Before my visit to Copenhagen I was in Motril for the weekend to meet my grand-niece Aroa. She’s a sweet little darling, too little still, but I can tell that she’s going to be extremely cute when she grows older.
It wasn’t the best of visits, to be honest. Jon and I had travelled for many hours, and later experienced a 2 and a half hour delay on our journey back (making my own journey to Copenhagen the following morning a bit hellish), just to see my brand new grand niece for less than 30 minutes.
Long story short, my sister in law got on a strop when my mum said that we weren’t going to go to a restaurant to eat fish, so they left. That evening there was a fight between my brother and sister in law with my niece and the father of the creature which made them leave for Granada, never to be seen again (that weekend).
But the weekend was alright in other aspects. I got to see Puri (my bridesmaid), Kika and Pepito the chihuahuas, drank lots of leche rizada and spent some good time with my other brother Juan.
I got to talk quite a bit to my brother and uncle during my visit, and we got talking about my recent promotion at work. I explained that I was quite excited about the new changes and that I was embracing them. It was awkward at times when I noticed that they looked at me in a funny way when I was talking about it.
Maybe it’s all in my mind, but I’ve got a feeling that some members of my family are a bit suspicious about the way that I am progressing in my career, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that maybe they even think that I have been sleeping with my boss in order to get the last couple promotions.
For them I studied English and trained to become a teacher and don’t understand how I could now be a Project Coordinator of a lighting controls company just like that. I’ve told them a million times that the system is different in the UK: they give you training and all kinds of support, and see beyond your qualifications and focus on your actual skills. That, I’m sorry to say, is an unknown concept in Spain, or at least where I come from, where “sleeping with your boss in order to get a promotion” is still something common, I dare say.
I was talking to my uncle about my grand-niece’s surnames. Is she going to take my niece’s surnames or will she be “recognised” by the father? And we got talking about the importance of surnames in my town. It doesn’t matter that you’re a complete chocolate tea pot and didn’t even finish school, let alone university; if your surnames are So and So, if you’re the child of Mr X and Mrs Y, then, you, my friend, needn’t worry – you will get a job regardless and will do well in life.
It is very sad for me to see that still so many people have this very old school way of thinking in Spain. Okay, maybe I can’t compare the big cities with a small town of the coast of Andalucia – I take it things are different over there. But I am hoping that things change soon, and as more and more young people go abroad to live new experiences, they realise that there’s a different way of doing things.
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