SPAIN: Cultural Diversity and Intolerance

This past week was different than the rest at Colegio Zazuar. First of all, our school places special attention in the United States, as the conversation classes we teach – starting with first grade of primary – are called American Culture. We do everything from American stories, songs, crafts, so long as the students learn English as well as the culture of the United States. It is very fun, as we – the English Assistants – constantly see the students remembering and enjoying what we teach them. As you can imagine, all this work is expanding the students' understanding of the world, and I cannot wait to see how this country will be in a few years after generation and generation will show their cultural knowledge.

It seems, however, a different story with previous generations. This past week, as the school day ended, I walked in on an argument between a physical education teacher and my English teacher – the person I primarily work for. The P.E. teacher said he was very upset about the location of the U.S. flag – which we had placed for a U.S. and World landmarks exhibition – compared to the Spanish one. Unknowingly, we had placed the U.S. flag first – or to the left as if you were looking straight at it – and the Spanish flag second. This remarks and body language were what most bothered me, not the position of the flag, which I found to be nonsense.

For someone to be so upset about the location of a flag leads me to believe that certain perceptions might exist for other nationalities, particularly Chinese – who are constantly stereotyped here – Africans, and South Americans especially. I clearly showed my discontent with what he said, and I was happy to see that he apologized the day after, but it still bothers me. Without asking any questions, he immediately assumed that we had done the worst to the Spanish flag, and it showed an ugly truth to cultural intolerance today. Being culturally isolated from the rest of the world until the 1970s after the end of the Franco regime, Spain is learning from the rest of the world, but much more needs to be done so minorities in this country are not discriminated against and treated less because of their origins. People around the world should embrace different cultures, and end their isolation to different customs while including others, otherwise we will continue to be intolerant and make similar remarks to that of the P.E. teacher at my school.