Social Observations, You are Not Alone

Living in a foreign country is an interesting experiment in the process of realization. When I first got here, I collected bits of data about the place from everything from billboards and adverts, to the architecture, to people’s attitudes and so on and so forth. With time that picture accrues depth, people open up and talk to me and I begin to notice repeating trends and patterns around me. What can be jarring is when exploration into these depths reveals that the face of the picture is not what you interpreted it to be.
Today I was giving a lecture to a high school class about Protestantism in the United States. When I opened the class I asked for a show of hands of who was Catholic. About as I expected, some 7/8ths of the class responded in the affirmative. I went on with my talk and it seemed to be received well. At the end of the class I had a few minutes left over and I decided to indulge in my curiosity. I began to ask the class questions at large.
My first question, “how many of you go to Church once a week?” They sat there and looked at me, and looked around. Not a single hand went up.
“How many go to Church once a month?” Again, no one. As it came out, most do go to Church on Christmas and Easter but that is about it.
I was a bit taken aback by this. I mean, this IS a Catholic school and these kids did just open the class by telling me they were Catholic.
The question which came from my surprise and protestant mentality was, “well, how do you consider yourselves Catholics if you do not practice?”
“Our parents had us baptized when we were babies.”
Here, Catholicism is not a choice made by the individual, it is made by their parents. It is a condition for life. Having just spoken about fluctuations in Church membership (specifically the declining percentage of Protestants in America versus the increasing number of Catholics) I felt there was something unfair about the whole thing.
Catholics are so just because of something their parents did to them when they were babies and they accept it as a condition for life (and will answer any statistician who asks that they are Catholic), whether they practice or not. On the other hand, Protestants are so because they practice Protestantism. The mentalities behind the answers are so different that it is almost like asking different questions. This makes me even more dubious about statistics and polls.
My picture of Spain was painted by soaring, monolithic cathedrals and from hearing everyone call themselves Catholics. I put these things together and interpreted them through my Protestant lens as meaning that every Sunday these cathedrals and churches were filled with Spaniards. It seems this is only true on religious holidays. Lesson learned.

As a result of my college thesis I brought a curiosity and interest in the immigrant culture here. From the articles and studies I read in the library in Liberty Missouri, I had put together an academic understanding of what immigration from Africa to Europe looked like. In my studies though, I focused primarily on detention facilities and those held in legal limbo there. It is interesting to reconcile my narrow theoretical picture to this grander physical one.
I always explained African immigration to the EU as having the same dynamic as Mexican immigration to the US. And in doing so, I was more correct than I knew. However, my focus on African immigration caused me to miss the fact that South Americans also comprise a massive number of immigrants in the EU. But, as I said, the picture is strikingly similar. Construction sites are predominantly manned by African workers, house cleaning ladies are from South America; small businesses and city jobs are for the Spaniards.
This dynamic bleeds into another notable similarity between here and the US. In the 1960s Mallorca began to become popular amoung tourists. There was a sudden and huge demand for large scale construction projects and, therefore, cheap labour to man these projects. Thus restrictions against immigration were lax. Today, Spain is facing similar housing issues as we are in America and attitude towards the immigrants is turning as well. As people become afraid for their own jobs in the face of something so huge, complicated, and difficult to understand, the reaction is the same. Interesting.
The word CRISIS (pronounced creesees [say it out loud. It sound funny]) is everywhere. I hear it at least 10 times a day on the news. People mention it in conversation. I even saw a store sale add the other day which, in giant letters, announced that they offered prices so low they would turn the crisis around.

So, I suppose what we can draw from this is…
Don’t feel bad America, Europe is gagging too.
And
Sometimes, statistics and numbers can make us think things are happening a certain way but you should take a real pulse yourself to be sure before you go burying anything.

Okay, so, I know this is nothing more than an internet blog and you are probably just reading this out of casual interest, but I would like it very much if you would do something this week. When you are out and about in your world, look around and watch, see if you can’t blow some assumption you have been carrying around out of the water. I know you will probably want to think this will be harder for you than it is for me because you have been living where you are much longer but I suspect that your situation actually may very well have just lulled you into complacence and there are plenty of assumptions just waiting to be questioned.
I am very interested in hearing about what you notice.

Post-script- A few days ago the bakery lady said something about being constipada. I thought this a highly innapropriate thing to inform me of, especially over my loaf of bread; but I let it slide. Then I was talking to some people at the school and someone mentioned that one of their students was constipada and wouldn´t be surprised if everyone was within the week. I was more than a little horrified by this idea. Contagious constipation really is a frightening thought.
Today I succumbed to a raspy throat and sniffles, and after several comments aimed at me involved the word constipada, with a general gesture at the nose and sinus region, I have realized the error in my thinking.