You know those random, slightly-awkward-yet-amusing exchanges you manage to have with complete strangers not only at GW, but all over D.C., whether you’re trying to pay for your groceries at Trader Joe’s, or are jointly complaining about the food at J Street? Well, as soon as you step off of the airplane at the Barcelona airport, you should leave that mentality at the baggage claim.
Although this is not true for all of Spain, in Catalonia (the region when Barcelona is located) people are taught to keep to themselves for the most part. It is always easy to spot a group of Americans on the Metro; they will likely be the only ones having a loud, heated discussion in an otherwise almost muted train.
The Spaniards in Barcelona don’t throw around the words “please,” and “thank you,” as liberally as we do, and it is not considered rude to omit an “excuse me,” after bumping into someone- apparently, all of that is implied. Small-talk is a rarity, and smiling at someone out of the blue has way more connotations associated with it than just an exchange of pleasantries.
First impressions seem to hint that these people just are not very agreeable, and it is easy to assume that when someone doesn’t thank you for holding the door, that they are being just plain rude. However, once you see the Catalans in settings other than those of the daily grind, all of this becomes a lot more questionable.
Thursday night, while at a FC Barcelona soccer match, it was hard to reconcile all of the energy and the sense of camaraderie circulating throughout the stadium with the cold demeanors I meet on my daily commute to school. When our team scored a goal, I have yet to see such an enthusiastic response at any other sporting event I’ve been to, GW basketball games included. Then, during halftime, a group of men that were sitting a few rows behind us decided that the crowd was too quite, and one of them figured that his bullhorn would make an excellent speaker, and started blasting music from his cell phone. Within seconds, half the people surrounding him were singing and dancing to the music, and refused to let him put his phone away until after the players were back on the field.
A simple assumption would be that it is the overwhelming European obsession with soccer that allows the almost 100,000 people that fit into Camp Nou let their guards down simultaneously. Well, that, or the immense amounts of alcohol that are snuck into the game- believe it or not, they sell non-alcoholic beer at the stadium. But let me give you just one more example.
This weekend, Spain, like many other countries, was busy with Carnival, a significant festival that occurs before Lent. Translation: every person in Barcelona without a bedtime and under the age of 30 (and plenty over) puts on the most outrageous costume they can throw together, piles onto the train to Sitges- a small town about 30 minutes from Barcelona- and stays out literally all night, filling the streets and beach almost beyond capacity. Imagine M Street on Halloween, plus another 20,000 people, and minus open container laws. Again, it could have been the liquor talking, but no one seemed to have any problem running up to strangers wearing similar and/or interesting costumes and insisting on a photo shoot.
So what conclusions can be drawn from this? That we should all start drinking at noon every day in order to be open and approachable? Or that business and pleasure have a very distinct line that is best left intact? One of my professors mentioned once that if you make friends with a Catalan, you’ve made a friend for life, which is a stark contrast with our habit of adding everyone and anyone we meet as a “friend” on Facebook at our earliest access to a computer. While I am not ready to stop thanking the waiter when he hands me a menu or to quit saying excuse me if I step on someone’s foot, I am glad that I have had the chance to be in Barcelona long enough to realize that when others do so, it is not out of malice. And after all, Barcelona certainly does know how to have fun.