THE man behind one of the Costa del Sol’s most influential Instagram pages has let rip at expats who have spent years living in Spain without bothering to learn a word of the language.
Diego Escalona Gomez, who runs the highly influential marbellasequejaoficial account (Marbella complains), posted a video this week to his followers expressing his frustration at foreigners who have lived on the Costa del Sol for a decade – or longer – and still cannot manage a basic greeting in Spanish.
“I feel like a stranger in my own land,” he said. “There is nothing that winds me up more.”
The rant was triggered by an encounter at his local gym, where a foreigner started talking to him entirely in English.
When Diego indicated he did not understand, the man simply gave up speaking to him.
“You’re at the gym and someone asks you for something in English,” he said. “You tell them you don’t understand and they couldn’t give a s***.
“I’m the only Spaniard in the room, and they just blank me completely because I don’t speak English.”
READ MORE: Tragedy as Marbella local, 25, is killed in motorcycle crash just days after returning from abroad
However, the influencer was careful to draw a distinction between expats who make an effort and those who do not.
His frustration, he said, was not with foreigners still learning Spanish – it was with those who make no attempt whatsoever at Spanish.
“What I don’t agree with is people who’ve been living here five, ten years – some of them thirty – and they can’t say so much as hello.
“I’m not asking you to memorise the whole of Don Quijote,” he said. “Forty words to get by. That’s all.”
“And look, I do understand English,” he added, “but what I can’t stomach is that here in Marbella I’m the one who has to speak your bloody language.”
He pointed to his own experience living in the Netherlands, where he said he had been forced to adapt to the local language and customs just to open a bank account.
He argued that expats on the Costa del Sol faced no such pressure and had little incentive to integrate as a result.
“When I was in Holland I had to learn every Dutch custom going because they wouldn’t even let me open a bank account. Here nobody wants to make that effort.”
Instead, he turned his anger on people who ‘think they can just rock up and not give a toss about living in a wonderful country, with the most widely spoken language on the entire bloody planet’.
“They should be the ones who have to speak Spanish, full stop, because it’s the most spoken language in the world, for God’s sake, and the most beautiful, and the richest, and the one with the most expressions — especially us Andalucians, bloody hell, the gorgeous expressions we’ve got!”
The wildly popular marbellasequeja Instagram account currently has around 108,000 followers after being banned by Meta on at least one occasion.
It documents the various untoward goings ons and anti-social behaviour that have become so prevalent in Marbella, usually sent in by aggrieved local residents who have to put up with it.
The Costa del Sol is home to one of Spain’s largest expat communities, with around 48% of 55 to 64-year-olds in Marbella being foreign-born ‘expats’, as well as welcoming enormous tourist numbers.
“It cannot be that we have to bow down to whatever they want,” Diego concluded.
Click here to read more Marbella News from The Olive Press.
The man is totally correct. I’ve live in Spain for 23 years and can get buy and converse with locals moderately. But I accept I’m the guest in this beautiful country, and therefore the onus on me the learn their language, their customs and their history.