I find them comparatively confounding. How are they different? How are they similar? Don’t they seem to be two peas in a pod?
Linguistically, Spanish and Italian are close. Not like Flemish and Dutch, but still, Italians and Spaniards travel easily in each other’s countries without problems communicating. Though here’s a difference, as far as I can tell: there are still lots of older folks in various nether regions of Italy who don’t speak the language of Tuscany very well, but Castilian Spanish is understood and spoken by just about everyone in Spain, young and old, regardless of regional dialect. Or is this a crudely inaccurate characterization on my part?
So let’s haul out the stereotypes and paint with broad brush strokes: The French are stuffy, the Italians are passionate, and the Spaniards are…dour Italians. Eh? I don’t think Spaniards are French at all, anway. At least, that was my impression when I was in Spain. But they seem to prefer the Italians over the French, from what I heard from numerous cab drivers and waiters and the like (yes, I tend to get into these kind of freewheeling conversations when travelling; it helps being North American, you can play up the New World naivete and get people to talk about lots of things). One of the waiters at a paella resto in Valencia we ate at was Italian, and he had the place in the palm of his hand, cracking jokes and making the Spanish waiters and diners laugh. He told us he’d left Genoa to live there, and when we asked why Valencia, he simply said: “Para mi, es mejor.” Why? Because it’s easy to be the life of the party when you’re Italian in Spain?
Why were the Italians’ colonial ambitions and achievements so paltry, especially in comparison to the Spaniards (and most everybody else in Europe)? The whole country is a launching pad for ships, for goodness sakes. That Columbus went to the Spanish for financing for his famous voyage says it all, really. I’m wading into the history here without knowing enough about it, though.
In terms of the people themselves, Moorish blood still runs deep in Spain, it appears. Here’s this year’s winner of the Tour de France, who is fast becoming a dominant force in cycling: Alberto Contador of Madrid.
You would never mistake Contador for an Italian, but you might mistake him for a Peruvian if you didn’t know better. Or even an Arab. Italians don’t really look much like Spaniards, do they? Too white, those Italians. But wait a minute; I grew up in Ontario with lots of Sicilians and Calabrians, and they’re a lot darker than, say, the Milanese. Actually, come to think of it, maybe southern Italians look like Spaniards. Though having said that, Contador isn’t necessarily all that representative of most Spaniards, certainly.
Culinarily speaking, my impression is that the heavy cream sauces are the domain of the French, but they don’t figure much in the traditional cooking of Spain and Italy. Olive oil goes in everything in Spain and Italy, it seems. Italy has pasta, obviously, but my admittedly ill-informed impression is that the Spanish eat more rice.
Caveat: Yes, I know these are all slap-dash impressions consisting of various stereotypes and potentially vapid generalizations. I never said I was an expert. But I’m not busy at the moment, and I thought I’d throw this out there to see the reactions I get. Don’t Spain and Italy seem like brothers among the nations of Europe to you? Which two countries have a closer affinity to one another, aside from the Netherlands and Belgium (and the Scandinavian countries, that goes without saying)?
Just curious.
