English, This, That and the Other

From the moment I was born until I had moved to Spain, I had always lived in Wales. Despite Wales being so close to it's neighbour, England, I never really strayed that way, maybe the odd day visit to London or to visit family there but nothing substantial. My life up until moving to Spain was generally surrounded by Welsh folk.

So, my move to Spain was a bit of an eyeopener. Although I live in the traditionally quite and Spanish province of Almería I was not expecting to hear the English language quite in its abundance on my arrival. I initially put it down to there being maybe lots of people from the differing areas of the UK. I was wrong. The majority of them came from England. For me this is something I had never encountered before, living amongst the English. Its a bit of a learning curve really, you see although the we all come from the 'UK' or Britain. The English don't see it that way.

They come from England, with their English mobile phone numbers, English pensions and English cars. I find it difficult to understand why the English folk refer to anything from the UK as English, when you can get all these things through the isles. After all how would they react if I started referring to my Welsh mobile phone number, Welsh car or Welsh Pension. I would guess it wouldn’t go down well.

I for one know that although Wales has its own parliament, with law making powers, the things that the English refer to as 'English' phone, car and pension are not a devolved matter, its the whole UK parliament that oversees these matters. It’s just like saying that because the DVLA is headquartered in Swansea the people of the whole of the Great Britain, only hold a Welsh Driving Licences or have Welsh Cars, or because their state pension is administered via a Wales based Department for Work & Pensions office they have a Welsh pension.

It sounds odd I hear you say? Well what’s how odd it sounds to us Welsh folk when we have to sit there and listen the English doing the same. I am in no doubt that the individual English person is at fault for the terminology of these items originating from the UK but its seems to be something that flows throw their veins. Just like it flows through the Welsh folks veins to know how to refer to these matters in their British form. It just seems to me the some English folk are 'England' centric and everything has an Englishness attached to it for whatever reason.

The Welsh folk on the other hand don’t need to add their Welshness to their possessions we are proud of our strong Welsh heritage and can differentiate correctly with matters that are UK wide and maters that are only Welsh. We just don’t need to say everything in this world is Welsh are we are confident and self-aware of our heritage. Whereas I suppose with the history of England, what is it to be English, where did it originate. Anglo-Saxon comes to mind. The Welsh celts are the true people of the isles. We are the original Britons, we confidently know this when the English are desperately trying to make their sort heritage seem so long and everlasting by calling everything English.

19th March 2024 en Almería