Tourism and Stereotypes

Stereotypes are simplifications, reductions that mind generates in order to understand the complexity of the world. Unlike many alleged intellectuals think, stereotypes are not a bad thing, existing only in the minds of less able or uninformed people. A word, for example, in itself holds a single stereotype which defines at the same time, though it helps humans to understand each other by sharing and combining them into sentences, and roughly describing ideas. "Car" is a stereotype of all possible and existing cars, and when I say "I saw a red car", most of people identify what I mean. It helps me to generalize and refer to any possible car without specifying which one I am talking about.

However, sometimes, stereotypes are wrong identifications of categories in reality. They don't correspond to anything existing in the world, or they are misleading and wrongly specified, being a bad tool to understand any given situation. The balance between the error provided by a certain generalization and its correctness should be a good measure of the utility for a given stereotype. "All French people stink" is probably a wrong stereotype, while "all pigs do stink" is certainly a helpful one.

Traveling is a good way to break a priori stereotypes about places and people or, at least, it used to be. Nowadays, due to tourism, I guess the omelette has flipped around and most people just travel to confirmed a priori real or invented stereotypes. They travel to Kyoto to see geishas in the same way they travelled to Spain to meet bullfighters, and they basically don't care or don't know whether there is almost no geisha left or that bullfighting has been banned in some areas of Spain.

Each language and nationality has their own "lonely planet" kind of books, and it seems that all of them have read the same, over and over, repeating ad nauseam the same common places, stereotypes, misunderstandings and, sometimes, lies. After a couple of decades trying to teach German, French and English lumpen tourists that most of Spanish were not whole-day flamenco-dancing paella-eating sangria-drinking bullfighters -at least, not in Catalonia, the area surrounding Barcelona-, now it seems that the tale has started all over again with other kinds of tourists, like asian ones.

However, after so many years of uninformed visitors asking to attend to a "tablao flamenco", and to eat tapas and paella, we have finally made up places where they can find such things, as they had imagined, such in Les Rambles; not as they really are. I am not saying that there was no flamenco in Barcelona before the tourists came. Yeah, there was, in gypsy camps on the beach, an awful place called Somorrostro. Tapas? Yeah, though never heard of them before the Spanish immigration in the 60's and always associated with Andalusian-style bars on the periphery of Barcelona. And paella? Well, strictly, a paella is a frying pan, and also the way Valencian people call a type of rice-based dish. We call it "arros a la paella" to distinguish it from other kinds of dishes such "arros a la cassola", for example. When talking in general, we just say "arros" (rice).

So what do tourists get when they visit Barcelona? Fake flamenco, with Argentinian dancers (true!), bad and pricy tapas (they should taste those in Madrid, Andalusia and/or the Basque Country!), and awfully yellow and oily paellas. Have these things anything to do with Barcelona? Nope, just about the character of Catalan people, who would try to cheat even Christ telling him they are jews to book him a room.

However, we have a new breed of connoisseurs, these tourists who think they know something about us because they have been informed by Argentinean bartenders. Those guys know (or think at least they know) about Catalan things such as "pa amb tomaquet" or "all-i-oli", but they can't see the difference between dry bread soaked in grated tomato or garlic-fied plain mayonnaise and the true dishes, which in Barcelona are almost impossible to find. But we shouldn't blame them! We should blame us, who allow to sell in souvenir shops Mexican hats and let ignorant bartenders to give advise about our local cuisine.

So, for the sake of truth, I suggest to anyone really interested in knowing anything about Barcelona, just burn immediately all tourist guides and books about the city, and when coming here, avoid anywhere with a density of non-locals higher than 5%, if you really can tell the difference. Nevertheless, if what you want to find is just a bunch of wrong stereotypes like in an attraction park, then Barcelona is your place. Welcome onboard!

The Best Shop in the World?

Though Barcelona is my mother's city, it keeps being a bitch, a dirty bitch. In some areas, it is becoming a gutter, specially in the older part of the city. I totally agree with that sign. The problem is that the owners of the city use her as their private business, exploiting her as they like, and tourisms seems it is the oldest and simplest way. Poor thing, Barcelona!

Dokyo or a Tofu Ensaimada

Look what I've just seen on Spanish TV, a dorayaki made out of chocolate



The problem with the original, the Japanese one, is its filling, azuki (小豆), a red bean paste, allegedly sweet.



The funny thing is its name, Dokyo, that sounds like Tokyo. But what is glorious is its slogan: "mola asako". It means "it kicks ass", where "mola" digs in the stereotype that asian people pronounce "R" as "L" (it is the opposite!!), and "asako" stands for "a saco", i.e., a cool way to say "a lot", with a more Japanese writting.

Anyway, the ad is as ridiculous as if a Japanese counterpart, let's say, a tofu ensaimada, would be anounced with something like this

My Teeny-Weeny City

My teeny-weeny city, by the sea, being bombed by an Italian squadron during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

Marcello, Marcello...Come Here...Hurry Up!

Botticelli's Birth of Venus in a shell

Fellini's Dolce Vitta's Venus in a fountain



I've found always them pretty similar. A Baptism.

Foreigners Working in BCN

I'm happy to have helped somehow to my beloved Ch. to find a job in Barcelona, specially in such difficult times. For a foreigner it is not that difficult to find a job here provided that he/she is European and his/her level of Spanish is enough so as to deal with a normal day's life. Since I came back, I've astonishingly discovered how many foreigners are in fact living in Barcelona.

Without trying to be derogatory, I'm not referring to those commonly identified as immigrants, which were already numerous before I left 5 years ago, but a sort of different kind of new dwellers of the city which would be better named as working tourists. If you speak any European language, plus Spanish, then it will be easy for you to find a job in some of the various contact or call centers which are outsourcing this service to important European companies and banks. I had never imagined so many Polish and Hungarian girls living in Barcelona.

For Asian people, apart from Chinese, which are another case, it is far complicated. For instance, Japan, which is the case, on the one hand, their companies land here with the whole staff in a parcel. On the other hand, very few local companies actually have contact with them in Japan and, therefore, they don't require the service of native Japanese to intercede for them from here. This awkward situation would improve if Japanese companies were more flexible with their staff and there were also more Catalan companies exporting or trading with Japan, which is difficult due to the customary Japanese rigidity.

In brief, one only needs to get a working permit to stay and work in Spain, which is only valid to stay in any other Schengen countries but not to work in there, and some hints of Spanish. I guess the three only legal ways to get that permit are by getting a contract before coming, a student visa (which might allow you only to work in part-time jobs) or by marrying a UE citizen. The rest, just tenacity and good luck.

American Dad!

That show is simply great! If something similar would be ever tried in Spain, I foretold no more than a couple of episodes on the air: one can't make fun of fundamental idiotic symbols of the State in Spain, as the king for example, as it is done here with the CIA.
That's my favorite character. His verbiage (swish) is just as peculiarly funny as it is his obsession with role-playing and wigs. Being an amoral drunker, in a kind of Bender-like way, also helps in becoming my favorite one.
And there she is, Haley, the slut of the family. Not that her mom wasn't a total bitch too when she was young, but Haley is it in a totally new different way: bossy, crazy, stoned and a political wannabe, like most of twentiagers. However, the most contemptible of the show, even more than she and Roger, is her dad Stan, a massively-jawed retarded republican bigot. Funny, isn't it?

What's New, Pussycat?

That's my pussy cat, Miu-ko chan, sleeping, as usual.

ちょっとポンポコリンくなってると思うんだよね



And that's a funny song from a crazy movie!

Once Upon a Time, a Barbie Girl

I spent Saturday afternoon at my friends' place signing with PSP's SignStar Karaoke. Was kind of funny. Giving I didn't go to karaoke since August last year in Japan, I've got to say that I missed signing for a while. Unhopefully, I discovered the songs which I could remember some part of were anchored back in the 80's at most. By the way, I laughed a lot signing that song,



Lyrics are hilarious: "...you can brush my hair, undress me everywhere..." or "...I can act like a start, I can bend on my knees...". So true in a plastic world!!!!
--Oh, I've having so much fun!!!
--Well, Barbie, we'll just getting started!!!