Sexuality and Sexual Harrassment in Barcelona

Veronica Marquez
The Santa Clara
November 1, 2018

Having a man in a crowded bar firmly grab and caress my friend’s butt, and then my own butt and legs was not something I expected. It was a life-impacting event. It was gross and uncalled for sexual harassment. But as a woman in today’s world, I have learned that I must expect such behavior.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been grabbed without my consent in a crowded place, but something stuck out to me about this experience. We were in a crowded bar making our way to our seats at a table in the back of the room. A few guys were blocking our path, and when we asked them to move, they simply motioned for us to go by. There was no way to maneuver around them; the only option was to go through them.

My friend carefully maneuvered past them, throwing one leg over the tight space between the two men’s chairs. As he watched her struggle to get by, he laughed with his friend and put both hands on her butt. I quickly grabbed his hands and told him to stop. He laughed and did the same thing to me, moving his hands down my legs.

Filled with anger, I turned around and told him it wasn’t okay. He spoke Spanish, but since I am a fluent Spanish speaker, I’m sure nothing was lost in translation. Yet, he looked me right in the eyes and laughed. Reprimanding him had no impact whatsoever. It didn’t matter.

It’d been a bit over a month since I had moved to Barcelona for my semester abroad. Within a week, my friend told me about an encounter she had with her Spanish Tinder date. When she told him she didn’t want to have sex, he scoffed at her, saying it was such an “American” thing to say. According to him, sex in Spain is casual and normal and a Spanish woman most likely wouldn’t have turned him down.

I found myself wondering if a liberal view on sexuality and the ability to not sexualize women in the way Americans do was not as successful as I had previously thought. Did Spain have a problem or was this simply a cultural inferiority?

When I thought of my encounter in the bar, I was angry. It was violating, yet I kept telling myself it wasn’t that big of a deal so I shouldn’t make it one. I kept trying to figure it out. Why was he so confident? Why was he unfazed by me telling him to stop?

When you walk around a beach in Spain, women of all ages are topless. There are grandmas laying out topless just as much as women my own age. I saw this distinct difference from American culture as a good thing. Women’s bodies weren’t sexualized for doing the same thing men do when they walk around shirtless.

On the subway, I saw a woman breastfeeding with nothing covering herself. She stood up, holding her son as he continued to breastfeed, and walked out of the train as if it wasn’t a big deal to have her breasts exposed on public transportation. And that’s because it wasn’t a big deal. She wasn’t ashamed for doing the simple task of feeding her child.

Couples make out on the bus, in bars, on the street—pretty much everywhere. The concept of PDA, according to one of my professors, simply doesn’t exist. Clearly, this is a cultural difference.

But I couldn’t quite figure out what my groping experience meant. I kept trying to put the blame on the country or Spanish culture. Yet at the same time, Brett Kavanaugh was being nominated to the Supreme Court. A reminder that even back home, women are not being listened to or protected. The feeling of unsafety washed over me. There was no need for national or cultural elitism, as if women aren’t victims of sexual assault everywhere.

Yes, much worse things could have happened to me than being grabbed without my consent. That doesn’t make it any less terrible. It was a reminder that even abroad, in a country where women strut around the beach topless and breastfeed their children on the subway, the threat of sexual assault or harassment remains very real, even in a crowded bar in plain sight.It is this fear that consumes me no matter where I am. It isn’t about staying safe, avoiding walking alone at night, dressing a certain way or even saying no.

You might think that would be clear by now, but the victims who have come forward in the #MeToo movement and the treatment of Dr. Christine Ford is a testament to how little progress has been made.

Having a random man touch me without my consent may seem like another unfortunate situation that can be brushed off without further thought, but it speaks volumes to the daily harassments women face.

It was a moment where my sense of safety was violated and the flood of “what if this were to happen” concerns dawned on me once again.

It would be rash of me to blame Spain and their inhabitants for what happened to me and my friend. It would take much more investigating and years of living here to truly understand the cultural norms and thinking about it now, it wouldn’t be shocking for something like this to happen at home, at a Santa Clara bar on Thursday night.

Veronica Marquez is a senior ethinic studies and communication double major.