Thomas Carmona
14/11/2008

Stereotypes of Spaniards:

They all speak with a lisp

They love to dance and they all know the same dances (flamenco, “follow the leader”)

They only play soccer

Acute Accent
14/02/2009

Excellent list of stereotypes, they make you smile really. They are deeply rooted in the British culture and they will remain there for a long time.

Contrary to other nationalities, Spaniards do not care about building their prestige and reputation and about managing the projection of the Spanish branding abroad. Spain is too involved in preserving regional differences and local cultures. The tourism industry and the Spanish elites do not make any effort either to counter the stereotypes and misconceptions about the Spanish culture.

Brits flocking to the coast season after season and year after year simply seem impervious to the changes undergoing in the country. Journalists also perpetuate many of the common Spanish stereotypes in articles and books.

Sarita
13/12/2009

Shakira is from Colombia not Spain…..good sterotypes tho but I agree with Barbra they are not rude and Brits shud make more of an effort when they go to Spain, its their country not yours!! No wonder they don’t like brits sure look at the way they treat them in their own country!!!!!!  If u saw the real spain instead of some tacky tourist area u wud find they are all untrue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maria
07/01/2010

hahaha i’m spanish, from Valencia actually (where the good paella is cooked!) and while reading the stereotypes i thought that we really may seem like that! hahaha really, shouting? YEAH! well, actually it’s not shouting, but we usually are very… effusive ^^ we really tend to speak very fast, very loud and everybody at the same time, but what can i say? tradition ^^   and i cannot even start about all the topics! but i must agree with something… we really have the weirdest timetable of all europe (tough for me it’s quite normal U__U)

Mikel
03/02/2010

You don’t know nothing about spain, the spaniards don’t just drink beer and have a siesta, we make a lot of botellons, thats our culture!

Doraemon
23/09/2010

“I’ve been in England, and when I entered in a commerce and talked in spanish they did not make any effort to understand me.” Would you find it strange?

alex
16/07/2011

well, I am Spanish and I disagree with you. For instance: 1 – we Spanish people don’t eat Paella every day (althought it is a quite healthy meal with a lot of properties, more than “Fish and Chips”) and many people hate Shakira (Colombian, not Spanish) and Ricky Martin. 2 – Salsa is very popular, but it is South American, not Spanish. 3 – Very few people can do a siesta (or nap, your English word) because we work harder than you do (I have worked in UK and Ireland and I thought that you were extremely lazy compare to us). Of course, you would say that this fact is not true, but just a question before you answer it: have you ever worked in Spain? I bet you don’t. 4 – We shout, that’s true, but as you are not interested in learning Spanish, you are unable to notice that it’s our tone, we don’t argue as much as you think. 5 – Place like Torrevieja or Salou, for instance, are simply made to take all your British money, we hate these kind of places. 6 – all British criminals are always caught, please, read the press. 7- Cigarrettes are very cheap, that’s way a lot of British people just come here to buy them. 8 – please, try to increase your cultural background instead of just being interested in your British culture, perhaps you will learn to respect others, we have our customs just as you have. 9 – we just play soccer, ok, that’s right, it explains why one of the best tennis players is Spanish (do you know Rafa Nadal?) . 10 – if we go to UK, we try to speak English, if you come to Spain, try to speak in Spanish, you are not better than us.

Hans Guterg
27/07/2011

Verdaderamente increíble lo que estoy leyendo !! Soy alemán y llevo media vida en España. Nunca he sido más feliz ! Por favor, si pensais así, mejor ¡ no venir aquí !

To all the morons in the world
29/07/2011

I would like to write something about the spanish racial stereotypes:

Many of these stereotypes or clichés are deeply rooted in the XIX century literature about Spain, and even in more remote times, in those times we spanish were as feared as hated many times just because we were the first power in the world and we were catholics.

I especially hate those related with our “inquisitorial” character and our supposedly “very dark” racial features that Hollywood films so mistakenly well reproduce in their bigoted movies about spaniards.They wouldnt be selling a single film about spaniards if suddenly northamericans discovered that those spaniards dont really look like mexicans but like europeans!.

Funny enough many of them try to depict a typical spanish town full of typical spanish people by making the film in Mexico with typical mexican settings and with very dark skinned mexican characters and when a real spanish actor or actress is demanded for a film he/she has to darken his/her face to fit with the biased idea of how a spaniard should look like.

All these stupid stereotypes are really funny. I would like to be there to see the faces of some people (especially northamericans) coming to Spain in the belief they are visiting a typical Latin american country only to discover that everything and everybody just looks european, but these guys are so stupid that they would probably believe that they took the wrong plane to the wrong destination!.

Greetings MORONS!

Ricardo
26/08/2011

Shakira is from Colombia. And I think English people are really lazy and ignorand but is not a crime. Carpe diem!

Mimi Astrid
06/09/2011

It’s such shame this funny article turned into a slagging match! Iam English and i thought that your stereotypes hit the nail on the head! Welldone. I love Spain, i like the Spanish/ Catalan/ Basque people. Were all human at the end of the day! Oh, and for what it’s worth i know my Country and it’s people get a bad rap, alit of them act like total dickheads whilst on holiday in Spain (or anywhere for that matter) but there not all like that all of the time. Were only humans afterall!

Jorge
12/01/2012

I really feel sad for you. That list is way too unrealistic -and unhealthy- even for a stereotype description. I would not be surprised if that list came from an american or chinese, but it’s even more sad coming from a country whose political, cultural and economic relations have been so tight for so many centuries, friend or foe. Clearly the british propaganda has worked for so many years, thinking that Britain is far superior to their neighbors, undermining some and envying some others. Britain can’t stand that Germans and French are richer and better organized, Italians have more style, a culture that’s much more to love and they certainly envy the development spain has worked in the last decades, putting them in higher standards of social welfare and quality of life. I’ll tell you something, currenly there are less than 80.000 spaniards living in the UK while there’s 800.000 british living in spain. I wonder where that masochism comes from, fleeing to such a rude, culturally handicapped country. And I’m not going to mention how many british retirees come to Spain and how many spaniards go for a pleasant retirement in Manchester, Liverpool or London. You can learn a lot from a society as a whole by studying their tourists: It is true, spaniards are loud, mostly unorganized, often chovinist about their culture and their foods. On the other hand you will see if you study the destinations preferred by those tourists that go out of spain that they mostly travel to cities to visit museums, admire the local architecture and try the regional goods. A spaniard will always go to London to visit the british museum and buckinham palace before choosing going to Brighton to party, go to the beach, or to enjoy London’s nightlife. The British tourist, on the other side: Is the only one in the world that expects locals to treat him the same way he would be in his home country, even in the same language! they even get offended if people don’t speak it! is there a more arrogant attitude? here’s a fact from you: spanish is a more spoken and spread language than english, so unless you feel that american citizens are superior to peruvian or argentinian, suck it up. The British tourist will be desperately seeking -like mouse to cheese- cheap sangría and the grossest paella they can find. Something that spaniards hardly do in spain. They are hopelessly cheap, despite bringing this “richest country” attitude. I’ll bring you an example: most spanish restaurants offer a reasonably good quality menu that includes 2 courses, desert or coffee and a drink for what you would probably buy some fish and chips in London. And yet, you can see british tourists in these restaurants ordering pizza and coke when they can have for example a nice steak and a cup of wine. They love going to the east coast of spain, to the tackiest most depressed areas just because they’re cheap and sunny, completely offering what they want, heavy sunbursts and loads of beer. And a night scene suitable for them to behave like they never would at home: like hopeless drunk animals. You think that’s a stereotype? come see!

And when it comes to what spaniards think of the british, I don’t think it’s as far from realty as your over the top examples: Arrogant, cheap people that underestimate the southern countries in a very racist fashion -while they love calling everyone else a racist-. Why do we think this? because all the above, because your newspapers call us “p.i.g.s.” when you’re next to recession, because you prefer being close to a country that’s in another continent rather than teaming up with your all time neighbors… the list is long. We do not laugh about your culture, your tea, your music and your cities, because honestly we like them. We don’t feel the need of labelling everything to feel superior, just because you can’t deal with the fact that you’re a decadent nation that still hasn’t got a grip of the fact that they are no longer a power and no longer an empire. For god’s sakes, british even think the world’s speaks english because of them!. Take out the london bubble and tell me how england is. Remove the carpets and look forward lads!