Comment by Al-Khwarizmi
3 days ago
> Honestly something that was a bit galling was that the Irish would moan about Ireland morning day and night but the instant a foreigner made _any_ observation that wasn't rainbows and sunshine we were out of our lane and needed to shut up.
In Spain we tend to have a similar attitude. Not really telling people to shut up, but if foreigners criticize our country we tend to get defensive, even if they are saying things we would agree with or say in a conversation between locals.
For me it's like common sense, just like you don't acknowledge family problems when you talk to people outside close family and friends, but it's probably just the culture I've been raised in.
Yeah, but when immigrants to my home country complained we generally agreed. I mean, why wouldn’t people experiencing the same system have similar complaints?
Oh, OK. I was thinking about foreigners that are here just for a visit. Immigrants get treated like one of us in this respect. In fact immigrants soon experience the horrors of our bureaucracy when they need to obtain their papers, and this typically creates opportunities to bond with the locals by venting about it :)