My Travel experience to Spain

 As a blogger I’m always in search of interesting topics. Combine that with my love for traveling; and travel related blogs or travelogue seems like a very natural choice to write upon. When I started blogging a good 10 years back, I tried my hand on travel blogs. However off late I have not written any post on this topic even though I’m still travelling a lot, courtesy my job. I even travelled right in the peak of pandemic.

Probably as most of my travelling is work related, it means a very hectic schedule with no time to observe the place, assimilate the unique culture around. I used to joke around that even though I claim to have visited 11 countries, It actually means 11 airports and 11 hotels. But this time is very different. Now I must spend almost a month in a new place away from my country. And I think I am well positioned to observe and pen (or type) my thoughts.

So here we go.

I landed in Spain on 9 of January 2022 and will be flying back on 6^th of February. That is almost one month (or four weeks to be more exact). This is my first visit to this country. Even though business visits generally are very tightly scheduled leaving very little time for recreation or fooling around; 4 weeks is a lot of time and more importantly, it also means 4 weekends. Plus, I get the opportunity to interact with my co-workers who are native of this country. Hence, I hope to get some reflections about Spanish society and overall, about Spanish culture from my visit.

I joined this company right in the first wave of Pandemic, Due to the travel restrictions and general fear associated with COVID, it was not possible for me to attend the induction training in Spain. We thought (like everyone else in the world) that the COVID and travel restrictions is just a matter of few months. But now it’s clear in the hindsight that this indeed is the new normal. Hence, we resumed our normal business travel and after a roller coaster ride of company restructuring (It need another post). I landed up in Spain for my introductory training full 1 year and 9 months after I had joined this company.

To put things in perspective, my company has two offices in Spain, One in Castellar de Valles (near Barcelona) and second near Burgos. I had no prior idea before, but this fact has lot of relevance as in Spain also there is some under-current of resentment between two regions.

I’m not a history major, so not sure if I’m the right person to write on history of even my native country India. Leave aside Spain. But whatever I could gather with my interactions and after a quick study on Internet. I understand that Catalonia or Cataluña as it’s called in the native language is an autonomous community inside Spain. Way back into Middle Ages, this region has its own distinct culture and institutional system including courts and constitutions. In 1960s, it revolted against a large and cumbersome Spanish army and was briefly proclaimed as a republic under French protection

For some periods, its unique culture and language was supressed, and Spanish was declared as its official language. During the Spanish transition to democracy (1975–1982), Catalonia regained self-government and is now one of the most economically dynamic communities of Spain. However, as I have experienced in India also, these kind of separatist movement does not die totally. Some small spark always remains deep buried in the psyche of people which is fanned by politician (Politicians, it seems like are cut from same cloth everywhere). I also understood the movement was again rekindled in 2017 when Catalonia parliament conducted a referendum and declared independence unilaterally. The Spanish senate in turn, termed this referendum illegal, they dissolved the incumbent government and conducted snap election The Spanish supreme court even imprisoned seven former ministers and convicted several ministers including then president of Catalonia region, who fled to other European countries.

As per initial planned itinerary, I was to stay to 2 weeks in Sabadell which is town near Castellar, then travel for a week to Burgos. After then come back to Sabadell before returning to India. Burgos lies in separate autonomous region of Castile and León. It has a very rich historical and religious significance. I will not dwell into this part much as then the post will be long. It was comparatively a smaller city and has more of small town / countryside kind of vibes.  It has more native Spanish European population compared to Barcelona which is more international and urban.

My experience in Burgos was very different than in Sabadell / Castellar del vales. One we were travelling with colleagues rather than on our own, secondly as it’s a smaller town and we were staying here for a much shorter time. Our hosts were more cordial to us. The town was very picturesque even though much colder. We used to roam around in the evening with the complete group most of the times. For a smaller town, Burgos has many places to see including famous Cathedral and Museum of evolution. I understand it has been a site of excavation too. We were travelling as a group of around 7-8 people out of which me and my colleague were only two Asian. We were a bit of exotic animals for others with all our idiosyncrasies like vegetarian foods (they were quite amused by difference between vegetarian and vegan).

In Sabadell we were more on our own. We were only two visiting guests there and barring two team dinners, we were eating out on our own for full three weeks. The local population has more proportion from other ethnicities compared to Burgos. In Barcelona which was 45 min drive from this place. We could find many Indians and our neighbours across the border (Pakistan)

This difference also shows in my interaction with colleagues in both the offices. The Colleagues in Burgos has probably never interacted with Asian person before and were more limited in communicating in English. However, the interesting thing is that they were more open to us compared to their colleagues from Barcelona.

My return was from Bilboa as the direct connectivity between Burgos and Barcelona was not very good. Bilbao is an important port city in northern Spain and is capital of Basque country. So, I had chance of visiting three different parts of Spain although Bilbao was just a stopover to be honest.

PS: My return was postponed by around a week because unfortunately my COVID test report has turned out to be positive. Apparently, I’m a COVID magnet, my hide and seek with this virus needs another post on its own, so for now it suffices to say that I’m going to experience bit more of Spain even though I will be mainly confined in my room only for this period.

I have personally experienced that how people are quick to stereotype or pigeonhole anything. So, I will refrain from generalizing my impression of Spain or Europe based on my limited interaction with people here. Also, most of the people that I interacted during my visit to Spain were my colleagues at work. So, the company relations between both the business units, the power dynamics and the relative hierarchies also plays a very important role. I have tried to observe everything around me with an open mind as far as possible without any conscious bias or prejudice on my side.

My first visit to Europe was way back in 2006 when I went to Austria. It’s a big gap of around 16 years and these are two different places so perhaps I’m comparing apples to oranges, but I noticed that I lot of things has changed. In my first visit we were like exotic animals in these places but now I could see many Indians and our neighbours across the borders, Moreso in big / tourist cities like Barcelona but even in interiors of Spain and in cities of religious significance where there is even less likelihood of seeing any Indian person. Heck, we even could find Indian restaurants in those places, so maybe India has done a good job of pushing their soft culture around (Yoga, cuisine, Bollywood etc). Another thing that I could notice is that now gap between India and Europe is decreasing in two of the most noticeable area at-least in my book, cleanliness, and road etiquette. When I last toured Europe, there was such a vast difference in general cleanliness that I felt like I have landed in another world altogether, everything was squeaky clean. However, this was not the case this time around. Even though generally it was clean, I could still find trash on places like public parks, on my hotel roof as well as downtown market area.  India is still more dirty but when you factor-in the abundant dust here due to topical weather and lack of greenery combined with our humongous population which is almost double than that of combined Europe, the difference does not feel so stark anymore. For sure, it’s much greener than the part of India I live in, but here I’m talking about general cleanliness.

Second part is about road etiquettes, When I last toured Europe. I was staying in a hotel at riverside with only a road separating the same. One fine morning, I was just standing outside my hotel gazing at the river. I realized after some time that good 3-4 cars had stopped on the road waiting patiently for me to pass. All the cliches regarding rarely using horn were indeed true in that region. However, this time, the situation was different. During my full stay of around a month; I could observe multiple instances of people jumping red lights, Not giving right of way to pedestrians. Off-course compared to the absolute nightmarish mess that we have here, it is still much better.

I don’t know how much I have left in this company, considering the uncertainties in our business. We are in post-pandemic times now. It may very well be my last visit to Spain. But it gave me good insights about people from another culture and I realized that we are so alike yet so different.