> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://the-second-home.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Those Bloody Expats. Yes, I’m One of Them. - URL: https://the-second-home.ghost.io/those-bloody-expats-yes-im-one-of-them/ - Published: 2026-09-12T21:17:16.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-12T21:17:16.000Z - Author: Barbara Orzel There is a particular kind of conversation you can have in Barcelona in which everyone complains about expats while, quite possibly, being one. Too many foreigners. Too much English. Too many remote workers. Too many people arriving with salaries earned somewhere else. Too many cafés full of laptops. Too many brunch places. Too many people who somehow know where to get natural wine but still cannot pronounce the name of the street they live on. Bloody expats. Yes. I am one of them. Please don’t hit me. I am trying. I am learning Spanish. I use it. I understand much more than I used to. I can follow conversations that once would have dissolved into pleasant background noise. And yet my brain still defaults to English. Not because I expect everybody to accommodate me. Not because I have made some principled commitment to living permanently inside an English-speaking bubble. English is simply faster. Safer. Automatic. When I am tired, distracted or trying to answer quickly, it often arrives before Spanish has even had time to organise itself. Sometimes I do not even get the chance to choose. Someone approaches me at the gym and immediately speaks English. No hesitation. No linguistic reconnaissance. Just English. Apparently I have EXPAT written somewhere on my face. There is something mildly ridiculous about deciding that today you will make a proper effort to speak Spanish and then having another person look at you for half a second and conclude: No. English. Fair enough. At this point, I have more or less accepted that I may always be an expat here. And I am fine with that. Not tragically resigned. Not embarrassed. Not waiting for some future moment when I will finally have integrated enough to become something else. I came from somewhere else. I live here now. Both things are true. Neither needs to cancel the other. There is, however, a surprisingly persistent fantasy around life abroad that suggests foreignness can eventually be graduated out of. Learn the language. Know the neighbourhood. Understand the food. Stop going to obvious places. Acquire opinions about public transport. Learn which wines to order. Become irritated by exactly the correct things. Eventually, perhaps, somebody hands you an invisible certificate. Congratulations. You are no longer one of Those Expats. I am not interested in this game. Partly because belonging should not work like a loyalty programme. And partly because the whole performance can become extremely Bourdieusian, extremely quickly. Cultural knowledge can become cultural capital. Knowing Catalan wine can be cultural capital. Knowing which restaurant is supposedly authentic can be cultural capital. Knowing which neighbourhood is considered fashionable, overrun, ruined, desirable or still sufficiently “real” can be cultural capital. Speaking the right language in the right setting can be cultural capital. Even knowing which things not to like can become cultural capital. And once this happens, something rather funny begins. Foreigners start distinguishing themselves from other foreigners. I am not like those expats. I know the real places. I do not drink sangria. I know Catalan wine. I avoid tourist restaurants. I know where locals go. Which is, of course, distinction. Taste becomes hierarchy. Knowledge becomes legitimacy. Consumption becomes evidence of cultural competence. And sometimes cultural competence quietly starts pretending to be moral superiority. This is the point where I lose interest. I know something about Catalan wines. So what? It means I know something about Catalan wines. Some people born here will know far more than I do. Some will know almost nothing. Some will care deeply about wine. Others will happily drink whatever is available and never think about appellations at all. People are not cultural stereotypes. The same applies to language, food, neighbourhoods, music, politics, history and all the other things we like to turn into evidence of belonging. A person can be born in Barcelona and have no idea why a particular metro station has its name. I can become fascinated by the question. Neither fact establishes a hierarchy. We simply know different things. And yet discussions about who is sufficiently local often behave as though a city were a cultural exam. I could become fluent in Spanish. I could learn Catalan. I could know every wine appellation in Catalonia. I could dance salsa brilliantly. I could memorise every metro line and every neighbourhood boundary. I could collect an absurd amount of Barcelona trivia. I would still be an expat. Fine. That does not make me a deficient version of somebody else. It makes me a person who moved countries. There is no shame in that sentence. And there is no particular heroism in it either. This is probably the part I have become most comfortable with. I am not trying to pass. I am not trying to convince anybody that I am secretly local. I am not collecting cultural points. I am not learning Spanish because I hope that one day somebody will declare my presence legitimate. I learn because I live here. Because the language surrounds my life. Because understanding more is useful. Because it is interesting. Because curiosity is one of the better ways to inhabit a place. Although there are moments when improved comprehension has consequences. Music, for example. There was a time when a Spanish-language song could exist for me primarily as rhythm. I liked the melody. I liked the voice. I liked the atmosphere. I could dance to it happily without knowing very much about what anybody was actually saying. Then understanding began to arrive. This is dangerous. I once Shazamed *Persona Ideal* by Adolescent’s Orquesta because I liked the vibe. Everything was going perfectly well. Then Javi asked: “Do you want to know what this song is actually about?” This is almost never a good question. There are songs whose innocence survives entirely because you do not fully understand them. Then somebody explains a line. Or a TikToker decides to provide linguistic education you did not ask for. And suddenly: Oh. That is what we have been singing. Wonderful. Sometimes learning a language is a very specific form of losing innocence. The song loses it. You lose it. And there is no way back to the version in which the lyrics were simply attractive sounds attached to a beat. Perhaps this is another reason I refuse to romanticise linguistic progress. Yes, I want to speak Spanish better. No, I do not need to turn it into a moral project. Speaking better Spanish will make certain things easier. It will make other things richer. It will occasionally destroy a perfectly good song. But it will not make me a better person. And speaking English does not make me a worse one. The word *expat* itself is not innocent either. Technically, it simply refers to someone living outside their country of origin. In practice, it carries very particular associations. Some people migrate. Others “move abroad”. Some are called immigrants. Others are described as having an international lifestyle. Some are expected to integrate quickly and quietly. Others can spend years functioning largely in English while their experience is marketed as cosmopolitanism. The distinction is often about class, money, nationality and mobility. And that is worth noticing. A wealthy remote worker, a surgeon, a cleaner, a refugee, an Erasmus student and a shopkeeper can all be people living outside the country where they were born. They are obviously not occupying the same social position. They do not experience borders, work, housing or language in the same way. The category “foreigner” can make these differences disappear. The category “expat” can do something similar in the opposite direction: it can turn migration into lifestyle. Barcelona is an especially revealing place in which to watch this happen. There are workplaces where English is normal. There are coworking spaces, international schools, WhatsApp groups, relocation services, cafés and businesses in which a person can function remarkably well without speaking much Spanish at all. You can live in another country while remaining surprisingly protected from the practical consequences of living in another language. That protection is real. And yes, I benefit from some of it. Of course I do. This is why I have no interest in writing a heroic story about my own integration. I am not here to prove that I am one of the good expats. That category is not especially useful either. I spend money. I speak languages. I form relationships. I contribute to some parts of the city and not to others. I bring with me habits, expectations and purchasing power formed elsewhere. Like everyone who lives somewhere, I participate in the place. That participation is not neutral. But I am equally uninterested in ritualised expat guilt. Housing pressure is real. Economic inequality is real. Gentrification is real. Touristification is real. Differences in purchasing power are real. The transformation of neighbourhoods is real. But structural analysis becomes stupid when it turns into a morality play in which every visible foreigner carrying a laptop becomes the villain and every person born locally becomes automatically innocent. Cities are more complicated than that. People are more complicated than that. Barcelona is more complicated than that. Foreign residents participate in urban change. So do landlords. So do investment funds. So do governments. So do planning decisions. So do businesses. So do labour markets. So do tourism policies. So do decades of economic change. There is no useful sociology in pretending that one visible category explains everything. And perhaps this is where I have finally become comfortable with my own position. I do not need to insist that I am harmless. I also do not need to perform shame. I can recognise the larger structures without turning myself into a walking apology. I live here. That is not a political manifesto. It is an ordinary fact. I have routines. I have places I return to. I have people I love. I know some parts of the city very well and other parts barely at all. I understand some conversations and miss parts of others. Sometimes I choose Spanish. Sometimes English arrives first. Sometimes somebody else chooses English for me before I have even opened my mouth. I know something about Catalan wines. I know oddly specific things about Barcelona. I still occasionally misunderstand things. All of this can exist at the same time. There is a strange freedom in accepting that. I do not need Barcelona to certify me. I do not need to become indistinguishable from somebody who was born here. I do not need to prove the legitimacy of my attachment to the city by performing sufficient cultural expertise. I can be attached to a place and still be from somewhere else. I can know it well and still experience certain moments as an outsider. I can build a life here without rewriting the beginning of my biography. Perhaps I will always be the expat. Fine. The expat who learns Spanish but still defaults to English. The expat who knows a suspicious amount about Catalan wine. The expat who becomes interested in the names of metro stations. The expat whose musical innocence is being systematically destroyed by improved language comprehension. The expat who occasionally gets identified as foreign before she has even spoken. I can live with that. Actually, I rather like it. There are worse things than carrying more than one place around with you. So yes. Those bloody expats. I am one of them. I am trying. Please don’t hit me.