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Working with the Spanish
 As a Hispanist, Jay Kettle-Williams has worked in Spain and Latin America in a variety of business sectors and conducted academic research into languages and the range of cross-cultural issues faced by Amerindian and European cultures.
Here, he comments on the accounts of people with different experiences of working with the Spanish - dispelling some myths and providing some expert advice.
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The TV series is regularly repeated on BBC Learning Zone, BBC TWO
Full schedule
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The shock can be that you're meeting people who don't, as individuals, behave as yourself. And then people who collectively express themselves in a way which is not the way that you have been taught or learnt from your own cultural experience to respond. So there you get the shock. Culture shock can be very, very uncomfortable for the person suffering it; they feel that they're not being understood, they're being exploited, they're not responding well, that something is going wrong.
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Expert tips
- Understand the culture you're moving into, find out about the different regions of Spain.
- Think about the individuals, concentrate on interpersonal contact.
- Be pro-active: think about your own situation in a positive way.
- Keep a sense of humour - it will help you get a perspective on things.
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Respect your region
Adela Gooch
Spanish Correspondent,
The Economist
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Spain is a people place; you've got to have a personal relationship with someone before anything happens. Spain is a tribal society; they want you to be on their side, they want you to be their friend and to be loyal to them.
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There is great interest in dignity of the individual. Yes, they like themselves. Spain is a country of regions and each region has a very rich and quite often idiosyncratic history to it. So Spaniards would think of themselves as coming from a particular region, being Catalán, being Gallego or being Andaluz. They're very conscious of their own environment that they like. The wine from their region is the best wine. Food from their region is the best food. The way in which they speak Spanish in their region is the best way of speaking it.
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Jay Kettle-Williams
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Being there
