Eric and Jessica Smith are a couple from Kansas (USA). He is 36 years old and she is 35. In 2017, they traveled to Spain for the first time and visited Madrid, Barcelona and San Sebastián. “We fell in love with this country: the food, the people, the language and the lifestyle,” they acknowledge via e-mail to EL PAÍS, where they also say that moving to Spain began to be a recurring dream in their lives. “During the pandemic, our lives (like everyone else’s) changed, and we decided to apply to teach English in Spain.” Six months before the move, Jessica discovered that she was pregnant: “Everyone thought we would stay in the United States, but we were determined to fulfill our dream.” Eric and Jessica moved to Logroño, for no particular reason, other than because they really liked the north of the country and wanted to live in a small city. “The first time we visited Logroño was the day we moved to Spain,” they explain. Now little Quinton is 2 years old. And yes, he is from Logroño.
In February of this year, the entire Smith family went viral. They uploaded a video to TikTok titled: Why not Logroño? (Why not Logroño?) where they tried to answer an increasingly frequent question in their lives: “Why does a family from the United States live in La Rioja?” His enthusiastic response was more applauded than any tourism advertisement in the region: “Our response is usually… And why not? The people are amazing, the food is amazing… The wine! La Rioja wine has no comparison. And what else? It is a safe city, it is fantastic for families, it has a great quality of life, the cost of living is manageable and we are surrounded by mountains,” they summarized in a video they recorded at night, back at what is now their home.
It is defined as culture shock, or in English culture shock, to a whole set of emotions and reactions that an individual can experience when coming into contact for the first time with a culture different from their own. It was the Canadian anthropologist of Finnish origin Kalervo Oberg who identified this feeling of everyone who moves to a country other than their own, already in the 1950s, and who divided the process into four stages (honeymoon, anguish, orientation and, finally, adaptation to the new environment). Nowadays, the culture shock or culture shock It has gone from being the focus of anthropological study to being a trend on TikTok, and a series of Americans living in Spain are its main representatives.
“If someone had told me 10 years ago that I would live in Spain, I wouldn’t have believed it. Spain was never on my radar, until I met a Spanish student at university, who later became my husband,” Morgan, better known as @MorganInSpain, a 31-year-old girl from Michigan, explains to EL PAÍS. After graduating from college, Morgan and her husband lived and worked in the United States. Over time, they began talking about the possibility of moving to Spain. He wanted to be closer to her and her family, to live new experiences: “We moved to Madrid in June 2021″. Six months later, Morgan began uploading videos online showing her discoveries: “I honestly didn’t know much about Spain before I moved, other than the fact that it was my husband’s favorite place, so that was enough for me. For example, I naively believed that the weather was going to be wonderful and tropical all year round, but I have already realized that is not the case,” she says, amused. Her videos were a success.
Of all the videos that the Smith or Morgan family upload to their channels, those that have the most views and comments are those that show their discoveries about the customs, expressions or particularities of our country. In the eyes of a foreigner, they make us Spaniards themselves also observe them under a new gaze.
“I have experienced many culture shocks living in Spain and I continue to experience them,” Morgan acknowledges; “However, for me the biggest of all is related to lifestyle. People in Spain are extremely sociable. It is very common to meet with friends or family throughout the week. I remember, during my first week here, walking past a packed restaurant on a Monday night at 10:00 p.m. In my country, unless you live in New York or Miami, the chances of you doing anything other than working during the week are slim.” Morgan admits that, at first, this exhausted her: she was not used to making so many plans and having so much social life, but now that she has left her comfort zone, she confesses that she has taken a liking to this way of living: “I really think “that Spaniards have found the balance between work and private life and strive to give priority to people,” he says. Through his videos (on Instagram he has 134,000 followers, on TikTok, 77,000 and more than three million likes), Morgan humorously explains some other things that catch his attention: for example, that people in Spain do not ride tracksuit on the street (and get dirty looks if you do), that people sit down calmly to have breakfast and don’t eat while walking, the after-meal culture or that, if you have an accident, you can call an ambulance without thinking about the costs.
Regarding this, the Smith family is clear about what their biggest cultural shock was, no matter how intoxicated they were by the wine of La Rioja: “Without a doubt, public health. It has changed our lives. When we are sick… We go to the doctor! We don’t have to worry about an outrageous monthly payment, a copay, or a surprise bill in the mail. “We have never been healthier!” The Smiths have more than 40,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok and, like Morgan, use humor to show cultural differences. In a very successful video starring Jessica, she mentioned that what she liked most about living in Spain was that the playground was next to the bar. As Dorothy pointed out in The Wizard of Ozjust after experiencing his own culture shock: “Totó, I have the feeling that we are no longer in Kansas…”.
Regarding the success of their respective accounts, they have similar theories: “I think people find this type of content interesting because it offers a fun and unique perspective on different cultures and what life is like abroad. “You always hear about people moving to another country, but you don’t really know what that entails, and when you see two different countries and cultures compared in a 30-second video, you can see contrasts that you would never have imagined,” Morgan concedes. who explains that his followers are usually divided into 50% Americans and 50% Spanish. The same thing happens to the Smith family: “We receive many messages from Americans asking how we moved to Spain, why we chose Logroño and recommendations for traveling around the country. And we receive many messages from people from La Rioja who are happy that we talk about this region and from people who live in other parts of Spain who want us to visit their city or town.”
In this little window to the world that opens on social networks, accounts like Morgan’s or the Smiths’ are one of those — increasingly less frequent — friendly, fun and safe spaces on the internet. Maybe to fall in love with something or someone again you just need to look at it from another perspective. For example, with the eyes of a newcomer.
