Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

SPANISH HABITS

What are the rules of kissing in Spain?

Seeing as the head of the Spanish football federation is currently in hot water for non consensually kissing a female player on the lips, now seems a good time to review the unwritten and written rules of kissing in Spain. 

Published: 23 August 2023 14:57 CEST
KISSING RULE SPAIN
Spaniards may kiss each other on the cheek without giving it too much thought, but a kiss on the lips is a completely different and more sexualised matter. Photo: Josep Lago/AFP

Spaniards are an affectionate bunch. They touch you on the shoulder or the arm to reflect friendship, they greet each other with two kisses and they’re very much in favour of hugging friends and family. 

But that doesn’t mean that anything goes in Spain, and there is a line to be drawn between what’s culturally acceptable and what’s taking it too far.

This threshold is currently shifting as it’s subject to changing perceptions brought on by an emboldened feminist movement that’s confronting sexual and gender violence which is ingrained in Spain’s patriarchal society. 

The country’s new ‘only yes means yes’ sexual consent law, spearheaded by the divisive Minister of Equality Irene Montero, has also meant that knowing the rules is all the more important. 

Kissing on the lips

A kiss on the lips is not a standard greeting in Spain, nor is it likely that a platonic smooch with a friend will be well-received. 

In a moment of extreme joy, such as an important victory, one may assume that Spaniards’ touchy-feely and laid-back nature would mean that un beso en los labios (a kiss on the lips) could fly, but that’s not how Spanish law views it.

A kiss on the lips is reserved for romantic partners, and if it’s done without the other person’s consent it can now be considered sexual abuse if the other person presses charges, a crime that can result in a damages payment to the victim, a restraining order and technically speaking even a prison sentence. 

As the 2022 sexual consent law’s moniker suggests, ‘only yes means yes’ in the sense that you should be getting explicit consent (¿Puedo besarte? – Can I kiss you?) before even the faintest peck.

It doesn’t exactly promote spontaneity but given the fact that consent or the lack thereof is subject to the interpretation of a judge, the best way to avoid any issue is to ask first.

Equality Minister Irene Montero has referred to the non consensual kiss that Spanish Football Federation president Luis Rubiales gave player Jenni Hermoso on the lips after Spain’s Women World Cup victory as “sexual violence”. Rubiales first effusively hugged Hermoso, lifted her slightly, then he put his hands on either side of her face and kissed her on the lips before giving her a slap on the back like a team coach. 

“Acts of sexual violence, especially less intense ones, continue to be invisible and normalised, but it is necessary to call it by its name in order to put an end to it. It is not just machismo, abuse of power or a sexist act: it is sexual violence,” Montero tweeted regarding the controversial incident.

Hermoso did not visibly pull back or react in any way that would suggest she did not consent to Rubiales’ kiss. 

She did briefly admit on a live video that she “didn’t like it” but later made a statement stressing that Rubiales and her have a “great relationship” and that it “was a mutual gesture that was completely spontaneous due to the immense happiness of winning the World Cup”, “a gesture of friendship and gratitude”.

Regardless of Spaniards’ opposing views of the incident, Rubiales’ unexpected kiss was clearly inappropriate for the occasion, for his position and for the current zeitgeist, all of which has overshadowed the first World Cup trophy won by Spain’s female national team.

It also serves to evidence the nuances and complexities which come with lunging in to kiss someone on the lips in Spain in 2023, perhaps a necessary conundrum if it serves to stamp out micro sexual aggressions in Spanish society.

Former Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy gives a supporter a big smackeroo on the cheek, acceptable behaviour even according to Spanish political protocol. (Photo by MIGUEL RIOPA / AFP)
 

Kissing on the cheeks

Kissing on the cheeks isn’t all that common around the world, meaning that foreigners in Spain sometimes get this traditional greeting wrong, which can lead to some awkward situations. 

Most of the time, when a man and woman, or a woman and another woman, meet or are introduced to each other in a social setting, they give each other two kisses on the cheeks. 

If it’s two men then they tend to shake hands or hug depending on how close they are. Spanish men don’t kiss male friends as much as they do in Italy or France, although it’s more common among fathers and sons.

It’s one kiss on each cheek, starting on the left side (as in your head goes to the left and your right cheek presses against theirs). This can be particularly confusing for kiss-giving nationals like the French who start on the right. 

It doesn’t necessarily have to involve lip-cheek contact either, often it’s rather cheek to cheek, lightly brushing against each other. 

Don’t worry, you are unlikely to be accused of sexual abuse for giving an acquaintance or friend two kisses as a greeting, nor are they ever likely to pull back (hacer la cobra, ‘do the cobra’ as this is colloquially known) given that greeting someone with two kisses is a tradition in Spain dating back to the Romans.

READ ALSO:

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

UNDERSTANDING SPANIARDS

Are Spaniards the world’s most misunderstood sleepers?

It's a timeworn cliché that Spaniards have a siesta every day, and yet the data reveals that they actually sleep far less than some of their European neighbours. Why are Spaniards 'different' when it comes to sleep?

Published: 9 May 2024 10:47 CEST
Are Spaniards the world's most misunderstood sleepers?

Along with their supposed obsession with bullfighting and constant sipping on sangría, one of the timeless (yet misunderstood) stereotypes that foreigners have of Spaniards is that they have a siesta every day.

In reality, this is far from the truth. Often foreigners can mistake the laid back pace of life in Spain, combined with the easy going nature of many Spaniards and tradition of siestas (more on the history below) as evidence that Spaniards must sleep a lot.

In more reductionist terms, this leads to Spaniards sometimes being incorrectly characterised as lazy or work shy — any culture that has a tradition of taking a nap during the day must sleep more, right?

This is one of those cultural stereotypes that just feels right, even though the reality is quite different.

READ ALSO:

Not only do Spaniards work more on average than many of their European neighbours, according to OECD figures, but new data has revealed that they actually  sleep less than many others around the continent. Less, even, than many of their supposedly harder working Northern European neighbours.

According to statistics from the Sleep Cycle app, Spaniards sleep on average 7 hours and 13 minutes per day (or night).

For context, that makes Spain one of the countries with the lowest average sleep hours on the continent. Europe’s deepest sleepers are found in Holland and Finland (7 hours 37 minutes) followed by countries like the UK (7.33), Ireland (7.30) and France (7.29).

At the other end of the sleep spectrum, among the continent’s lightest sleepers (or those that sleep the least) are Italy (7.09), Russia (7.07), Poland (7.04) and Turkey, where Turks sleep an average of just 6.5 hours per night.

The reality

So, we know that Spaniards sleep less on average than many other nationalities. But what about siestas specifically?

Although many children and the elderly may choose to take a nap, most working people in Spain don’t have time to take a snooze during the working day.

According to survey data from 2016, 58 percent of Spaniards never take a siesta, while just 18 percent say they do so at least four days a week. Another 16 percent said they have one between one and three days a week, and 8 percent even less frequently than that.

In fact, data aside, anecdotally speaking many Spaniards claim they don’t sleep enough (siesta or no siesta) and they’d probably admit they should get more shut eye. The long-held siesta stereotype about Spain comes, in part, from history, climate and cliché, but also the structure of the Spanish working and social day.

“Most workers have a split shift, and that ends up delaying our whole day. We Spaniards tend to have dinner after nine o’clock at night, and this means that we go to bed without having fully digested our food,” says Adela Fraile, sleep specialist at the HM Puerta del Sur University Hospital in Madrid.

This late eating custom, which usually means eating lunch between 2-4pm and then dinner anywhere from 9-11pm, is often the first thing many foreigners notice about Spain. But it’s not just that. As food is such an integral part of Spanish culture, other parts of life fit around lunch and dinner, rather than the other way around.

One example of this is the lateness of Spain’s prime time TV slot.

“We are also used to watching TV after dinner, and as prime time programmes start late, we often end up staying up until they finish,” Fraile adds. “Using devices such as computers, tablets or consoles in bed doesn’t help either… the German and the Spaniard get up at the same time, but the Spaniard has gone to bed later,” she concludes.

READ ALSO: Sleepless Spaniards slam ‘late’ prime-time TV

Nazi time zones

There’s also another slightly darker, historical explanation for the unconventional timekeeping and body clocks of Spaniards: the Nazis.

Although officially neutral during the Second World War, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who was keen to show his thanks for Nazi support during the Spanish Civil War, demonstrated this to Hitler by agreeing to put Spain’s clocks forward by an hour in an act of solidarity with Nazi Germany.

READ ALSO: Why Spain is still in the wrong time zone because of Hitler

Spain has remained in the Central European Time zone ever since, in line with countries as far east as Poland. That means that Madrid currently has the same time as Warsaw in Poland 2,290km away but is one hour ahead of Lisbon which is only 502 km away.

This bizarre historical quirk has had a lasting impact on Spanish culture and society that underpins everything from Spaniard’s sleep cycles and meal times to the country’s birth rates and economic growth.

In recent years there have been calls to make the switch back to GMT because many believe the time zone quirk is affecting Spaniard’s productivity and quality of life. In 2013 a Spanish national commission concluded that Spaniards sleep significantly less than the European average, and that this led to increased stress, concentration problems, both at school and work, and workplace accidents.

The history of siestas

So, where does the siesta fit into all this?

After the Spanish Civil War, it was common for people to work two jobs to support their families: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Taking a longer two-hour break allowed them to rest before starting their next job, and often this (understandably) included a nap.

Siestas were also used as a way to avoid midday heat, especially among agricultural workers. Spain is not alone in this tradition: workers in other countries close to the equator, such as Greece, Mexico, Ecuador, the Philippines, Costa Rica and Nigeria, observe similar sleep schedules.

These working hours, roughly 8/9am-2pm and 4pm-8pm, have endured in Spanish work culture until today, despite the fact that most Spaniards don’t work outside, have two jobs or take siestas for that matter.

When American in Spain Melissa Perri posed the question to Spaniards only “When do you sleep? Are you vampires?” one Spaniard replied “We have a culture built around the siesta and no time to take siestas any more, so people are getting less sleep than they need”.

The future of siestas

So, what of siestas in the future? As the data shows, Spaniards sleep less than most other countries, and very few Spaniards actually take a siesta during the working week. In that sense, siestas could continue their downward trajectory and slowly die out over time.

Recent proposals by the Spanish government to cut the working week, which would likely mean that many Spaniards have a shorter lunch break and finish work earlier, say around 5pm or 6pm, would probably accentuate this trend and remove the need for afternoon naps for many people.

READ ALSO: Spain set to slash work week to 37.5 hours

However, there’s also some evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic caused a slight resurgence in siesta sleeping among Spaniards. The rise of remote working (known as teletrabajo in Spanish) led many to reassess their sleeping habits, and as time goes on and the working world becomes increasingly digitised and online, perhaps Spaniards will begin splitting up the day again when working from home.

One thing seems certain, however. Siestas, like bullfighting and sangría and screaming olé for no good reason, will probably live on as a Spanish stereotype for a long while yet.

Now, time for a lie down.

SHOW COMMENTS