Do the Spanish hate expats? Are Americans welcome?

Recently, on a walk through Poblenou, I spotted some graffiti on a metal door.

Someone had taken a marker and scrawled, in all caps:

EXPATS GO HOMO

INMIGRANTES YES

Let’s be generous here and assume that the intended message was “expats go home”. In any case, it’s not the first bit of graffiti I’ve seen about such things.

Is there an anti-expat feeling in Spain? Is being anti-American still a thing?

Or are a couple of poorly-spelled graffiti messages not an actual social trend?

Let’s talk about it. But first…

What is an expat anyway?

The word “expat” has only been in the Spanish vocabulary for a short time, as far as I can tell.

Several months ago, I read an article in La Vanguardia explaining the whole “expat vs immigrant” thing.

Expats, they said, were from countries with a higher GDP per capita than Spain has, and they were mostly moving abroad for the adventure or the lifestyle. On the other hand, immigrants were from poorer countries – those with a GDP per capita lower than Spain’s – and were here out of economic necessity.

I think that definition of expat vs immigrant is incomplete, for a couple of reasons.

First, because GDP per capita is an average that tells you about the economy in a country… but it has very little to do with the financial situation of any given person.

(Bill Gates walks into a bar, and the average net worth of that bar’s customers immediately increases by a billion dollars each. Why? Because that’s how averages work.)

Second, because these types of one-dimensional understandings of the world suggest that the person writing has never spoken to an actual foreigner.

Have you?

Go talk to someone from a country poorer than your own. They may well be having an adventure rather than fleeing from poverty. They may be advancing their education or they may have found love in another country. I’ve talked to a ton of people over the last 20+ years living abroad, and the reasons for moving are quite varied.

The real world is more nuanced than “people from rich countries are rich, and people from poor countries are poor”.

But still, I suspect that when people do graffiti about “expats go homo” – sorry, “expats go home” – they’re probably referring to high-end immigrants who are here for the lifestyle rather than the booming economy.

By that I mean digital nomads, or remote workers, or pensioners who are here with (relatively) a lot of money, and who may be perceived as driving prices up for the locals.

So, is there an anti-expat sentiment in Spain?

Having said that, I can’t say that apart from a bit of graffiti I’ve noticed any anti-expat sentiment.

People in Spain are pretty chill about who you are and why you’re here. At least most of the time.

(A corollary to this would be: don’t be a dick who goes around antagonizing people, and don’t start questioning them about their personal politics. You’ll avoid a whole lot of annoying discussions that way.)

In my life, I talk to people at the gym, who usually want to talk about gym bro stuff. Between themselves they talk about football, or getting hair transplants in Turkey, or (occasionally) about the incompetence and corruption of their own politicians.

Not a lot of wide-ranging geopolitical talk in the locker room, in other words.

Besides gym bros, I talk to plenty of other people – mostly expats (or immigrants) of one kind or another. And those conversations are usually about topics that directly affect our lives: the housing crisis, the never-ending struggle with bureaucracy, and maybe dating Spanish girls.

There are many topics of conversation, then, that have nothing to do with which kinds expats or immigrants we’d like to see fewer of in our cities.

As far as sentiments go, the anti-tourist sentiment is a lot larger. But even that’s mostly something you’ll find in a couple of the more central Barcelona neighborhoods and two or three yearly protests. Apart from occasional exceptions, most people are not spending much time harassing foreigners on the Rambla.

Anti-American sentiment in Spain

What about more specific anti-American opinions?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

Spain has people from a lot of different countries, all living elbow-to-elbow in tiny flats.

Not all of the high-end immigrants are Americans – actually, only a small number are.

Madrid, for example, is becoming a sort of haven for rich Latin people, who buy up million-euro flats in the nicest neighborhoods, and benefit from the quicker Spanish nationality process in order to have a good Plan B in case their countries go downhill.

(Or, in some cases, Madrid is their new Plan A because their country is already being wrecked by a terrible government… looking at you, Venezuela.)

Outside the capital, coastal areas in Spain have been among the favorite retirement destinations for Germans and Brits since at least the 70s. I’ve been to places in the Canary Islands where nobody, apparently, speaks Spanish.

Expats, whoever they are, are nothing new.

Anyway, I’m American and a lot of the people I talk to are American.

Does Spain have a general anti-American sentiment?

Again, not that I’ve noticed. And I’ve been here for over 20 years.

Spain would like to welcome Mr Marshall

There’s a famous Spanish film called ¡Bienvenido, Mister Marshall!

In it, a small town in Castilla hears a rumor that the Americans are coming to bring them some much-needed prosperity through the Marshall Plan.

The movie is old, from 1953, so the setting is an impoverished post-war version of Spain that could really use a bit of the American Dream.

The excited villagers prepare for the Americans by dressing up in typical Andalusian outfits and setting up a flamenco show – an attempt to welcome their guests with some comfortable stereotypes.

They spend all their money in the process of getting the town ready, all the while, dreaming of their future prosperity. Finally, the Americans arrive in a motorcade, only to go through the town without stopping.

And just like that, everyone’s small-town dreams are crushed. The end.

I haven’t seen ¡Bienvenido, Mister Marshall! for a while, but I remember it as a sort of cautionary tale disguised as a comedy: don’t expect the Americans to come save you, and don’t count your chickens before they hatch.

(The town where it was filmed, Guadalix de la Sierra, is just to the north of Madrid, and still has a statue of the movie’s fictional mayor on the balcony of the ayuntamiento.)

All this to say, Americans have been moving money in Spain for some time.

A bit of Spanish and American history

Spanish-American relations didn’t start yesterday.

Here’s an incredibly brief summary of a few major events, in case you haven’t been paying attention.

Our countries went to war in 1898, in what ended up being one of the defining moments for 20th-century Spain.

In American history class, I learned that the Spanish-American War was a mostly unnecessary conflict whipped up in order to sell newspapers in New York, back in the heyday of the yellow press.

I have yet to hear it portrayed that way in any of the Spanish histories, though.

The embarrassment that Spain received at the hands of the US in “la guerra de Cuba” inspired a young Francisco Franco (and others) to later attempt to restore Spanish glory through a military coup in 1936 – it’s a long story.

Later, the US stayed out of the Spanish Civil War and left Franco alone for four decades of fascist dictatorship, installing a few military bases but generally letting Spain be Spain.

Not everyone was thrilled, of course, that the US would loudly advertise itself as “defending freedom” elsewhere while allowing Franco to do his thing until his death in 1975. But that’s what happened.

For those several reasons, and from talking to older people, I get the impression that in the 70s and 80s, anti-American sentiment in Spain might have been more widespread than it is now.

Spanish-American relations in the 21st Century

Fast-forward a few decades…

The year 2004 – incidentally, the same year I arrived – was another pivotal year in Spanish-American relations.

After the train bombings on March 11th of that year, the conservative government was quickly voted out of office, and replaced by the socialists under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

Zapatero pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq – allegedly, the Atocha terrorists were responding to Spain’s involvement in the Iraq war. But the Iraq war was hugely unpopular among Spaniards even before the bombings.

(Personally, I was against the Iraq war, too, but never had any idea that Spain was involved. Apparently, it was a plan by the Prime Minister at the time to kiss up to George W Bush and Tony Blair, and it backfired spectacularly.)

Anyway, I moved to Spain as all this was happening, and can’t say I noticed any anti-American sentiment at that time. Mostly, Spanish people seemed to understand that national governments do things without asking the opinions of random guys like me, and that US foreign policy wasn’t my fault.

So while people might have had strong feelings about foreign wars, they didn’t (apparently) translate that into any sort of animosity towards regular people from the US.

More recently, Spanish people seemed pretty excited about Barack Obama back in 2008, and less than thrilled with Trump in 2016. But for the most part, folks are managing their affairs without much reference to US party politics.

Anti-Americanism in the Spanish media

So among normal Spanish people, living their daily lives, I don’t think there’s much of an anti-American sentiment.

There is, however, a good bit of anti-Americanism in the media.

The “paper” I follow these days, La Vanguardia, is based here in Barcelona, and it seems to have an editorial position revolving around three main theories:

1. American capitalism is a failure, and the “empire” – such as it was – is now collapsing.
2. Donald Trump is an idiot and a fascist.
3. Around 51% of Americans are stupid, and that explains most things about US politics.

You may or may not agree with those theories, but in any case they’re not very original. Lots of other publications in the US and elsewhere seem to share approximately the same editorial line.

And I guess I could write a long article about each point, but honestly, I don’t care that much.

I will say that while I used to believe the last one (that US politics can be explained by the stupidity of approximately half of the population) I don’t anymore.

These days I see that as a comfortable fiction peddled by elitists who don’t actually have solutions.

It’s far easier to assume that people who disagree with you are stupid than it is to refute their arguments. Because having an actual debate might expose the weakness of your position.

Not everything is political

Some people (Spanish and otherwise) just want to make everything political.

If you’re going to find any anti-expat or anti-American sentiment here in Spain, or elsewhere in Europe, it’s probably among those people. They’re the people who go to protests: a small but vocal minority.

And if you are the type of person who moves abroad and then tries to make everything about politics in your new country, well, you’re sort of asking for it.

A lot of Americans these days feel the need to tell people they’ve just met where they stand politically. So after 5 minutes of conversation, you already know they voted for in the last several election cycles.

It’s exhausting, and unnecessary.

But also, if you’ve started a political conversation, it might go off in ways you don’t like.

One of the things that Americans tend to love about Spain is that people are more relaxed about politics. And we can all keep it that way by not importing our pet issues when we come here.

So here’s my two cents: Do the Spanish hate expats? Are they tired of Americans?

Maybe. They might, in fact, have those opinions, but as long as you’re respectful and don’t bring it up, they’ll probably just keep their mouths shut.

It’s called convivencia, and it’s something Spanish people value.

Just don’t get caught putting chorizo in a paella.

Apolitically yours,

Daniel AKA Mr Chorizo.

P.S. Here at home, my wife Morena and I occasionally have an expat vs immigrant debate of our own. Because while she’s the classic expat – fancy career, advanced degree, came to Spain on a “highly qualified visa”– she’s also from a poorer country, and, as her name suggests, rather dark in complexion. I, on the other hand, overstayed a tourist visa and hung out illegally for several years. With my high school education, I’m qualified for nothing. But I’m from a richer country and incapable of even minimal tanning. I am, in other words, an immigrant. Or perhaps an expat. It depends on who you ask. Like I said, the whole argument is dumb.

P.P.S. I’ve talked about the difference between expats and immigrants before, but really I think the whole thing is pretty boring. Don’t get offended at people’s vocabulary selection and you can save yourself the whole debate. On the other hand, if you want to be offended by the word American, I’ve got a whole article about it. And did I mention I’ve written about American Ignorance and European Stereotypes? Why yes, indeed, I have. Enjoy!