I spent the Spring and Summer of 2022 in Madrid, Spain, in total for a period of four months. The main reason for the trip was to carry out research for several forthcoming publications, all of which are about Populism and Foreign Policy in Southern Europe. During the first 6 weeks I stayed at a place close to Plaza De Espana, and for the rest in the very centre of town, Puerta del Sol. During the day on weekdays I did my work at the National Library, but I also engaged in many social activities which led to the development of meaningful friendships and to a relatively deep integration into society in Madrid. Moreover, I visited several of the country’s historical treasures, inside and beyond the capital city. These experiences were extraordinarily enriching and will be the focus of this blog post, with particular attention on the general impressions of the city, the country, its language, and culture.
In 2021 the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal published an article I wrote called “Populist Foreign Policy: The Case of Italy” (the article can be found here). Little did I know at the time that academic publishers would become very interested in the theme, and as a result, shortly after the article was released, I was presented with two opportunities to publish on populism and foreign policy in Southern Europe, including Spain. For the past several years my work has focused mainly on France and Italy, and to develop expertise on Spain I would have to travel to the country, consult texts unavailable elsewhere, interview locals, and master the language. With these objectives in mind, I arrived in April and stayed until the first week of August.
For the most part, I would spend my days in the National Library, which itself is an architectural jewel, with neoclassical designs both in the interior and the façade, adorned with impressive statues of Spain’s illustrious thinkers. The library contains many rare and valuable texts, and some have been stolen in the past; consequently, gaining access to the library requires obtaining permission, which involves submitting documents confirming one’s nationality, address, and status as a researcher, then waiting one week to obtain the access card. All sources must be booked online before they can be physically consulted, and the client must wait for the confirmation that the sources are available, after which access is granted. To enter the premises, one must pass through security, leave personal belongings in a separate room, pass through another layer of security, go to the main room to obtain the sources, and then go to an allotted desk in the main reading hall where the books can be read and analysed.
Initially I found this process annoying and excessive, but as in most things, I got used to it. After spending the day in the library, in the evenings I would engage in social activities which can be found on the popular app “Meetup.” During the first few months, the main one was language exchange events, where native Spanish speakers can meet Anglophones and practice their native tongues with one another, ideally in a manner that allows improvement (for example, correcting each other's mistakes). Doing this was extraordinarily valuable, especially since I had learned, and was used to, the Spanish spoken in Latin America, and needed to adapt to the castellano spoken in Spain. As well as the different accent, there are some non-trivial differences in vocabulary, and a few examples will illustrate: when saying “right now”, Latinos say “ahorita”, while in Spain they say “ahora mismo”. “Congratulations” is usually expressed as “felicitades” by Latinos and “enhorabuena” in Spain. “llevar” is commonly used in Spain to mean “bring,” “carry,” “going,” "getting along," or “have been”; when I was in Mexico, I don't recall hearing “llevar” used in so many different contexts despite almost two months of full immersion.
One of the more enchanting aspects of Spanish—and this is true both in Latin America and in Spain—is how frequently the diminutive is used, as in “una cerveza” (a beer) often becomes “una cervez-cita,” or “un euro” (one euro) becomes “un euro-cito”. One finds the diminutive in the most unlikely places, such as (my personal favourite) “covid-cito”. When directly translating to English, these words—little euro, little beer, little covid—lack the full breadth of meaning in their Spanish expressions, and one reason is that the diminutive itself has multiple meanings. It is not only “less” in the quantitative or material sense, but also in the psychological one, as in emotionally less burdensome. It is also a conscious attempt to minimize a suggestion or question the hope of making it more acceptable. In some contexts it seems to have a similar function as baby-talk, as when adults change the tone and texture of words and sentences while communicating with children.
Participating in language-exchange events was rather easy, because almost everyone, often unconsciously, adapts their communication to their language-learning interlocutors, meaning that words are clearly, fully, and loudly pronounced . It was more difficult to attend social events where there were exclusively Spaniards, and I would be the only foreigner. I waited about one month before going to these latter types of events, and initially it was challenging, because when native speakers talk among themselves, the pitch is faster, more words are truncated, and local colloquialisms are more common. As I participated in these conversations, over a period of approximately two months I went from understanding roughly 80% to 98% of what was being said, and naturally this created opportunities for me to be an active participant in these events, most of which were discussions or debates on philosophical or spiritual themes. Doing this allowed me to make the leap to a much more advanced level of Spanish, and it also gave me a deeper understanding about the people who live and work in Madrid (whereas language exchange events are often filled with travellers). Many became friends with whom I developed genuine affective bonds. In comparison with the many countries I have visited and lived in, I can confidently say that people in Madrid are among the most friendly and welcoming I have ever encountered. I am a bit puzzled about the cultural origins of this tendency, although I suspect it’s a mix of the city’s cosmopolitanism, Catholic universalism and Mediterranean sociability.
A noticeable feature of Madrid is its demographic composition, which is very different from the other major cities—Rome, Paris, Toronto, New York—that I am familiar with. All these cities are very diverse in the sense that there are large numbers of blacks and Asians as well as whites; in contrast, in Madrid the vast majority of non-Spaniards are from Latin America, whom, of course, are very diverse, from the Indigenous, to white, to mixed race, and black. At many of the events which I attended, up to half of the participants were from Latin America, mainly Columbia and Argentina, although Uruguay and Peru are also highly represented. Many have been in Madrid for a long time, and so they are fully integrated, a process made easier by the shared language and culture.
Plenty of the local friends I made are originally from Latin America, and out of curiosity I asked them whether they had ever experienced discrimination. Several replied that they had occasionally received condescending or disparaging comments from former employers, but that overall, they had smoothly integrated. This response fit with my own experiences of closely observing how Spaniards and Latinos interacted as friends, lovers, or co-workers; sharing the same language and a similar culture blurred the national differences between them or, in many contexts, made them utterly irrelevant or trivial. It was noticeably different from my own experience in Toronto, growing up in an immigrant family with a language and culture--Italian--different from the host country's; my mom, for example, would often contemptuously refer to “i canadesi” (“the Canadians) to refer to Anglo-Saxon members of the country even though by then she had already obtained Canadian citizenship. One reason was that she had never really integrated into Canadian society—her friends and partner were Italian, as was the media she consumed, and so her contact with Anglophone Canadian society was very minimal.
One of the unique aspects of Spain is the Islamic influence, which is unambiguously visible in the physical characteristics of the people, the architecture, and the language. Spaniards are considered “white” Europeans, but upon close inspection it becomes clear that many are the descendants of the Arabs who ruled the peninsula for 8 centuries. This is unsurprising, given that, after the Reconquista, Arabs, who numbered around 300 thousand, were given the option to convert to Catholicism and stay, or to go and live in Islamic territories. Estimates are that around half took the former option, meaning that they assimilated into the broader population. In the process, not only did they contribute Arabic physical features to the ethnic make-up of the country, they also strongly influenced the language, such that many habitual Spanish expressions are Arabic in origin. The most common one is “Ojala” which means “hopefully” and comes from the Arabic word for God Willing, or Inshalla. Another common word is “hasta” which means “until” and comes from the Arabic “hatta.”
The enchanting Arabic influence can be seen in the resplendent buildings and cathedrals which combine Roman, Gothic, and Arabic architectural styles. In Madrid, which itself was founded by the Umuyad Emir Mohamed the First, very little visible Islamic influence remains, but in nearby Toledo, the cathedral, which is easily one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, contains the well-preserved remains of the medieval mosque. The same is true in Segovia, where Arab styles can be seen in most of the prominent buildings, whether secular or religious, even though many were built after Muslims were expelled, highlighting that Arabs continued to influence the architecture even after the collapse of their empire. This influence is most evident, of course, in Andalucía, in Southern Spain, which the Arabs called Al-Andalus. Granada and Cordoba were Arab centres of power and culture during Islam’s golden age, when Christians, Jews, and Muslims coexisted under Muslim rule, leading to a flourishing of science, philosophy, and architecture. Visiting these two cities was easily one of the highlights of the trip, given that this has been on my bucket list for years. Words cannot do justice to how beautiful and intriguing these cities are, and so hopefully the pictures below give a better sense.
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| Alhambra (Granada) |
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| Cordoba |
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| Inside mosque-cathedral Cordoba |
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| Alhambra |
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| View of Cordoba |
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| Inside mosque-cathedral of Cordoba. It was 40 degrees that day. |
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| Entrance to mosque-cathedral of Cordoba |
Finally, and moving to a completely unrelated theme, I would characterize this trip to Spain as my first post-pandemic travel, even though the virus continues to circulate. Since the beginning of the Covid plague, I have travelled many times—to Paris, Barcelona, Naples, Havana, and Tulum—and the trip to Madrid was the first one where I finally had the sensation of pre-pandemic normality. At the events described above, I would be in locations packed with unmasked people, where greetings occurred with the typical Mediterranean affection gesture of the double kiss. Most importantly was doing this without the fear that the other person was a carrier of some deadly virus, and this was felt even though a “seventh wave” of Covid occurred in July 2022, when I was in Madrid. The difference with last summer is astonishing. I went to Barcelona in July 2021, and the “fifth wave” occurred while I was there. While in Barcelona I was exposed to the virus twice, and this led to panic in part because of rules on mandatory isolation after exposure. The situation was so tense that I decided to leave Barcelona earlier than planned. In Madrid in July 2022, I was exposed to Covid several times, and not only did I not catch it, but most importantly, it did not cause any paralyzing fear. How liberating after the terror of the past two years!
