On Becoming a Foreigner, Moving to Barcelona

This month, I moved to Barcelona. The first week after arriving felt like I’d been dropped into an escape room; a life-size puzzle of bureaucratic procedures and documents, and more than one catch-22 situations — you need a registered address to obtain a foreigner card, but you need a bank account to apply for a flat so you can have an address, but you also need an address to set up a bank account. You need a phone number to be able to call to make appointments, and to set up a bank account, but you’ll also need a bank account to get a phone number. What do you do first?! Only difference is that the objective of this escape room was not to get out, but to be granted permission to stay. 

Over the first two weeks the game was well underway and the bureaucratic processes seemed to be multiplying; every successful move would unlock another document I didn’t know existed but now suddenly needed, particularly come the flat finding stage. Yet, amidst the very human feeling that this would never end was a deep knowing that like all things, it would be over soon. A note from my journal on day 12: 

This chapter of my life would be called ‘Shelf Life’ —

I’m living in a room in an airbnb,

It’s a small bedroom, with not enough space to ‘do yoga’ without kicking a wardrobe or knocking a lamp off a table

With one shelf, maybe a meter long for personal belongings,   

One smaller shelf in the bathroom for toiletries and laundry detergent,

One even smaller shelf in the fridge that even when carefully arranged in an precarious grocery version of Tetris, only lets you plan meals 1-3 days into the future. 

It is a life lived on shelves, but just like the yoghurt in the fridge has an expiry date, this very state of transience has a shelf life too. 

Check-out date: August 31st. 

The deadline to find a home.  

Really it’s okay if there’s not enough space to ‘do yoga’, when there are so many other opportunities to live it: to sit with the uncertainty in meditation and embrace the change, walk into the unknown, make do with less stuff, to live in the present and take each moment as it comes and be deeply grateful for what you do have. In the end I did manage to figure it all out, signed my lease on the 26th and moved into an apartment more beautiful than I could have imagined, with exposed brick walls and wooden beams on a vaulted ceiling, a balcony right off my bedroom and an open plan living/ kitchen space (a hard thing to come by in Barcelona). Now, every day when I walk to what is now my local yoga studio, in glorious sunshine, through streets lined with palm and eucalyptus, I can’t believe I get to live here. I can’t believe this is my life. 

I’ve struggled writing this article because I don’t want it to sound like I’m complaining about the stickier stuff. I know how deeply privileged I am. I find gratitude to be a gritty concept because it often comes packaged in guilt; I’m grateful for what I have but I feel guilty that I have it and others don’t. I’m aware that this fleeting state of discomfort and uncertainty isn’t the same discomfort and uncertainty that someone without the privilege I have experiences when they move to a new country. I get to know with relative certainty that everything will be ok. I got to actually enjoy the process and explore the city while I look for an apartment. I can liken the whole charade to a game. Not everyone moving to a new country has that luck. 

Rewinding to my first week, as I found myself in queues and waiting rooms of government administrative offices filled with others vying to be granted a TIE (Tarjeta Identidad Extranjero, Foreigner Identity Card), I was acutely aware of not just my whiteness, but by the other cards I hold that play in my favour: my ability to communicate in a mix of English and Spanish, my luck to have contacts in Spain who can vouch for my authenticity and reliability by signing as guarantors on my lease, and providing documentation for my empradronamiento (the first key to the escape room puzzle, in case you need it), as well as the relative financial security to be able to take on this process and all the associated costs without having to take out a government loan.

We’re all applying for the same identity card. In the eyes of the state, we’re the same, but in reality, the world treats us very differently. So what does it mean to be a foreigner? I suppose can mean many things, depending on your reasons for moving, the presence of pre-existing social/familial connections where you’re going, work opportunities available to you, visa restrictions, the diplomatic relationship between your home and destination countries. Not everyone is dealt the same hand of cards. Not everybody has the luck I’ve had.

A note on terminology: In the West the term foreigner often is used to refer to anyone not white, with ambiguous origins or an accent out of place, even if that person has naturalised and calls the country they’re ‘foreign’ to home, in this way homogenising an incredibly diverse group of people and erasing individual identities. The term immigrant, at least in the UK, is shrouded with negative connotations. ‘Migrant’ is often intentionally misused to refer to refugees who are fleeing war and persecution as an attempt to undermine their plight, alongside dehumanising language, including ‘illegal’ as a prefix to immigrant (I wrote my undergrad thesis around this topic). Then we have the term ‘ex-pat’, a special foreigner label reserved for the white and wealthy, so they don’t get lumped into the same category as everyone else moving to a place they’re not from - the refugees and migrants and people of colour. If you can’t already tell, I’m not a fan of this term at all. At the end of the day I believe it’s down to the individual to choose how they identify, bearing in mind that each whatever word they choose carries the weight of the way it is used.

I saw a meme recently, a sign in an airport that said ‘Foreign passports’, with a picture of the American flag under it, the caption reading ‘because only Americans need reminding that they are foreigners outside of their own country’. I don’t think it’s just Americans that need reminding that we are all foreign in most parts of the world. Every time we travel, we are a guest in a new culture, and when we choose to stay, we have more of a responsibility understand that culture, even though we’ll all assimilate in different ways depending on our personal cultural backgrounds and values. As always with matters of identity, it’s up to the individual to choose how they identify.

Moving from the country of one coloniser to another (UK to Spain) at least lessens the sense of contributing to the problem of ongoing colonialism (something I may have felt had I chosen to move to a country that had at one point been colonised), but there’s a different point of interest for me in that I’ve also moved from one country with an independence movement to another (Scotland to Catalunya), and so part of the responsibility I feel being here, especially as a student, is to research. I’m not talking about the required reading for the courses I’m taking (though that will be relevant as I’ll be studying topics like inequality, diversity and intercultural communication), but rather seeking to understand the people, history and culture of Catalunya. 

My arrival in August happened to coincide with the Fiesta Mayor de Gracia, a week long event of live music and street performances that with strong echoes of the Edinburgh International Festival happening back home. The folk band playing in the square refused to introduce their set in Castilian (Spanish), and with admiration for their tenacity I tried to pick out what Catalan words I could recognise. They described the steps of a dance, and I didn’t catch enough of the instructions to dare taking part in the organised chaos that followed, but watched in  amazement from the sidelines as the dances unfolding looked so much like the ceilidhs I’d attended since school age. I felt a sense of kinship, a familiarity, but also the sense that I still have a lot to learn. I identify with this culture, but I can’t claim to understand it yet. I’m still a guest here. Walking home, I noticed graffiti and stickers on the walls of the narrow streets: “Tourists go home” “Tourism kills the city” and one with a subtitle “Refugees Welcome”. Absolutely fair enough, I thought.

Uniquely positioned at this moment in time neither as a tourist nor a local, I felt curious to explore the city respectfully and intentionally. I have attended concerts by Catalan performers, a capoeira class taught in Portuguese, museum exhibitions translated into three languages, an ecstatic dance workshop as well as several yoga classes all taught in Spanish. While I learnt so much from all of these experiences despite the language barrier, each of these situations also made me acutely aware my position as an outsider. I think that’s a healthy thing for me to do, to embrace this part of the process. Exposing myself to that discomfort of being in a room and not understanding everything that is being said is the only way I’ll get the exposure I need to actually learn, both the language(s) and about the culture and history.

I’m aware that if I want to show up and communicate my ideas, to use my privilege to do some good, (rather than simply stewing in guilt), I need to use the cards I’ve been dealt to take on the responsibility of showing up and advocating for equality. And crucially, if I want to engage in bigger conversations around inclusivity, social justice, and cross-cultural dialogue, I need to be able to listen. Quite literally, I need to be able to understand. Only then can I contribute. It’s interesting to me that this is also the way language acquisition works — that comprehension precedes speaking. Thankfully, I’m getting there and I have time.

I’ll be living here for at least a year while I complete my masters in International Studies in the Communications department at Pompeu Fabra. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this topic as my time here opens me to new people, experiences and perspectives. I’m curious to see from a personal perspective how my own sense of belonging to place and people might change with the addition of community. Will I continue to feel like a foreigner as I integrate into this place, adapt to customs and ways of life, learn the language(s)? Importantly, I want to reiterate that it is both a responsibility and a gift to have the privilege of living here, even though I do wish I’d done this pre-brexit and been able to skip 90% of the bureaucratic bullshit. For now I’m here to live my practice'; to challenge myself and put myself in situations where I feel out of place, and to find a way to enjoy the experience regardless, because to not enjoy would be to reject the gift.