Boletín 132 - A Q&A with Spain expert James Blick from Spain Revealed.
Key cultural insight for A Level students from "the men dressed as devils jumping over babies" festival, and los bares de barrio to Spain's attitude to food and family.
In this week’s Boletín discover more about the Spanish way of life (including family, food, culture and lots more!) with James Blick from Spain Revealed. If you’re an A Level student or teacher then you can’t miss it!
👋Welcome to Boletín, an English-language newsletter covering historical, cultural and topical stories related to the A Level Spanish course. These newsletters accompany a student worksheet which can be downloaded here. This week:
Introduction to issue 132 of Boletín
A Q&A with James Blick
Student-friendly PDF download with “ten takeaways” section
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📌Edition 132.
It’s March 2025 and students up and down the UK are gearing up for their upcoming exams. A Level students are still covering topics in class, learning grammar, writing essays for the film and trying to broaden their understanding and knowledge of Spain and the Spanish speaking world. The latter is a must as they have to:
Show very good knowledge and understanding of the culture and society of Spain and Spanish-speaking countries and communities. Share ideas and points of view which are well supported by evidence. Draw conclusions based on an understanding and appreciation of the country's culture and society.
To do all of that is no mean feat especially with so much else going on!
Enter, James Blick.
James, alongside his wife Yoly, run a super popular YouTube channel called Spain Revealed which needs no introduction. Together they’ve been making videos for years about Spanish food, lifestyle and culture and have amassed 37 million views on YouTube alone. As of September, James will also be accepting new students onto his 8-week Move to Spain Masterclass course covering location, property, timelines, taxes, banking, working in Spain, healthcare, thriving as a local and much more!
I asked James if he wouldn’t mind answering some questions about his experiences in Spain to help students gain a better understanding of the largely unexplored cultural/societal side of Spain, which students are expected to show an understanding of in writing and speech during exam season. He gladly obliged!
🎤An interview with James Blick.
I wonder if you could introduce yourself to our readership with a little background on yourself.
Hey, everyone, so my name's James Blick. I was born in New Zealand, but I've been living in Madrid for the last 14 years. I came to Spain in a roundabout route. I moved to France for a year when I was in my mid-20s because I was just in love with the idea of living in Europe. When I was in France, I met a Spanish woman who's now my wife. So, we lived in New Zealand together a little while but finally settled here (Madrid) in 2011.
So yeah, now I've been here, now I feel more at home in Spain than I do in in New Zealand. We have a daughter here who's like you guys, learning Spanish. Well, she speaks Spanish, but she's bilingual, she's only three years old, so she's learning both English and Spanish at the same time, which is a pretty fascinating thing to watch.
Favourite Spanish word or idiomatic phrase?
There's one I really like, which is “de perdidos al río”, which literally translates as kind of “from lost to the river”. I was trying to figure out what the best way to translate this was and actually found a film which has terrible reviews, a comedy from 2004, an American comedy, which was called Without a Paddle. So, “up <insert expletive here> creek without a paddle”, translates as “de perdidos al río”. It's like when you've got a situation that's so bad, it couldn't be worse and then it does get worse.
How did you learn Spanish?
Well, I always answer this question by saying that I'm still learning Spanish, you know, learning a language when you weren't born into it. Like my daughter who's born into English and Spanish, you're never truly bilingual. So, for me, it's a continual process. I also have Spanish class once a week with a private tutor. We go over things that I've heard or struggled with during the week.
I would say I have a C2/1 level of Spanish, but throughout my whole life here, I'll still be acquiring language and learning things.
I actually made a mistake when I moved here. I didn't take Spanish classes right from the start because I figured that living in Spain and having a Spanish wife would be enough. But it's not.
You don't acquire a language just by being in the country. You certainly acquire some things, but you really need to make an effort to understand it. So, a lot of it in the early years was a bit slow-going just through living here and interacting with people and picking stuff up and then over time I realized I wanted to really reinforce that. So, now I have a Spanish tutor.
For the first time the other day, my daughter actually said a Spanish word I didn't understand. So, that was humbling, as I say, she's three years old.
An introduction to Spanish grammar (CEFR A1 - B2)
If you like what I’ve been doing with Boletín for the last four five years or like me, you like buying language books then consider checking out the book I released in July. It’s called Spanish grammar workbook: An ambitious, jam-packed introduction to Spanish grammar for complete beginners, intermediate learners and GCSE students.
How do you use languages in your day-to-day life?
A lot of my life is actually in English. It used to be more in Spanish, but we want our daughter to learn English and obviously she'll learn Spanish just by being in Spain. We speak English at home now, which we didn't previously. So, when I'm out and about, I use Spanish, but in my work due, to my audience, it's all in English. I would say that 60% of my day or even 70% sometimes is in English, which depresses me a little bit because I don't like living in Spain and speaking so much English, but it's just the reality right now.
One thing you’d teach an A Level Spanish class which you don’t think would be taught in a classroom.
So, I'm not sure if you guys learn this, but this is a very common expression that is used constantly in Spain when you screw up effectively. “Liarla”. If you screw up a situation, you would say “la lié” (I really screwed that up).
I think that's kind of a cool thing that I didn't know and wasn't super comfortable using and so I brought it up with my Spanish tutor and we went through it. It's very common in Spain.
If you could move to any other place in Spain, where would you go?
Ah, the eternal question. I love it in Madrid, but in the end, I would love to be near the water. It feels like living in Spain and not being right on the water is kind of a shame.
This is a hard question because I love the north, it's like New Zealand, where I'm from, but it's cool and cold in winter and I wouldn't mind that, but it could be a bit depressing, and I don't think my wife would like that. The South gets really hot and sometimes in the summer I would struggle.
If I could move anywhere, maybe somewhere in Andalusia, maybe in the south, somewhere on the Costa del Sol, or potentially the Costa Brava. Actually, yeah, maybe the Costa Brava, which is the coast between Barcelona and France. It’s a little cooler, I love the food and the culture there, beautiful beaches. That would be a nice spot to have a second home.
What is your favourite Spanish tradition or custom?
I love Christmas here. In New Zealand, and in the UK, I think Christmas day is the big day. Then there's obviously New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. But here, you celebrate those days, and there's a lot of festivities around that, but the Christmas season really is a season. It lasts from the 22nd of December, which is around when school breaks up, and they have the Christmas lottery, which is the largest lottery in the world and something really beautiful about this lottery is that the prizes are shared. When you buy a ticket, you only ever buy a piece of a ticket. And so often the people who buy them in the same place as you, in the newsstand in the village or in your neighbourhood, buy the same piece of the same number. So, when you win and when you see people winning on TV, often they're celebrating with their community because they've all won. I think that's really beautiful.
I love that tradition, but it's a part of this bigger tradition, which is Christmas. The 25th is Christmas Day. You have lunch, Father Christmas brings presents. Although that's not traditional in Spain. Then we have the 31st, which is New Eve's. A big deal, big dinner.
I also love Christmas Eve. Being out with your friends. It's a real family time as well. So, you have both the family aspect and the friends aspect. New Year's Day is quiet and then the 6th January is three kings (los reyes magos) and that's traditionally when presents are given in Spain, the three kings are the three wise men who in the Bible were the ones that, according to tradition, gave gifts to baby Jesus. So, it just goes on and on and on in a way that is wonderful. Having a daughter now, it's just even more magical.
What is the strangest Spanish tradition?
Well, there's a festival that I made a video about a couple of years ago called El Colacho and you could translate it as “the baby jumping festival”.
So, this is a village called Castrillo de Murcia, where men dress up as devils and leap over the babies that were born that year, who are laid out on mattresses on the street.
It dates to 400 years ago. Men dressed as devils jump over the babies which symbolises the cleansing of them from original sin and protection from evil spirits. It sounds insane and it is insane, but what’s amazing is when you're there, how seriously the locals take it. It’s serious stuff and it’s not a joke.
That’s the beauty of tradition, right? From the outside, some things look insane, but from within, it's very serious stuff. There's a pagan aspect to it, but also the church is involved. There's a religious, Catholic aspect. I kind of love that combination because it represents the richness of Spanish history and culture. I love that. It’s very Spanish. Men dressed up as devils, jumping over babies. It's a curious tradition.
Are there any values/characteristics you consider distinctly Spanish?
This is a hard one because inherently it asks for a generalization and I can only speak from my experience, but what I would say is that I've always found and always find Spanish people to be very easy-going, very welcoming, very friendly. I'm not saying that if you move here it's easy to make friends. That's a different thing. But if you're in a public environment, if you're in a Spanish cafe or a restaurant or a tapas bar or you're in a queue for something. People are very easy at speaking to each other and interacting. I find that really nice.
You know, there are studies that show that random brief conversations increase our happiness. So, there's an easygoingness that I love here. I find that really enriching.
I would say that it varies a little bit depending on where you are. Sometimes people are a little more closed off in the north, a little more open in the south. You know, there's generalizations like that. But across the board, if you show curiosity and interest in the culture, people are willing to share it with you.
Does religion still play a key role in modern Spanish life?
I think Catholicism, or traditional religion here doesn't play a key role in Spanish life as it did say 30, 40 years ago but it has shaped society. If you look at the statistics, church attendance drops every year. Young Spanish people by and large don't go to church. They may, however, still consider themselves, in some cases, Catholic.
I made a video about Semana Santa, about Easter Week and Seville a few years ago. Brotherhoods of men and some women will get together and carry floats of the crucifixion and dress up in these robes. And you would look at them and think, wow, they're really religious, but half of them don't go to church.
I think religion still plays a role in modern life given that it's still really intertwined with Spanish culture and traditions, but not in an organized way. People aren't going to church as much as before.
Is there a generational divide when it comes to values?
Yeah, I guess so. I mean, generations change, right? That always happens. I would say that those core aspects that I've noticed about Spain, friendliness, openness are still the same, whether you talk to older people or young people.
What are the issues affecting young Spanish people?
Well, I'm 46 and I'm not Spanish and my daughter is Spanish and she's three. I don't know a lot of 20-year-old Spaniards.
I would say a big issue right now, something that has always been a big issue, is employment and unemployment. There's big structural unemployment in Spain. Although, unemployment has dropped to its lowest in a number of years. Since about 2007, which was just before the economic crisis. So, it's doing better, but I think for young people, the idea of finding a job is tricky.
What do I study? Is there going to be work for me after that? Will I be able to afford to rent a home, have a family, buy a home? Housing is expensive here.
I think the average age at which Spaniards leave home, like stop living with their parents is quite high so I think that there is a big issue just starting your life. Emancipating from your parents and starting your life, financially and socially, I think, is a challenge for a lot of Spaniards.
Benji, asks “everybody says family is important in Spain but what does that mean or look like?”. For example, we may see our grandparents once a week in the UK.
I think one of the things to always be aware of when you're reading about countries is often people generalize about cultures, right? And so, it's easy to say that family is important in Spain because it fits with our image of what Spain is supposed to be as a Mediterranean country. You could say the same about Italy.
But the reality is always a little more mundane and not so cliché.
Having said that, young Spaniards probably also only see their grandparents once a week, but I would say that there is still a strong sense of the nuclear family in Spain and of sticking together and supporting one another.
The fact that there wasn't a revolution at 25% unemployment when you'd often have three generations living together. Intergenerational support is important. Grandparents supporting the kids. Part of that is also because of that strong tight family unit, right? So, I think family is important, but what does that look like?
The notion of cousins is very strong. People talk about their primos, their cousins. People hold on to those close family ties, maybe a little more and keep cousins and grandparents in their lives more than potentially say in the UK or in New Zealand. But not in a massively dramatic way, I wouldn't necessarily say. I think the image we have of Spain, of the whole family constantly seeing each other, is probably a little bit overplayed. Traditionally it was maybe more the case, but you know, now people are busy like in other parts of the world. I think the society we live in now is more individualistic and that plays out in Spain as well, but I still think that people are more connected to their aunts, their uncles, their cousins. They see them more and there's more a sense of going to visit your aunts and uncles.
How would you describe Spanish culture to someone who has never visited Spain?
First, I would say there's not one Spanish culture.
If you were dropped from another planet into Asturias or into Malaga, you might think they're different countries. They would look different. The accents are different. In the south, people are generally more open and friendly and easy going. In the north people are a little bit more insular.
If you saw a cultural festival in the north, you might think you were in Ireland at times. There's a strong Celtic aspect to a lot of the traditional culture, whereas in the South, it's more what you would say is kind of classically cliché Spanish.
I would say that beyond that in my experience, this is a country where people are friendly, open or welcoming, even if there's some difference in the way that they sort of play that out in the different regions.
I would also say that there are certain cultural and social rhythms that are common. You know, it's a cliche about Spain that people work to live and not live to work but if it's a holiday or if it's August, things slow down. People are less likely to hustle on a Sunday. People see value in having stronger emotional ties with friends. People keep their friendship groups. Despite living in a more individualistic society, there's elements of Spain that still hang on to that sense of community, which is important.
One of the things about Spain is we have quite a high average life expectancy and people talk about the Mediterranean diet, blah, blah, blah, Again, a little bit overplayed. People eat burgers here all the time.
But I wonder if one of the underappreciated aspects of life expectancy is more about social connection and community, which I think remains really strong here. I think if you came to Spain, you would find that people are more likely to take time off, to slow down, to enjoy life, to spend time around a table for a meal, to meet friends, to see value in that.
What are some of the most common misconceptions about Spain?
Well, I see a lot of confusing Spanish culture and traditions with Latin American traditions, with Mexican traditions. The imagery that people expect. They think that it's all kind of one big mix.
Just the other day I was writing a document about Spanish traditions, and I found a freelancer on fiverr.com to do a design and make it look nice for me and some of the images he put in were from Mexico. Some people think they’re the same thing but they’re not.
Another common misconception is the whole idea of the siesta.
There is some tradition behind the siesta which goes way back throughout humanity, back to more agricultural ways of living when people had a nap during the day. People then didn’t necessarily have these driving kinds of rhythms that we have today where it’s all go, go, go.
People will say the heat is a reason for the siesta. Yeah, okay in the south. I live in Madrid, obviously, in Madrid, some things close at midday, the traditional market opens from 09:00 until 14:00 and then it'll close from 14:00 to 17:00 and then reopens from 17:00 till 20:00.
And you'll see that in smaller towns, but people aren't going off and having a sleep. That's just the traditional lunch break. Because it’s true that people have big lunches. Like when I met my wife, I would have a sandwich for lunch and the idea, to her, of having a lunch that is not a hot meal was really depressing.
So, lunch has to be something cooked which I love today and nowadays we still have sandwiches, but we also have something cooked, but Spaniards will very often have something cooked for lunch. The idea of having a sandwich at your desk is very depressing. So, I think the biggest misconception is the siesta, there is an element of that in the Spanish culture, but it's not like people are just sleeping during the middle of the day. That's not true.
There was an article about working hours and siestas on the BBC a few years ago and they had a photo of a guy on a building site, just sleeping in the middle of the day. It was very misrepresentative of the culture.
I think also there's a perception that Spaniards are lazy, which is not true. Spaniards actually work more hours than the European Union average. There are issues with efficiency and productivity at work. There's a concept here called presentismo, which means that if your boss is in the office, you also have to be in the office. This is not an efficient way to work. If you've done your work, you should go home and be with your family and your boss should trust you. But if the boss is here, I've got to be here. So, there are issues with people staying in work long hours which impacts their productivity.
What is Spain’s relationship with food like?
People are very proud of the food of their region. There's a great pride around local produce and local meals and the local culture.
In some ways we say in Spain that you're not Spanish first, your allegiance isn't to Spain. It's to your village.
People talk about where they're from, like, “mi pueblo” (my village). “My village is in Burgos” and what that means is that’s where your grandparents were born or maybe your parents, but then in the 50s and 60s, a lot of people moved to Madrid and Barcelona because it was really hard in the villages. This happened to my wife's family.
My wife’s grandparents and her parents were born in small towns, but in the 60s and 70s, the families moved to Madrid because it was literally living like an agricultural medieval life in the village. It was really hard. So, there was a big urban drift to the cities for work.
So, the idea of where you're from is very important. People talk about the food like “the best tapas are in my village”, “you should try the sardines from my town”, “there's an incredible bar in my village which does great food”. Remember when we say bars in Spain, we mean more like a pub, like a place you can eat, a place where the community gathers.
Also, Spain's relationship with food is not what we eat, but how we eat. Tapas is the act of sharing food. At tapas bars we stand and share our food. There's also a verb in Spanish which is tapear (to go for tapas), which I think reflects the fact that the way we eat when we're out and about, is “tapeando”, and involves sharing food and dishes.
And at home we share dishes. I always remember moving to Spain. In the first six weeks we were living with my in-laws. My mother-in-law would serve the meal and there would just be a bunch of plates in the middle of the table, each of us would just share them. The idea of sharing food, sharing common plates is very Spanish. I love that sharing aspect. In the UK and New Zealand, we've moved away from that. I think people think of tapas as just pieces of food but it’s more the sharing of food.
In Spain, the idea of sharing food holds on, which I think is why tapas and eating in Spain is so fun.
If you could only eat three Spanish meals for the rest of your life, what would they be?
Obviously, this is like asking someone their favourite film. It'll change depending on the season. I would say:
1. Gambas al ajillo. Shrimp (gambas) that are fried in a little bit of olive oil, lots of garlic and some chili pepper. So good. There's a place around the corner where we often go for a menú del día, which is the daily three course fixed price lunch, like 12 euros and you get three courses.
2. Gazpacho. There they also make a great gazpacho, which is the cold tomato soup. I love it. The guy who makes it puts chopped up onion and pepper in it. He also adds cumin to it, which I love. I'm obsessed with it.
3. I don't eat a lot of red meat, but when I do and it's good, the steaks in Spain are some of the best I've ever had. In the north of Spain, at a cider house where they make apple cider, you can go and have these big kind of wonderful meals. One of the things they give you is a chuletón, which is a big steak cooked on the grill. Some of the most incredible steak I've ever had.
Is there a genuine difference between city and pueblo life/lifestyle in Spain?
There is a big difference between city and pueblo life and lifestyle in Spain. City life feels much more like what you would experience in London, or you know, a big city in the UK or in New Zealand or wherever.
Whereas in village life, you'll see a lot more of the traditional Spanish rhythms. Places will close for the three-hour lunch break. I avoid calling it “the siesta” because it’s not called that in Spain, it’s just lunch and the opening hours. You'll see much more slowdown in August and on Sundays in Spain.
Things do often close on a Sunday in the city, but not as much as in the village. You'll see a lot more of how Spain used to be. Those traditional times and how things, I imagine, used to be in the villages.
What is a bar de barrio and why are they important to a neighbourhood?
So, a bar de barrio is a place where you can experience Spanish community.
When we say a bar in Spanish, I think the British equivalent would be like the pub. It's all things to all people. You could go in the morning and have a cup of coffee and breakfast. You could go at lunch and have a three-course meal, and you could go for dinner and have wine. We often have gin and tonics after dinner.
I think the bar de barrio or bar de pueblo, where there’s sort of one local bar, is like the inside version of the village square. You'll see groups of men playing cards or playing dominoes. You'll see someone having a cup of coffee. You'll see a family. You see kids running around. There's a kind of a chaos to it. The lottery seller will come in and try to sell lottery tickets.
There's no division between inside and outside. It's kind of like a public space. I think in the neighbourhoods they still exist, although less so. This is a change which has happened. People are less likely to go to the village bar because people order using Uber eats and people watch Netflix and, you know, all those things. The pandemic particularly shifted this, so a lot of the neighbourhood bars now struggle.
Also, there's a lot of variety. If people want to go out to eat in a place like Madrid, they can eat Indian food or Thai food. There's a lot more of that compared to even 13, 14 years ago when I moved here. So, you have more choice and maybe younger people are less likely to go to the village bar.
People also drink less than they used to.
But still, the bar de barrio or the neighbourhood bar is still busy.
I mean, the place I was talking about where I get my three-course lunch with my wife once a week, you could go in the morning (sometimes I do for work) to get a cup of coffee. You can go for lunch; you could go for dinner. It's just always open and it always has a different rhythm at each moment in the day and people there do different things. I might be having a cup of coffee and working. Someone next to me is having a beer, you know, or standing at the bar and having a bite to eat. They’re meeting places. I love going to them because, you know, when we go, we went the other day and the guy who runs it, we're not close to him or anything, but he recognizes us and that's nice, right? You feel a sense of the community. He asked ¿qué tal Lucía? How’s Lucia? It’s nice. He knows my daughter’s name. That's community.
Are there any traditions which are fading away in an increasingly globalised Spain?
I think a lot of things I've sort of spoken about have touched on this in a lot of ways such as the bares de barrio. It's changing. Spanish culture isn’t a monoculture as it was 15 years ago.
I remember 10 years ago in Madrid in the Puerta de Sol (one of the main squares and tourist centres of Madrid) on the corner of the square there was what we call “an old man bar”, a bar de barrio. But things are changing so, you know, the idea that there would still be a neighbourhood bar in the tourist centre of Madrid was just wild.
Imagine that. Your equivalent would be in London, for example, like a little family run English pub in the centre of London. So that's less likely to see now that cities have become more globalized with tourism, with immigration.
The number of immigrants, you know, speaking as an immigrant, the number of people living in Spain who are not born in Spain has shot up and in recent years, it's about 15% percent now, and it was a lot lower, even 10, 15 years ago. So, some things are fading away, but I guess culture changes, right? Culture is always in flux. I would say rather than fading away, it's changing.
And so, some of those traditional things that we think of as Spanish are evolving, my wife was telling me the other day about how her cousin's kids, they’re about 18 and they’re having this kind of fiesta, this sort of party where you dress up and you go out on the town. It's kind of like this coming-of-age thing that actually comes from Latin American culture. So, that's not Spanish, that’s from a different culture and they’re practising that. So, culture evolves.
There's a lot more Latin American immigrants here than there were, say, 20, 30 years ago.
I think some people lament the loss of traditional culture and I understand because globalization leads to a new culture, but also maybe a more homogenized culture where places start to seem sort of similar. But I think it's just part of the globalized world we live in. I think there’s value also in going and holding on to those things that are traditional, not necessarily because Spain must be as we always thought Spain was, but because richness comes from variety.
So, I think, you know, going to villages is a great place to, you know, the baby jumping festival. That holds on, right? And I think a lot of traditional things do hold on now because people of my generation, say in their in their forties, have also seen a world growing more globalized and we actually want to hold on to those things that our parents had.
So, you'll see a lot of people in their 30s and 40s and even their 20s, going back to their village and holding onto it because they want to hold on to these things. I think that there is also an attempt by younger people to hold on to traditional Spanish values.
I realize I'm saying two different things. The children of my wife's cousin are celebrating this Latin American tradition and other people, a little older, are wanting to go to a really traditional Spanish bar to experience Spain as their parents knew it. That's a globalized world, right? All things coexist. It's not a monoculture.
So, I think some things are fading away, but some really traditional Spanish things are still being reinforced and celebrated and other things are being pulled in from other parts of the world.
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That’s all this week!
Ollie
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