The Meaning of Cheating, or Spaniards 1.2

It's such a wonderful day that's sure somebody will come to make it horrible.

Anonymous. A normal day in Spain.

Preparing for lying

I had a question about my own definition of a Spaniard. I should tell you that I thought I was well explained, but I was wrong. I really meant cheating, but I wasn't speaking about love. So, I think the best is to explain it with some examples as well with words.

I realized that for non Spaniards lying is such an unpolite way of doing things. But that's not true for Spaniards. If you want to complain about anything they always have an excuse, even if it's true or not (it could be a half truth). In Spain how the people think we are is even more important than how we really are. I mean, if somebody fails, they'll try to show that it wasn't their fault, so their image won't be damaged. The most common is, when you are complaining about something, to say that "it's not my fault, my ... told me to do it like this" (you can say "boss", "company" or whatever you want) so they'll still be nice to the complainer. I saw that and even practise it when I worked in CARREFOUR hypermarket, but in my defence I would say it was true.

Guilties could be bosses, companies, wheather, another company, traffic, or in case of being late somebody's fault.

That's another subject in Spaniards, punctuality. Never trust a Spaniard. As you should know by now, Spaniards love chatting and, as I said, cheating, so, if a Spaniard is late (99% of the times) be sure they will say "I received a call from ... and I couldn't stop him talking", that could be true, but it's hardly to believe they couldn't stop him for more than half an hour. But chatting is really important to Spaniards. We'll speak more about that subject in the future, especially when I can compare Spain with other cultures.

Returning to our main Subject I would say that we are lyiers, more than that, experts in lying. I have to add another common prhase "mañana, mañana..." that means something like "tomorrow, tomorrow, ...". Literally it really means "tomorrow" but really it doesn't. The real meaning of that sentence is "I might do it some day", or "it migth happen some day" or "I'll finish some day". That's a really important thing to now if you want to be here for in a long term. Foreigners would tend to believe the real meaning of the sentence so, the next day, they would quietly come there to ask again, in the believe it would be finished, just to receive the same answer "mañana, mañana". This has to do both with cheating and punctuallity. They would really want to finish it before tomorrow, but I'm sure they will receive a calling from somebody or just find something more fun to do.

So we really cheat, but only to foreigners, because we know the rules. For us that's not lying, we know the code, we know the rules. If somebody tells me "sorry for being late, my mom called me..." I know they're lying but I don't really care, because I would do the same thing. And if somebody tells me "Mañana, mañana" I know they mean in a far future. And so on.

At this point I hope you got the core of Spanish cheating. We really don't want you to think we are as horrible as we appear to be.

I hope I made it clear for you. I'm living here since I was born, and that means 27 years and a half, so I guess I know ourselves enough to tell you how we are. And I'm not a real Spaniard so I can really say that being a bit objective. Perhaps I'm being too negative. But in our defence I would say again that "there's no better place in the whole world than Spain".