Spanish Culture (part 2 of 3) : New Mexico and Spain

Spanish Culture (part 2 of 3): New Mexico and Spain

As many of my friends and family in New Mexico would think that Spain is very similar, you are wrong but not entirely. Spain and New Mexico have several differences between each other but they also have many similarities I will start with the differences and move to the similarities.

The biggest and main difference in culture here for me is: THEY DON’T LIKE SPICY FOOD!!!! There is not chile or anything like that over here. Generally, Spaniards eat very wholesome and balanced meals; cooking vegetables, rice, bread, and there is always some sort of meat. Some typical meals are “Juevos Rotos” and “Cerdo” which means broken eggs and pig. The first meal is rice cooked with tomato sauce and topped with fried eggs. This is also served with bread along with all of their other meals. Cerdo is like pork and we have this every day without a doubt. This is similar to some areas in the US but when talking about New Mexico and the culture of food, there is no good Mexican food here and there is nothing close at all. I have tried to go to a couple of their Mexican restaurants and have fallen short each time. Their salsa tastes like tomato juice and they think that it is incredibly spicy! If they ate Sadie’s Salsa, they would be dying. Needless to says their food here is very different than the food in New Mexico. It is also way less diverse, because just like in New Mexico we generally cook a lot of Mexican food, here they mainly cook a lot of Spanish. So in that sense, it is also different than the US because in my household while we do cook a lot of Mexican food we also cook Chinese, Japanese, and Italian as well. Another thing that is different here is the music. New Mexico has Mariachi and Spain has Flamenco. This type of music was actually developed in the province that I am living in currently (Andalucia). These shows consist of dancers, guitarists, and singers. It has a gypsy vibe to it because this music was developed by gypsies living in southern Spain. Even though they are both speaking Spanish, If you listen to Mariachi and Flamenco you can hear the differences between the two.

One similarity between New Mexico and Spain is the artwork. It does not simply come down to paintings but mostly the tile work and mosaics that I have seen here in Spain. These tiles are extremely similar to the ones that you can find in every day local markets in New Mexico. They have a very distinct style but are exactly similar to the ones that you can find in New Mexico. I will attach a picture so you can see what I mean. Another thing is their sense of community over here. Generally, Spaniards spend most of their time outside of the house. Other than midday, there are Spaniards with their entire families out even until around 1:00 am in the morning!! I think it is crazy. Now this is not a similarity but the similarity is in the views of our cultures. Spainiards spend a lot of time outside because they have a giant sense of community, just like Las Cruces does. This is a bigger city than Cruces, but the people here live for each other and are all very genuine and nice. They genuinely care about the next person the street even if they don’t know. I see this back Cruces as well, where many people are proud to be from New Mexico, so much so that we go out of our way to make sure that our communities thriving. I see much of the same culture in here in Spain. I have reasons for this that I will be discussing in my next blog concerning cultural ignorance and exposure so please stay tuned!

Until next time!