Bar a UKIP membership meeting or a Tommy Robinson family meal, ‘Johnny Foreigner’ is a term that has died a death with the ages. Frequently used by my grandparent’s generation, it has gone the way of ‘courting’ or a word I used this morning for some unknown reason, when I described a friend who had met a lady for a bit of ‘Whoopie’.

Having just arrived back from a family holiday in Espana (you know the type: concrete monstrosities with all-inclusive food, pools, broken aircon and a complete lack of health and safety), I found myself using the term ‘Jonny Foreigner’ on more than one occasion as I undertook a one-man people watching study of their oft strange behaviours.

Yes, the stereotypes are true, to a point: Us Brits, overweight, covered in tramp stamps (aka ‘ink’) and sporting a narrow range of football shirts and branded towels were to be found by the pool with a cold pint in our hands just after breakfast, as we sweat profusely into our frothy Estrellas.

The real difference on this trip was the number of Eastern Europeans. Very rarely smiling, the men are all ‘lumps’, they look like they could take you in a fight and they have a moodiness in their demeanour. Their wives, often frail, yet pretty butterflies, undertake the traditional roles of females. It was like travelling back to England in the 1950s: At mealtimes the man would choose the seats, the entire family would then sit in the same positions, and it was the sole job of the wife to look after the children whilst husband was not disturbed as he tucked into four or five rounds of full Spanish fry ups, washed down with a plate of Danish pastries.

The Germans, stereotypically, wore Speedos (whose marketing team deserve great credit for managing to maintain market share for a fashion item that died in every other country in the western world at least 30 years ago). Up early, as is their efficient stock in trade, they would attempt to look as if they were not running as they took a brisk walk with their FC Wolfsburg towels to bag four sunbeds near the pool and four behind, under the parasols. All I could wonder was how much better the Lufthansa baggage allowance was over Ryanair, if they could afford to bring eight towels on their foreign jaunt.

The Dutch, cool as ever, kept themselves to themselves, only drawing attention when they spoke. All of them as fit as a fiddle, which left me scratching my head as an avid cyclist as to how they, like me, haven’t ballooned in the summer months. This was answered at lunchtime as I loaded up with round three of what I think was a paella and chips, as the Dutch contingent nibbled a lettuce leaf and a bowl of grated carrot.

Surprisingly, the biggest change to my eyes, was that of the Spanish. Having been to Spain countless times, more so 20 or so years ago when my brother lived in the Marbella area, I found them to have embraced a real sense of entitlement.

Despite being given a room that was not what we had paid for, and having no working air con, fridge, TV or safe, the remonstrations were met with a Gallic-style shrug of the shoulders and, no matter how hard I tried, as I stood in a puddle of my own sweat at reception, I could not elicit a simple ‘sorry’.

But the single most irritating thing that seems to now be rife with the Spanish is this: By the pool, having a chilled-out coffee in a local café as you let the warm breeze waft through your bald patch or catching the wrong train into Barcelona, the Spanish felt the need to have extremely loud conversations on their mobiles. Not only that, but each to a senor and senorita put their phone loudspeakers on so others would get the full unedited conversation, like it or not. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand the lingo beyond ‘un San Miguel por favor’, or maybe it’s my age, but I found it intrusive, irritating and wondered when this cultural phenomenon became the rule, not the exception.

Still, no doubt, as I sat in a square in central Barca sipping pint numero dos of the day, resplendent in my hooky Barca top as I picked a troublesome toenail through my flip flops, I’m sure I heard a neighbouring family utter ‘Sangrienta Johnny Extranjera’ as they glared in my direction…

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher