There are not a lot of Black individuals who live here, by Hamida Hassan

I’ve been in Spain for the last two months and so far I love it. The people are friendly and
welcoming. I’ve traveled to Madrid, Cadiz and Granada outside of Seville and the architect in
these cities are incredibly beautiful. I can not get over how detailed they are. The kids at my
internship are fascinated by me. When it comes to group conversations at my internship, each
group literally fights over me which I completely love and adore. But something strange that I
notice in Spain is that there are not a lot of Black individuals who live here. Most of the Black
here like myself are either tourists or students from the United States. Yes there are a few
darker Spaniards but if you take them to the United States they would be considered as a light
skin vs dark skin. I sometimes get referred to as “Moreno” meaning brown in Spanish. In many
Spanish stores there are many advertisements and posters of Black people used. This is weird
because as I mentioned there are not a lot of them. But also in the U.S black people are the
minorities there but they are not in the advertisement in the stores as much as White People.
Which makes sense because there are more White people in the U.S than Black people. But
this is not the case in Spain. It’s completely the opposite I’ve been to Zara, Lefties, Humana and
a few more that are all stores that I wouldn't find in the United States. It makes me happy to see
something different in Spain but it is strange.