Save Me…… from a collective attempt to number my days of futile resistance

In Star Trek, the crew of the Starship Enterprise have to fight a race of half organic, half mechanical organisms known as the Borg. They are a deadly species, made up of cybernetically-enhanced humanoids organized as a collective, where decisions are made by a central hive mind. Their sole objective in existence is to forcibly assimilate into the collective any and all species they come across in the pursuit of genetic, unemotional, mechanical perfection. They take individuals, their knowledge, their technology and their thoughts and subsume them into the central core. Members of the collective are given names such as Seven of Nine or Five of Sixteen. As they say: “Resistance is futile.”

So why am I telling you this? Because there are many similarities between the Borg and the people of Spain.

Now, for the record, I am not a “trekkie”, nor have I watched very many episodes of Star Trek, its films or its spin-offs. However, for the purposes of full disclosure, I do have Star Trek The Movie on iTunes and I downloaded it because I liked it, even though I know I´m in the minority there as a lot of people say it´s dull as shit and nothing much happens, but I always liked it because it´s cerebral and mysterious in much the same way a spy or detective story is, whereas Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica were always just about blowing things up and zapping laser guns in every direction without much thought, and don´t even get me started on Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century (the TV series, not the comics) which was just plain low-budget rubbish, I mean, come on, who has a dancing robot called Twiki? Really!

But I think I´ve gone off the point a bit. The point is this. As I said, there is a strange connection between the Borg of Star Trek and the people of Spain, and more specifically Seville.

It´s not immediately recognizable. In fact, it only struck me one night this week on the Metro when a friend of mine told me about Seville’s so-called Three Stages of Integration.

It was after 10pm. I was on my way home. He was all dressed up and on his way to the Seville Feria and we were sitting there talking about the fact that both our wives are Spanish (He´s British). He said that as he´d been living here for several years it was important to be traditional and dress up to go to Feria. It wasn’t necessary, he said. But it was all part of “going native”, he said. Of becoming one with the locals, he said. And his wife would shout at him if he didn’t, he added.

He told me that this was part of something a German friend had explained to him; that there were three stages everybody goes through when they move to Spain, and in particular Seville.

Apparently the first stage is known as Love. When you first arrive, you love everything about the place; the noise, the shouting, the cars who impatiently rev their engines when you´re on the pedestrian crossing, the banks that need everything in triplicate, the cockroaches in the bath tub, the TV adverts that cut in at the most inappropriate moments and then last 15 minutes.

Then comes Stage Two. Hate. This is when you slowly begin to hate exactly the same things that you loved when you first arrived. The aggressive car drivers, the stupid TV ads, the six-legged friends in the bathroom, the inability to talk at a sensible volume.

Finally, you get to Stage Three. Assimilation. This is a crucial stage, because it´s at this point that there is no turning back once you´ve made the decision. You can choose to accept those things you have fondly grown to hate and it is at this point you begin to do them yourself. You take a conscious decision to no longer fight the tide. You dive in and let it take you. Before long, you don’t hear the shouting that passes for normal conversation, because you’re shouting yourself. You become one of the collective.

Or, you can fight it. You can resist assimilation. If you do, you pack your bags and return to the riots and lashing rain that marks a British summer.

Now I´m not suggesting people from Seville are a race of cybernetic organisms intent on forcibly assimilating visitors into their collective. But it is interesting to see how, before you know it, you’ve been sucked in. You’ve been “assimilated” as it were. You are them and they are you. And you didn’t even know it was happening until it was too late.

So it got me thinking. What stage am I at? How long does each stage last? And do they really exist or were they just invented by a German bloke who was bored because there was nothing much to watch on telly one night?

Well, I’ve been here nearly three years now and while my Spanish is much better that it used to be, it’s still a bit rubbish and not anywhere near as good as it should be for someone who’s been here nearly three years now. Look, what can I say. I’m just lazy and crap at languages, alright? So, maybe I’ve got a little way to go yet before the collective.

As for the stage order, well, for me stages one and two have sort of metamorphosed into one really big stage. If it was a stage on the Tour de France it would be that one where they have to ride for 30km up a vertical cliff. And from a practical point of view, as anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, I love and hate things here with equal passion.

But as for stage three, the assimilation, the becoming one with everything around me, then this week has been somewhat of a watershed. Because last Saturday me and the wife went to a family baptism in Jerez. Her cousin’s baby son to be precise. I was the only non-Spaniard there, but naturally I was made to feel very much part of the family. I felt quite at home, despite my lack of complex Spanish. We had the baptism then we all drank together, sat and ate together, chatted together, drank some more together and then when that ran out, we got some more and drank that as well together. And by the end, it didn’t matter what language we all spoke because we were all pissed. For all intents and purposes I was Spanish. I was one of the family.

So have I been – willingly or not – sucked into the Spanish equivalent of the Borg? Have I become number Seven of Twelve or Eight of Twenty Six or whatever? Has my resistance become futile?

Well, I think for me the jury is still out. I think the love and hate stages still have to work themselves out yet.  And I think that any assimilation should take its natural course. I don’t want to be influenced by any thought of a process of stages. Let me do it in my own time and in my own way.

But I do know one thing. The Borg don’t do baptisms like the Spanish do.