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SPANISH HABITS

Why do Spaniards have very clean homes?

If you’ve ever been invited to a Spaniard’s home, you will have probably noticed that it was extremely clean and tidy. In fact, people here clean more than anywhere else in Europe.

Published: 15 August 2023 16:22 CEST
Why do Spaniards have very clean homes?
Why do Spanish love cleaning? Photo: Kelly Sikkema / Unsplash

Walk down any street across Spain early in the morning and you’re likely to come across people mopping their front steps and the pavement outside their shops or buildings. The air is filled with the faint scent of bleach and gloves are at the ready. 

A well-known Spanish saying goes no es más limpio el que más limpia, sino el que menos ensucia (the cleanest is not the one who cleans the most, but the one who dirties the least).

But, this doesn’t appear to be true because Spaniards actually do spend a lot of their time cleaning. In fact, a study by cleaning service website Clintu.es, the Spanish clean the most out of people from any other European country.

Spaniards spend an average of close to three hours a week on cleaning and tidying, compared to Germans, Italians, French and even the English, who spend between half an hour to an hour less on domestic chores.

The study in fact calculated that the average Spaniard spends more than a year of their life cleaning – a total of 383 days to be precise.

According to another study by apartment hunter platform Kobolo, 77 percent of respondents say they clean between one and three times a week. In addition, 60 percent dedicate between two and four hours on average a week to tidying their house.

In Spain, bathrooms are cleaned every day or every other day and another deep clean is done at the weekend. The floors are vacuumed daily and scrubbed between two and three times a week.

Spaniards love to clean in the early hours of the morning, are addicted to bleach, iron almost everything, and even clean before they go on holiday.  

Spain also loves cleaning gadgets and shopping channels are filled with the latest must-have item to help make cleaning your house easier and better.  

If you go to the supermarket in Spain, you’ll find a wide range of cleaning products of every type and scent.

Spanish cleaning brands are so well known in fact that they have found a unique niche market in the UK. They are now whole websites set up for UK customers just selling Spanish cleaning products.  

READ ALSO: The Spanish cleaning products that British households love

If you needed any more convincing that Spaniards are in fact clean freaks, then just take a look at the online “Clean Tokers”.

These are young Spanish influencers who have taken to social media channels such as TikTok to post cleaning videos, posting tips and tricks on how to clean specific places in your home, the latest products to use, and even how to organise your fridge.   

There are several reasons that Spaniards love to clean so much. Primarily it’s a cultural thing, they are house-proud and want to keep everything as neat as possible. But, it also has a lot to do with the weather – especially in summer when it gets so hot. 

The hot weather in Spain creates lots of dust, particularly when doors and windows are open for much of the day to let in a breeze.

READ ALSO: What to do about insects and other pests in your home in Spain?

It also means that there are more insects attracted to the home. Keeping everything clean and ensuring no particles of food are left lying around ensures that ants, flies and even cockroaches don’t invade during the summer months. 

According to Spanish news site ABC, 80 percent of Spaniards also consider that having a clean home helps their children in their studies.

Member comments

  1. However outside of their homes they are the dirtiest people in Europe. They throw their cigarette butts ion the floor likewise empty bottles and drink cans. Dog shit on the pavement is common..

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FOOD AND DRINK

Why do they pour cider like that in Spain’s Asturias?

The green northern region’s drink of choice is cider but it’s the method waiters have of pouring it from a great height that catches the attention of ‘out-ciders’.

Published: 29 February 2024 15:40 CET
Why do they pour cider like that in Spain's Asturias?

They say Asturian blood is 50 percent water and 50 percent cider, and given the 40 million bottles produced every year in the region, it doesn’t seem too hard to believe.

However, it’s the method of serving cider in Asturias which really captures the imagination. 

The bottle will either come attached to a contraption which sucks up the cider and splurts it into a wide but thin-rimmed glass.

Or the waiter will come out every few minutes to grab your bottle and glass, lift the former high up with one arm and the latter down low around waist height before pouring some of the cider into the glass from at an arm’s length. 

There’s even a verb for this action – escanciar – to decant.  

The objective is for the cider to be shaken and aerated so that its natural carbon dioxide ‘awakens’.

When it is poured from above and hits the glass, carbon dioxide bubbles are produced that make the aroma of the cider come alive.

It’s good and normal for there to be splashback when pouring Asturian cider, but the aim is still to get most of it in the glass. (Photo by MIGUEL RIOPA / AFP)

These bubbles go away quickly so once served, the customer should quickly drink the culín (small bottom) up in one swig. 

The action of escanciar imitates how cider would be traditionally served when it went directly from big oak barrels to the glass, as cider has been the drink of choice in Asturians since before Roman times. 

READ ALSO: Why Spaniards’ habit of drinking alcohol every day is surprisingly healthy

This is after all natural cider which doesn’t come with the sugar, additives and pre-carbonated mixes of brands such as Strongbow, Magners or Kopparberg.

“It took me some time to get the hang of pouring cider, I missed the mark a lot, and my arm used to get very tired at first,” a Latin American waitress at a bar in Gijón told The Local Spain. 

Many sidrerías (cider houses) and restaurants have cylindrical tubes on wheels where escanciadores (the waiters in charge of pouring cider) can put the glass in to avoid making a mess on the floor or splashing customers, as there is always some splatter even if they don’t completely miss the mark. 

A waiter pours cider for customers at a cider bar in the northern Spanish city of Oviedo (Photo by RAFA RIVAS / AFP)

The more old-school chigres (cider house in Asturian) prefer to have sawdust all over the floor to absorb the spilt cider.

To pour, tirar (throw) or escanciar (decant) cider like an Asturian, you should tilt the bottle slowly from above and aim for the cider to hit the top part of the inside side of the glass, which has to be held at a 45-degree angle. It’s this that brings out the effervescence out in la sidra natural.  

So when you visit the beautiful region of Asturias and you tuck into their famously ample servings of fabada asturiana (Asturian bean stew) or cachopo (meat, cheese and ham all together in breadcrumbs), washed down with one or two bottles of sidra, now you’ll understand what’s behind this eye-catching tradition.

READ ALSO: Eight fascinating facts about Spain’s Asturias region

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