el / la guiri: Term often used playfully but sometimes considered pejorative, to refer to uncouth foreign tourists, especially those with Northern European appearances
The beach is full of tourists. = La playa está llena de guiris.
I first came across the term guiri when I moved to Madrid for my year abroad during my Undergraduate Studies in Spanish Literature. Determined to blend in, being called a guiri constituted the gravest insult. Sporting a bikini in Madrid’s Retiro Park at the slightest hint of sunshine, wearing embarrassing sightseeing gear, puking in the streets late at night drunk on subpar sangria and generally making life unbearable for locals by conducting a loud and brazen hunt for ‘the real Spain’ - these were all hallmarks of guiri behaviour that were the opposite of what I wanted my experience to be. And yet …
The most sure-fire way of ascertaining how much of a guiri you are is through the quasi-scientific exposed-skin-to temperature-ratio measure. Your guiriness increases proportionally with every centimetre of white flesh on display at ever lower degrees centigrade. Peak guiri = wearing a spaghetti-strapped summer-dress or going for a swim in the sea at 20 degrees and below. (Case in point, last week I went on a guided tour on a sunny 25C spring day. Two tour groups were leaving at the same time, one in English and one in Spanish, i.e. one shorts-wearing group and another one sporting gilets…).
While I didn’t blind any innocent madrileños with sun bouncing off my pale skin on my year abroad, I couldn’t deny that I was feeling a certain guiri urge. A childhood spent in north-west Germany and two years of studying in Scotland had planted a little voice inside my head that became agitated whenever the sun was out: “Go outside. Drink up that Vitamin D. You never know how long this will last”. However, in Spain you kind of do know. So after a week of sunshine. And then another. And then another, I eventually managed to tame the compulsion to throw myself horizontally across the nearest grass verge whenever the sky was blue. After a year of playing it cool came the ultimate blend-in honour: a female (!) Spaniard asked me for directions, mistaking me for a local.
Fast forward a decade and you could say I have taken my de-guirification a notch too far. Following a not fully voluntary, family-related move to Andalucía had me turn from guiri to grump, refusing to see the beauty of anything the light touched around me. And so I wallowed and moaned, and moaned and wallowed and couldn’t get out of my self-pity rut.
Watching darkly on a cruise-ship-tourist-group’s photo session next to a bin (inexplicably) in Central Cádiz, it dawned on me. This time round, I needed to be more of a guiri not less! There’s a lot to be said about the cost of over-tourism to Spain, but what is often overlooked amid the guiri-bashing is the admirable amount of unbridled enthusiasm they bring to even the most undercooked paella. If there is one thing I can stand less than being gullible, it is being jaded.
So the following weekend, mission ‘Bring my inner guiri back’ was on! Heading to the archaeological site ‘Italica’ near Seville (a place of two major events for human civilisation 1) settlement of the Phoenicians 2) and more importantly, a filming location for Game of Thrones) I decked out in guiri essentials:
Fewer items of clothing than most Spaniards would wear on a spring day
Digital camera
Backpack
Sunglasses
Baseball cap
A manic grin paired with a searching look in my eyes for the motif that would make a break-the-internet holiday snap
Did I stand out in the 20-head strong group of gilet-clad Spanish people?
Yes, I did.
Did I take 20 times more pictures than everyone else.
Sí, señor.
But at least I was having fun again. At the end of the day, I washed off the last vestiges of my grumpiness with a dip in the March ocean. Waves lapping at my marbled thighs, my guiri rebirth was complete. Andalucía, you ain’t ready for this!
