Directness in Spain - Insults and Adjectivesm, by Joey Ruemenapp

I’m not the most direct person. I will make up an excuse when I simply don’t want to go. I will beat around the bush when I don’t like something. But I never truly realized my indirectness until living with my host mom. I vividly remember feeling uncomfortable my first week in Seville after she called me “flojo.” ‘Did she just call me lazy?’ I thought. She would ask me straight up, "What don't you like about living here? Do you regret not living in a residencia?" I didn't know how to respond. I would give her a jumbled list of (mostly) pros and (only the unbearable) cons without trying to trigger defensiveness, as my American upbringing raised me to.

The following week I would be in bed and told, not asked, to get up and spend 40 minutes helping organize the pantry. She has some nerve! Then, I would arrive back from school and get criticism of not being able to find things on the first try (in Spanish) -

“You’re very despistado, you know what that means?” I put it into a translator which tells me I’m “clueless.”

“Yes, it’s an insult.”

“Chiquillo, it’s not an insult, it’s an adjective!”

It’s started to click for me now. The relaxed nature of Spanish culture manifests in this way. People tell each other how it is, they don’t hold it in. Georgetown University (https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/the-direct-etiquette-of-spain) states that similarly to the concept of blatant staring and political incorrectness, Spaniards don’t hold back on criticisms and commands. They will not beat around the bush.

I think this is the most important part of my cultural immersion here. Why say something indirectly? If my host mom asks me if I dislike something about her, I can just tell her, and she doesn’t take it personally! I can just tell people when I don’t want to go! These conversations and criticisms, I believe, are important to have, and in the US, as our waiters do at a restaurant, we often create a fake bubble of joy and dance around what we really think and want. I’m excited to be able to apply Spanish directness to my life. I am clueless, I am lazy, but those are just adjectives. I am happier to live in a world that is how we act and say it is.