I’m surprised we don’t have an identity. There are 307,000 Brits living in Spain and perhaps a million stretched across the whole of EU (nobody seems to know how many). Then there are all those EU nationals who live in another EU country than their own, plus all those who came from somewhere else – South America, Northern Africa, China, The Ukraine and Timbuctoo.
How many is that?
In Spain, there are around 8,500,000 people who are foreign-born, and across the whole of European Union of 450 million souls, we are talking about some 60 million ausländers of one sort or another who have chosen a (new) EU country to make their home.
Begging the question, who are they?
Broadly speaking – we foreigners have come here either to work or to retire.
The workers may be those poor folk who arrived here through economic necessity, sometimes risking their very life for the chance of a better future, or maybe they flew here with just a good job-offer in their pocket.
The retired folk, perhaps because we live better over here (I’m thinking of – oh my Lord: it’s the PIGS countries with their good food, friendly neighbours and warm winters!).
But all of us, we do rather pass without much notice from the local people. There are a few wealthy Hollywood or sporting (probably football) types who grace the pages of the gossip magazines, as we wander through their palatial homes in Mallorca or Majadahonda, accompanied by some bearer of purple-prose; then there are a handful of tame foreigners who have been accepted by the local population (in Spain, we have James Rhodes, Ian Gibson, Viggo Mortensen and the late Michael Robinson); the odd homage for standout political leaders (there’s no Churchill Square but Madrid does have its sublime Plaza de Margaret Thatcher). A few other foreigners from an earlier time are remembered – the various sherry families and the Dr Fleming barrio also in Madrid (he discovered penicillin).
There’s no Glorieta de Francis Drake though… There’s someone who needs a publicist.
Wouldn’t it be fun, if one of our current number became known for his or her literary or musical endeavours, or because he (we!) invented a cure for cancer.
That would make all of us ghosts walk a little taller.
The largely invisible foreigners: whether expats, immigrants, guiris, émigrés, piratas, hijos de la Pérfida Albión or those people who for various reasons find themselves on the run – are all living a better life while admittedly suffering from certain absences; whether family, traditions or a decent pot of Scottish marmalade in the fridge.
What do you miss, the social media sometimes asks.
Me? Nothing, I’ve been here too long.
A useful page to help get through the bureaucracy here in Spain is one called Brexpats in Spain International. The name probably came about thanks to the Brexit (which affected us EU Brits far more than it did you UK Brits). The other day, this worthy organisation decided to change its name to Expat Support in Spain – and were strongly criticised for doing so by many of its supporters. The Facebook announcement quickly got 203 comments before being turned off. The first one said: ‘Whilst I understand that the group no longer fit its previous name, Expat is not a good catch-all either, I and many others are NOT expats, we are immigrants and proud to be so!’
It seems that the Brits have put their foot down – no longer merely indignant about bullfights and uncastrated feral cats, they now have a new bugbear – being called an expat.
The word comes from expatriate, which means ‘a person who lives outside their native country’. An immigrant means something similar, without being as specific. The Brexpat people serve, from their page on Facebook, the northern Europeans (that’s to say, pretty much the Brits, since no doubt the Swedes have their own page) and we all understand the meaning of the word. An immigrant – usually one who moves for economic reasons – will probably be aiming for a passport from his host country, will certainly aim to speak the language, and will most probably be working in some menial position, such as in the plastic farms or on a building site.
In short, we know what the word ‘expat’ means when we hear it.
But what do the Spanish think? Are we guiris immigrants and nothing wrong with that?
I asked a few journalist friends.
·‘It sounds inappropriate. The concept of immigrant in Spain is associated with ethnicity, culture, and, above all, integration. The English, as Europeans, don't consider themselves to be immigrants’. José María (note here he uses another name for the British: los ingleses).
·‘The English who consider themselves immigrants are right, because they've migrated from their country to settle here. That's what immigration is. Coming from one country to settle in another. But you're right too. For a Spaniard, it sounds strange to call a Western European an immigrant, because we have a subconscious understanding that immigration is linked to poverty, to flight, to leaving developing countries to come to more developed ones. So, technically, an immigrant is both a Moroccan and an English person, but in everyday language, an English person isn't called an immigrant, but a Moroccan is’. Miguel Ángel.
·‘I'd laugh. I often defend the English. As you know, some Spaniards are prejudiced against the English. It's also true that they don't usually make much of an effort to integrate’. Says José Antonio.
·‘The meaning of "immigrant" is another’. From Ángel.
·‘No, the term is correct, from the perspective that they are immigrants in Spain and emigrants from the United Kingdom, although they are not strictly emigrants in the economic sense. Nowadays, the word "expat" has become fashionable to differentiate economic immigrants from those who aren't’. Writes Diego.
Why we must label ourselves as anything at all is another question – unless they happened to be handing out a new passport.