husband and I were helping some good (guiri) friends put together an Ikea sofa after a move (ok fine, I was hanging out with my friend Martha while our significant others put the sofa together, but still). Apparently we missed out on all sorts of cultural funfare, including a touching tribute to the Oscar winning Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar. But that was nothing compared with the most important Noche en Blanco moment lived by so many madrileños: that crazy beautiful, ever so magical moment when they had sex with some other culturally minded soul they just met. Apparently culture wasn’t the only thing being given away for free that night. How do I know this if I wasn’t even there? Because a few days after the Noche en Blanco, a report was released stating that requests for the morning after pill from Madrid hospitals literally DOUBLED the day after the Noche en Blanco!

This news struck me at the time, but when you couple it with the tidbit I heard on the radio this morning while I was getting ready for work, you’ve got a pretty serious situation on your hands. Studies show that 40% of Spanish couples use absolutely no birth control whatsoever and an additional 21% practice what the journalist called “coitus interruptus”, which is really just a fancy term for what my middle school sex ed teacher referred to as “pulling out”. The aforementioned method is apparently the third most used “birth control” method in Spain and is the method of choice for 33% of sexually active Spanish teens. Of course, there were no statistics about how many of these couples were in loving, monogamous relationships, but we all know that many of them are not. I can only imagine that the majority of those post Noche en Blanco pill goers were not necessarily planning on having sex that night; otherwise they probably would have taken measures to protect themselves from disease and unwanted pregnancy.

All jokes aside, I find this extremely concerning. Are Spanish men and women (and American men and women, for that matter, just look at our sky high abortion rates) really that uninformed or are they just irresponsible? In one article, an expert chocks the problem up to “lack of information and difficult access to contraceptives”. But everywhere I look there are ads for condoms, which are sold in all pharmacies and the bathrooms of many bars. With the number of 24 hour pharmacies in the center of Madrid, one can only come to the conclusion that people just don’t care.