Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Sat 25 Apr 2009 23:24 Post subject: Spanish Racism
I was talking to an Indian American (as in East Indian) friend of my wife and mine today. We started talking about her trip to Spain last year and she was remarking about how racist Spaniards are. She speaks Spanish (and Portuguese) and was talking about the taunts and remarks about "gypsies" (I guess they thought she was one) etc. My wife then talked about her Japanese friends who went to Spain a few years ago and told her to go to Italy instead because Spaniards were racist (but they didn't give her much detail other than they were offended). I know my father has been to Spain a few times, when he was in the Navy and he was there for a few days each time but I don't recall him speaking about racism there, so I started looking for examples of stuff on the net.
One is a biracial British Formula 1 star who was abused in Spain for his "blackness" [seems they follow the one drop rule] last year and the other is an older article of racist treatment of immigrants (which I'm not sure is really due to pure racism or nationalism...because I read elseware there are many Romanian immigrants in Spain who are not treated as bad etc. That article is here:
Abusive banners at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona. Photograph: Manu Fernandez/AFP
It was a display of puerile stadium antagonism that rapidly generated accusations of the r-word, involving a group of fans, a black sporting hero and some unappealing antics that were quickly denounced as racist.
But while Britain has fumed at the treatment of Lewis Hamilton earlier this week in Barcelona, where fans "blacked up" and goaded the formula one driver with ugly slogans, the Spanish response has mixed bemusement with outright denial.
"We didn't have the slightest intention of mocking anyone, much less laughing at [Hamilton] because of the colour of his skin," says Toni Calderón, one of those whose painted faces appeared in newspapers across the world this week. "I'm not racist and I'm ashamed to appear as one in the English press."
Calderón says he had wanted to bring a touch of humour to the racetrack and that many at the time thought he and his friends were Hamilton fans.
But it wasn't just the costumes that caused offence - Hamilton also faced racial insults from a small minority of the crowd as he walked between the paddock and the track.
Santiago Segurola, deputy editor of sports newspaper Marca, and Spain's most respected sports journalist, says that the events of last weekend were both particular to formula one and part of a broader problem: "Unlike many other countries, such as the UK and Germany, Spain has no history in formula one. So when [Spanish driver] Fernando Alonso came along, support for him rapidly developed from passion into a kind of fanaticism.
"This has not been helped by the press, whose support for him goes beyond the normal boundaries of journalism. In this sense, we have two novelties in conflict: these new fans, who do not have any history in the sport, and Lewis Hamilton, the first black driver."
The Spanish don't want to recognise this behaviour as racist, but that is exactly what it is, he says. It might be a minority of fans, but too many people are prepared to deny the existence of racism and "journalists often justify the unjustifiable", he adds.
It is not the first time that Spanish sport has found itself at the centre of a race row. In October 2004, the national football coach Luis Aragonés was overheard describing Thierry Henry, as a "negro de mierda" ("fucking black"). Aragonés was let off with a small fine.
A month later, at an England-Spain friendly, monkey chants and racist insults were directed at the visiting team's black players.
Juan Díez-Nicolás, who has advised government agencies investigating racism, says Spaniards see a distinction between these episodes.
"What happened in Barcelona was a sign of stupidity, but to call it racism is simplifying things. If [Hamilton] had happened to be a fat person, they would have insulted him for that.
"In Spain, when they make fun about the colour of your skin, it is not necessarily racism. If he had been a woman, they would have made a joke about that, and we would be talking about sexism," he says.
Díez-Nicolás argues that his surveys regularly show the problem of racism in Spain to be lower than in the UK, France or Germany, countries with much longer histories of immigration.
Others, however, see it as only the latest sign of an increasingly tense debate in Spain about immigration and racism in a country that has been radically transformed in the last decade.
Spain emerged from dictatorship after the death of General Franco in 1975 a very closed society. It was traditionally a country of emigrants, who left in their millions to find work in Europe and South America, and it was not until the late 1990s that large-scale immigration began.
Of Spain's 45 million inhabitants, nearly 10% are now foreign-born. Few countries have seen such a dramatic change in their population in such a short period of time.
The Spanish economic boom of the last decade was partly built on the cheap labour from South America, north and sub-Saharan Africa and eastern Europe, which helped make the construction industry one of the country's great successes.
Spain prides itself on its welcoming and broadly liberal approach to immigration and the authorities have tried to steer a course between the multicultural approach adopted in the UK, and the one-size-fits-all assimilation in France.
But recent figures show that rising unemployment, which is touching 2 million for the first time in three years, has hit the immigrant population hardest. There are now more than 400,000 unemployed foreigners in Spain - a cause of concern to those who fear ghettoisation.
"We have as many racists in Spain as anywhere else in Europe," says Esteban Ibarra, spokesman for the Movement Against Intolerance.
"But my concern is that the authorities seek to minimise the problem. We believe that there are 4,000 hate crimes each year in Spain. This contrasts with the official line, which doesn't deny the problem, but says it is very small," he says.
Ibarra is also critical of the way sociologists work in Spain: "They make valuations based on questions that people answer in a politically correct way rather than expressing the reality. We, however, are in the street, we visit the schools, the stadiums, and work with the victims of racism and xenophobia."
The Socialist government has taken a number of steps to tackle racism, and the work and social affairs minister, Jesús Caldera, says: "I don't believe any country has had success with its immigrant communities in the way Spain has. I condemn what happened to Hamilton, but I believe the government's response to racism has been solid."
The Socialists intend to pass a law against all forms of discrimination if re-elected on March 9, he says.
But Ibarra is critical of their efforts: "The government established an observatory to examine racism but it has no powers. We need a special prosecutor dedicated to racism and xenophobia."
On the streets however, many Spaniards take offence at being told how to behave by the British, whose sports fans have a particularly low reputation in Spain, and feel that the problem has been blown out of all proportion.
Xavi, a 45-year-old resident of Madrid watching the Spain-France game on Wednesday night says: "This is madness. It was all just part of the game. And anyway, Hamilton isn't even really black, so I don't know what all the fuss is about. Perhaps the English are trying to hide their own problems by making such a big story out of it."
Meanwhile, Javier, a 35-year-old Getafe fan, puts it down to misunderstanding, saying: "It is not racist - they were dressed for carnival. This is the sense of humour in carnival - the Spanish take the mickey out of themselves, too. The Spanish laugh at the Andaluciáans and the Catalans, as much as the any other race."
* Giles Tremlett in Madrid
* The Guardian, Saturday 20 November 2004 01.13 GMT
Official condemnation of the racist barracking suffered by England footballers in Spain this week cannot hide the fact that xenophobia is on the rise in a country now Europe's biggest magnet for immigrants, Spanish anti-racism campaigners warned yesterday.
"A few years ago it was bad to be a racist ... now there is more impunity," complained Begona Sáñchez, a spokeswoman for the SOS Racismo group. "This is not an isolated incident. It is a signal that, although the vast majority of Spaniards are not racists, this is something that is consolidating here."
Campaigners welcomed the condemnation that eventually came from the Spanish authorities. But they warned that it was time that Spaniards, who were mostly upset that anybody should think they might be racists, took the threat seriously.
"We have a problem with racism," said Esteban Ibarra of the Movement Against Intolerance. "Either this is stemmed now, or something grave will happen."
But many, if not most, Spaniards remained convinced yesterday that neither they, nor their country, nor the national soccer coach, Luis Aragonés could be described as racist.
Racism is difficult to measure in Spain, where there is no equivalent of the Commission for Racial Equality. The social affairs, justice and interior ministries, as well as the body responsible for Spanish courts, the National Council of Judicial Power, all admitted yesterday that they did not keep figures on racist incidents.
"We calculate that there are more than 1,000 racist attacks every year. There has been no adequate following of this, however, by governments," Mr Ibarra explained.
Warnings have, however, come from several fronts. Amnesty International, for example, dedicated a report two years ago to racial abuse and torture by Spanish police.
The report detailed cases of deaths, rape, sexual assault and violence against foreigners while in custody, and lamented the impunity enjoyed by those responsible.
Amnesty's allegations, however, fell on deaf ears. They were dismissed as containing "major inaccuracies" by the then interior minister, Mariano Rajoy, now leader of the opposition conservative People's party. A survey by the state-owned Centre for Social Investigation discovered recently that one in four young people thought there were too many illegal immigrants.
Spain, with a buoyant economy and historically low birth-rate, is the main destination for immigrants into Europe.
Last year it took in 600,000 immigrants, a third of the EU total and five times as many as Britain. The country's 3.3 million immigrants now account for 7.5% of the population, and most have arrived in the past three or four years. Madrid's immigrant population has increased from 3% to 14% in just four years.
A walk around the city's Lavapies district, the most culturally mixed place in Spain, yesterday revealed varying opinions on whether racism was a problem. On Meson de Paredes street, lined with garment wholesalers run by Chinese, Moroccans, Indians and Africans, the general feeling was that Spaniards were less racist than other Europeans.
"I have lived in Britain, Germany and Switzerland and I find that there is more respect for me here as a foreigner than in any of those places," said an Indian shopkeeper, Rajiv Arora.
Ali Jaffar, an Iraqi, said: "Even after the Madrid train bombings I didn't feel, as an Arab, that people were being nasty to me. In fact, many people actually tried to make me feel better." But a crowd of young Senegalese men disagreed. "There is a lot of racism," said one. "People tell me to go home to my own country. The old people are the worst."
Yesterday the blame for Wednesday's events was being pinned on a few neo-fascist football fans - though El País newspaper had reported that those making monkey noises were several thousand mainly young men from Madrid.
Joined: 02 May 2006 {Posts: 443 } Location: le-de-France
Posted: Sun 26 Apr 2009 07:47 Post subject:
About possible remarks against Gypsies (Roma): since the entry of Romania into the EU, busloads of gypsies have been coming to large western european cities to beg for a living. They use fake (and sometimes real but borrowed)babies, fake disabilities, fake petitions, even sell fake newspapers, and can be very aggressive. Some reports have shown that they average 100 Euros (currently 132 dollars) a day. This has not surprisingly led to much anti Roma sentiment in areas where they do this.
Quote:
One is a biracial British Formula 1 star who was abused in Spain for his "blackness" [seems they follow the one drop rule]
Maybe not. From the article:
Quote:
Xavi, a 45-year-old resident of Madrid watching the Spain-France game on Wednesday night says: "This is madness. It was all just part of the game. And anyway, Hamilton isn't even really black, so I don't know what all the fuss is about.
From the second article, I found this quote interesting:
Quote:
On Meson de Paredes street, lined with garment wholesalers run by Chinese, Moroccans, Indians and Africans, the general feeling was that Spaniards were less racist than other Europeans.
When I was last in Spain I spoke with a couple Senegalese immigrants. They expressed the same sentiment. When I told them I was living in France, the one who had lived there said Spain was much better. When I asked why, he said because in Spain, most people are nice to you and will do what they can help you out, where as in France, most people look down on you for being an immigrant.
I think a lot of the examples from the articles posted are a result of Spaniards being very un-politically correct with respect to anglophone standards. For the black face example, that resonates heavily in the U.S. and England because of the history of minstrel shows, but in Spain, there is no societal understanding that says making fun of someone for having a darker skin tone is any different from making fun of someone who has bigger ears. It seems racist to a us-American, but there are very likely no bad feelings, intentions, or racial stereotypes behind it when it is done there.
I though I would post a striking example of an immigrant's experience in Spain that I saw on TVe a few months ago. An original article, for those who read Spanish:
And a summary on a pro-immigration blog in English:
Quote:
A Town Bands Together to Save a Friend from Deportation
By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
For a change from the posts about raids and militarized borders, an immigration story with a very happy ending.
It happened in Spain, a country with an “immigration problem” like the U.S., but where people as a whole tend to be a lot more likely to look at immigrants as people rather than “problems”. Hassane Moctar, at 21 years old, arrived by night on a makeshift raft to Spain from Mauritania, taking his life into his own hands to try to find a better life in Europe. He ended up in Galicia, where a family from Cangas do Morrazo, a town near Pontevedra “adopted” him. Hassane has been living with the Veiga family for 6 months, and the family who were once strangers now consider him part of their family.
But things weren’t so rosy with Hassane’s legal situation. Two weeks ago, Hassane, now 24, went to court to answer to a deportation order which would send him back immediately if something wasn’t done. His attorney demonstrated that the people of Cangas supported him, that he spoke Spanish, and that he even had job offers. The Veiga family began a signature campaign and managed to collect 5,000 names from townspeople in support of Hassane staying in Spain. His Galician “sister” testified on the stand to the fact that he was now part of the Veiga family:
“Ever since he started living with us, he’s been just like any member of the family. He’s never had any problems and we all love him. My 95 year old grandmother asks where Hassane is as soon as she gets up, and he spends a lot of time with her. If he gets deported, my grandmother will die.”
But initially much of this was considered irrelevant to his case by the judge. Now he had to wait for the verdict.
The people of Cangas said that if justice wasn’t served in the case, they wouldn’t let it go. Hundreds stood outside the court with signs that read “We are different. We are the same.” A 70 year old woman from Cangas do Morrazo told reporters “The young man came here with his pockets empty, but he is a very good person and we love him a lot. I also had family who emigrated.”
That last statement is key to drawing parallels to our perspective of immigration to the U.S. Galicia was the region of Spain with the most emigration (estimated at 3 million) to Latin America and Europe as a result of the Spanish Civil War and subsequent dictatorship. Galicians live all over Latin America, and while some have returned to Spain, in general, the community has always understood the phenomena of immigration and empathizes with the human side of the phenomena. In the U.S., the country that politicians like to tout as “a nation of immigrants”, we don’t emphathize of even sympathize. Looks like we could learn a lot from a town in rural Galicia.
So what’s become of Hassane? Last night, his story made national news, as the verdict was returned amid the expectation and fear of the people of Cangas do Morrazo, hundreds of whom had rented buses to get to the courthouse in Parda. The judge said that Hassane’s defense proved that the deportation order was not “sufficiently justified”, given his family and community situation and his lack of criminal record. He gets to stay in Cangas, with the Veigas, indefinitely. Yes, Hassane is undocumented, and a court ruled that he doesn’t have to leave. Oh, and he doesn’t have to pay any fines, either.
There are racists in Spain, like there are racists everywhere, but in my experience I would agree with those in the article that said Spain is the least racist and most friendly to outsiders of any country in Europe.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Sun 26 Apr 2009 19:08 Post subject:
I can believe this in that I think many Northern European nations are less "expressive" in general in public settings about any strong emotions than countries along the Mediterranean (on both sides). This is purely culture and it could be that in these nations making comments about "race" or whatever is seen as "uncouth" (not just in nations that had a history of slavery or mistral shows) just because it is something potentially controversial or something you don't talk about (not in public). I remember an article on religiosity, the same thing held in that Scandinavians were the least likely folks to discuss religion, call on God in public, etc. It did not matter their religiosity level, all of them ("God fearing" or not) thought it low class to discussing public. Spaniards and Italians did not have this problem.
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