When You're A Stranger

Normally, I stay out of political conversations. Everyone’s got an opinion, what difference does it make to blather on about things? Here lately, everybody’s talking about immigration. Just like back home, but they’re complaining about the Moroccans and Romanians instead of the Mexicans. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard a Spaniard tell me that foreigners are the cause of all the crime in Barcelona. Apparently, the city was a clean and drug-free utopia before the extranjeros (foreigners) invaded.  Now, Barcelona is going to hell in a handbasket and the outsiders are to blame. 

The old lady who always sits on the park bench in front of my building says that “blacks” are to blame. They’re here illegally. They don’t follow the rules. They pimp and whore and piss in the streets. I’m sure she thinks they eat their young.  Being an equal-opportunity bigot, she says that the western guiris (foreigners, pejorative) have lead us astray, too. The Swedes introduced topless sunbathing, the Germans brought in liter-sized jarras (pitchers) of beer. The Americans are keeping Starbucks and McDonald’s in business. A Spaniard would never eat fast-food, she says.

When you’re a foreigner, people feel some sort of freedom to say things to you that they would never otherwise say. For some reason,  the guy who owns the Gallego bar downstairs feels comfortable telling me, a foreigner, that he wishes the government would just close the borders and shoot the illegals. That guy always makes me nervous. How does he expect me to respond to something like that? Agree? Apologize?

Next time he tells me it’s my fault that Spanish teenagers drink 46-cent boxes of wine, I know what I’m going to say. I’ve planned it out so I don’t get all nervous and end up just sitting there saying, “Si…” Next time he starts to blame all of society’s problems on me, I’m going to say:

“Listen pal, I’ve got news for you: the North Africans and Latin Americans aren’t coming here because it’s the promised land. They’re not immigrants- they’re your children. You can’t conquer the world, rape, rob, and pillage, without some kind of consequence, and the wave of immigrants is yours. The Mexicans are literally children of the “explorers” sent by Spain five hundred years ago. The Ecuadorians and Chileans are the remnant of the indigenous American tribes that were extinguished by the good-ol’ Kingdom of Spain. What goes around comes around.”

In fact, I’m not even going to wait until next time. I’m going to go down there tonight and really let him have it. Yeah, that will show him. He needs to be brought down a notch or two, even if he does have that lazy eye. I’m not a gypsy or anything, but it really pisses me off when Spanish people act all high-and-mighty.

I just need to figure out how to say “pillage” in Spanish.