'But olive oil and sugar is the best sandwich filling!' Curiosities of Andalucia

‘Get ready to be kissed,’ I warn my sister. ‘They’re coming for you.’

Daisy rolls her eyes.

‘No,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not joking.’

‘You’re so funny.’

‘No, Daisy-’

But it’s too late. They have seen her, and now a flurry of six or seven young women, middle-aged women, women of all ages, are fluttering around my sister, telling her in a language she doesn’t understand that she is absolutely gorgeous, and one by one they kiss her on both cheeks. Daisy looks at me in alarm. I shrug.

Why are all these women kissing my sister, when they have only just met her? Over the next three days, Daisy will be kissed and told she is beautiful many, many times. Why? Because that is just what you do in Spain. And, although it took some getting used to, and although a couple of times we forgot to warn people and got some very strange looks from our English visitors, now I think it is nice.

Spain is not just a sunny England, even though some tourists still treat it that way. They do some things very differently here. I won’t forget the look of revulsion when I started adding vinegar to my chips.

‘That’s typical in her country,’ my friend told the horrified waitress, who quickly leaves, shaking her head.

Here are some other things I have noticed that are different about our countries. (Note: These things do not apply to the whole of Spain. I hear in the North they’re not as fazed by the train.’

1.They really love their region. Like, really really love it.

‘I hate England. All it does is rain all the time.’ This is how a lot of people, old and young, talk about England. But in Spain, they love their country (or, at least, most of them do.) Many Spanish people I have talked to can’t understand why Cataluna would want to separate; because why would you want to be on your own when you can be together? Spanish people not only love their country – they love their region. Andalucians love Andalucia, and a few of them seem surprised I might want to go anywhere else.

One of our favourite TV programmes is called ‘Andalucians in Spain’. The programme travels up and down the country, interviewing people who, normally when looking for work, have moved away from Andalucia to another part of Spain. These interviews are almost always exactly the same. People get very emotional talking about how much they miss Andalucia, but at least they can go to their local ‘Andalucia club’ where they eat Andalucian recipes and keep up their Andalucian traditions. Then the scene will change to a group of people sitting around in a circle with a guitar, singing as the girls dance flamenco. My favourite episode was a girl who left Andalucia when she was six months old – but is still very proud to be Andalucian.

We can’t help but find it funny that they are so unabashedly in love with where they live, because we can’t imagine anyone who moved away from Hampshire starting to cry because they just really really loved Hampshire, or a show where people from Portsmouth tear up because they really miss the sea and fish and chips. But people seem to be a lot happier when they are in love with their home, instead of grumblingly accepting it. And it’s very easy to love Andalucia, with its quaint white streets dotted with orange trees and where it’s almost always sunny (except for when it isn’t – which, as you will soon see, causes chaos and some existential despair.)

2. Maybe because they love Andalucia so much, they love being outside in Andalucia.

Spanish people are always outside. Or they always want to be outside. And it is just lovely to sit in the sun with a little coffee (which you can actually afford to do because it’s only a Euro, not the £3.50 I have to fork out for a cappuccino at home) in the spring sunshine. One person told me they thought this was why all English people were so solitary and grumpy.

‘I think it must be because of the weather,’ he told me. ‘If you’re not in the sun, it just makes you want to stay in your house all the time, which makes you less sociable. So that must be why it’s so hard for them to make friends.’

Great start.

Even if it’s a ‘bit fresh’ (although my ‘fresh’ is different to their ‘fresh’) they just bring heaters outside. If I tell people I am cold, they often look very confused.

‘But you’re from England,’ they tell me. ‘You’re used to it.’

3. They really really hate the rain.

Andalucia, the sun-dappled land of orange blossom and flamenco – except for when it’s raining. While Britain is being pummelled by snow, a similar ‘historic event’ is taking place in Spain: it has rained all week. And this has caused chaos. In November we scoffed at getting a rain warning through our phones, but then the next day (after really, what seemed to us, very little rain) houses had flooded and panic ensured. The roofs are flat and the drains aren’t great. With a week of rain one school had closed down and it was deemed safer by most people just to stay inside and not risk getting blown away.

‘Did you have a nice Andalucia day?’

Yep, that’s right. Last week we all had a day of work to celebrate Andalucia.

‘Well, I just stayed inside all day. It was raining.’

‘Ahh yes. Of course.’

But this is not just one person, it is every single person I speak to. It was raining. So I didn’t leave the house. I message my student, checking our class is still on. They live less than a ten-minute walk-away. ‘Yes!’ They reply. ‘Unless it’s raining too hard. We don’t want you to catch a cold.’

4. People are so nice I’m sometimes not sure if I have understood what they’re saying.

This was a problem in the first few months: do I not understand the words, or do I just not understand why on Earth these people that hardly know me are being so nice to me? What do you mean, you’re going to try and change your doctor’s appointment to drive me to Seville?

‘If you need anything,’ one lady tells me, peering intently into my eyes. ‘Anything at all – we’re just here. Just here. Anything.’ She says this to me at least twice a week on the way home from Zumba. Even with my boyfriend at one point only able to tell people ‘my Spanish is bad’ we have been made to feel so welcome. It seems such a shame that all immigrants do not get this kind of welcome.

Some things are still taking some getting used to, and some don’t surprise us anymore. Now when we go home we try and kiss people twice on the cheeks. A lot of things that were weird at first (olive oil and sugar on bread, all the cheek-kissing, anything below fifteen degrees being described as ‘a bit fresh’) are totally normal to us now, but others are still taking some getting used to. Like the fact I’m greeted like a super-hero when they realise I have been brave enough to venture outside without an umbrella.

Some things have changed, but we will continue to offer all our visitors a cup of tea and hope that one day, someone will say yes.