The English

 The first of the myriad anglosajon peculiarities that would confound and exasperate Julio Camba in his 15 months as London correspondent for el Mundo revealed itself when a porter tried to help the young Spanish journalist with his luggage as he arrived at Victoria station in December 1910.

Victoria Station, London, the Sunlit Square
Charles Ginner (1878-1952)
Photo Credit: Atkinson Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-SA]

"The worker grabbed my suitcase and shouted, so I started to shout, too," he wrote shortly afterwards. "Given that I'm Spanish, I shouted much more than he did and, finally, he shut up. Camba concluded that, unlike their Spanish, French and Italian neighbours, the English were not given to passionate outbursts. Or passion. Or, indeed, outbursts.

"The English," he noted in an aphorism that has hardly aged over the past 115 years, "endure the proximity of the continent with the same irritable gestures as a man who lives next door to a young music student...

Camba had stowed away on a boat to Argentina at 13, flirted with and rejected anarchism, and chronicled the Young Turks in Constantinople - but despite his taste for adventure, the fog, starch and impenetrable social rituals of Edwardian England were a challenge. Take his thoughts on the English and Spanish attitudes to time - thoughts that echo his contention that: "Deep down, all Englishmen are policemen ... Deep down, every Spaniard is an anarchist."

"In London, you simply have to have a watch," he wrote in April 1911. "These English genuinely believe that time is an important thing, and that there's a big difference between 4pm and 5pm... In Spain, when you want to meet a friend at 11, you agree to met at 10 or half- past 10, and then you don't turn up ... [But] if an English person summons you to meet at 12 minutes past three and you turn up at quarter past three, it's as if you'd turned up the following day."

Then there was the weather: "England is a waterproof place. The rain bounces off the English the way it bounces off English buildings."

And then, of course, there was the miraculous effect of alcohol on the national character. "The English people appeared to become a little more human as long as they were drinking," he noted not long after his arrival. "They spoke with great animation and their movements appeared almost spontaneous. Some even roared with laughter, like people do."

(Sam Jones, The  Guardian, 2025)

Definitely right about time. It would be considered rude not to turn up when you had agreed a time. Far better to turn up a few minutes early than be late. Definitely right about alcohol, too!