Reading Without Prejudice

There we were, the sun was all but set after what had been another gloriously sunny day. The masts of yachts in Alcúdia's marina were silhouetted against the final yellow of the sky as it turned to grey and then black. This was the night of the Kings arrival. It was becoming chilly, as it will do in Mallorca once the January sun has gone to bed, but it had been warm earlier, as it had been for the previous two days; warm, sunny, not the slightest risk of rain and certainly no possibility at all of snow. The AEMET forecasts had been accurate.

It came as a surprise when some of us - three at least - all piped up and said that the forecast had been totally different. Mallorca had, according to this same AEMET met office, been expected to have been freezing over the weekend. Temperatures had been due to go as low as minus eight in Lluc and snow at sea level had been forecast. Where had this all come from? There was absolutely no mention of such weather in the AEMET forecast, I insisted. How could the met office be saying one thing on its forecasts - the ones I had seen - and something completely different elsewhere? It made no sense.

The threesome all said that they had read that this was the forecast. They were as insistent as to the prospect of freezing conditions as I was as insistent that the forecast hadn't been for any such conditions. Where had they read it? They weren't one hundred per cent certain, but the source appeared to have been one particular (free) local publication.

Still baffled by the total discrepancy in the weather forecast, I went and had a look at this particular publication. To my amazement, there, in front of me, was exactly what the threesome had been talking about. But it still made no sense, until I realised what I was reading. It wasn't current news. It was news from last year. From a review. In February last year, freezing conditions had indeed been forecast and were right to have been forecast.

If three people could have failed to appreciate that what they were actually looking at was a reproduction from eleven months previously suggests either that they are blind or the presentation in the publication was not as clear as it might have been. It was probably a bit of both. And I then recalled having been initially foxed by an item from the same publication in the past. For the same reason. It was from a review of the year gone, one back in January 2009.

I wonder how many other people had thought this weekend was going to be freezing. That three people could all make the same error suggests that there would have been many more, and one even odder aspect of this error was that there was also a belief that this freezing conditions forecast had been on Spanish television. I suspect that this was some peculiar leap of reinforcement. There had been no such forecast, but because news of it was in one place, it was imagined to have then been in another place.

All this makes me wonder how we digest information. A publication layout that may not be entirely clear can, or so it would appear, induce misunderstanding. But is it the case that we don't properly read, or that we read what we want to read? I have pretty good reason to believe that we do (and by we, I mean some people). It has happened with things I have written. I have been quoted as having written things that I didn't and had blatant send-ups construed as having been serious.

There can be both a preconception as to what one thinks one is going to read and a prejudicial attitude that manifests itself as a misinterpretation of what has been written. People read what they want to read or think they have read. And occasionally this misinterpretation or misunderstanding is given more power through the invention of another medium saying the same thing, as with the television weather forecast which simply couldn't have been.

Cognitive and psychological research has been undertaken into just this phenomenon. And so it should be. A weather report is relatively inconsequential. But misinterpretation, which can border on the deliberate misinterpretation, and the subsequent dissemination of this misinterpreted message can potentially have more serious consequences.

Read, read and read again, preferably without a preconception or prejudice, and then, just for good measure, check that what you have been reading isn't in fact from eleven months before.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Misjudgments: Culture and expatriates

I am not a newsagent loyalist. Given that a journey is required for whichever newsagent I might patronise, each day brings its moment of decision-making. Which one?

A Can Picafort shop has become the newsagent of most chat, partly because the chap seems to take notice of what's in the "Bulletin"; well, on its front and back covers at any rate. I very much doubt that he will be reading this (when it goes forward to the Bulletin). Nor indeed does he know that I am there within its covers.

"Capello quits" was the cue for a morning chat. What I had anticipated might have been solely an assessment of the now former England manager's contribution to the national team turned out to be the cue for another racism analysis; there had been a previous one regarding Luis Suárez.

The chat does tend to be somewhat one-sided. As a subject for discussion, I tend to simply nod, utter the occasional "claro", even if I don't mean it, and eventually depart, bidding my interlocutor a pleasant and good day. I have no wish to cause offence and no offence has been caused on his part. It is a discussion, if you can call it that, which speaks volumes about different cultural perspectives.

The chat wandered off into seemingly unrelated territory, that of the French broadcaster Canal Plus' satirising of Rafael Nadal as a doper and of claims by the French to be superior in matters of racial correctness. Who had France ever had in their national football team who was of a different ethnic origin? Zidane. Spain had Senna, and he was black.

This did rather overlook Henry, Thuram, Desailly and any number of black French players and also overlooked the occasion when the former Spanish coach, Luis Aragonés, was caught describing Henry in a John Terry-like fashion (allegedly, when it comes to Terry of course).

It is good to know that the French are currently European public enemies "numéro un" where the Mallorcans are concerned. Showing Nadal urinating into a petrol tank; how dare the French? This does at least divert attention from the British for the time being. And it is also good to know that a French propensity to provoke neighbourly ill-will extends to the south as well as the north of France.

Be it racially correct Britain or France, there is no great vive of la différence between Britain and France in the eyes of many a Spaniard or Mallorcan. They simply don't get the whole racial deal. Which is not to say that there is rampant racism, as there isn't. Just that they don't see what the fuss is all about. And the newsagent couldn't figure out what the fuss over Capello was all about.

Capello's mistake was to have made a misjudgment, but it was a mistake in keeping with what appears to have been his failure to have bought into British culture and mores, and not just because of his failure to have acquired a decent level of English.

British expats in Mallorca aren't of course like Capello. Most of them are not paid a small fortune for doing very little. But the Capello story is instructive as an example of how not acquiring a feel for culture, central to which is an appreciation of language, can result in misjudgment and in non-ingratiation.

Capello can't be blamed for his mercenariness. What the precise terms of his contract were, who can say. They should though have included clauses for the sake of keeping up appearances if nothing else. Without them it was all too easy to consider him as someone taking a fat pay cheque and giving very little back.

In a similar way, many an expat is a mercenary. Not in terms of monetary or material gain, but in terms of gains from what Mallorca has to offer and not giving much back or not seriously attempting to come to terms with local culture or societal mores. Or in making misjudgments in the form of constant criticisms, be they anything from disapproval of bullfighting or road behaviour or standards of service.

But perhaps it is too much to expect otherwise. There will always be misjudgments and misunderstandings and not just because of a failure of language. The mercenariness of ease of mobility can sharpen cultural distinctions rather than lessen them. And it is one that leaves the country or island that is subject to the mercenariness wishing to fall back on what it knows best - its own. Not just Mallorca but also England. After Sven and Fabio, England wants an Englishman; Harry, for whom there has been no misjudgment.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.