This won't make you pregnant!

By Richard Morley

A few months ago I was present as an American Business man attempted to entice a group of us Europeans to buy his product. He claimed his devices, he had two different models, would rid the air around them of pollution. One device was a model of what was eventually intended for larger, industrial purposes. It consisted of a clear plastic box which contained both the anti-pollution apparatus and an electric element which would cause burning and smoke. He set up the model and plugged it in. Immediately the clear plastic box was filled with a cloud of light grey smoke.


And then he made his first mistake.

“Now”, he declared, “I’m going to show you some magic”, and at the press of a button the air in the box instantly became clear.

Now I have some idea of the electro-static method his devices used. It’s been around for some time and similar things are even sold on Amazon. But it’s NOT magic!

Some in the audience asked, “How does it work?”

And along came mistake number two: he said, “I have no idea”.

“How can you expect us to invest in a technology you can’t explain?” asked a member of the audience. “If you can’t tell us how it works, how will we know if it is suitable for purpose”.

“Well”, shrugged the salesman, “I use a microwave oven every day, but I don’t know how that works”.

The questioner, now with a definite air of disbelief in his voice, said, “But if you were selling me a microwave oven I would expect you to know the principle of operation”.

Different members of the audience then joined in with speculation on how the device works, and the salesman replied he couldn’t comment as he didn’t know.

I was hosting this event and at the end thanked the salesman for his “interesting” talk and afterwards had a few words with him. “You know you didn’t make a single sale”, I told him, and explained why and used a term he could understand: “In Europe, we won’t buy snake oil”.
“But it’s not snake oil”, he protested, “it works. It’s been very successful in the States”.

“I don’t doubt it”, I commented. “But you won’t sell it here (specifically in Spain) unless we can trust you and if you can’t explain how the thing works, we won’t”.

I then noticed he was wearing his second device around his neck. It resembled a small mobile phone with two brass (or perhaps even gold) contacts on its top edge. “What’s that meant to do?” I asked.

“It purifies the air in front of me”, he said. “It means I only breathe in clean air”.

I was doubtful, and feeling a little mischievous, and holding up my smouldering cigarette, remarked, “So, if I blow a puff of this cigarette smoke into your face (something I would never do, let me point out before the comments come thick and fast!) the smoke would just disappear before it reached your nose?”

Of course it wouldn’t! And he knew it. So, he changed the subject away from his products to the matter of selling, which, and now I will reveal the truth, that although this was actually his prepared sales pitch and the devices and the sales talk were quite real, the salesman was rehearsing his pitch against an audience of the attendees at my English Speaking Group, here in Madrid.

“I don’t think that went too well”, he stated with ironic understatement.

“You lost us the moment you mentioned magic”, I told him. “If you going to produce a rabbit from a hat, then we would accept magic. Selling us technology means you have to explain”.

“But these things are selling like hot cakes in the States”, he alleged, “and it’s the same sales talk”.

Which demonstrates quite well that the United States and Europe is divided by more than the Atlantic Ocean.

There are many stories told of cross-culture, cross language marketing mistakes. Some, like the Chevrolet Nova car not selling in Spanish speaking countries because “nova” means “no go” are myths. “Nova” is a quite unpejorative Spanish word and, besides, something that didn’t work would be described as “no funciona”, and Parker Pen’s supposed translation of “It won’t stain your pocket or embarrass you” as “no manchará tu bolsillo, ni te embarazará”, which would have meant, “It won’t stain your pocket or make you pregnant”, was caught well before the advertisement went to press.

However, one American airline, vaunting the comfort of their leather seats, did exhort its passengers to “vuela en cueros” or to fly naked!! But I cannot point the finger here as I have made the same embarrassing error while mistakenly trying to compliment a married female friend or her selection of leather jackets and skirts: “Me gusta verte en cueros”, I told her. Luckily she has a sense of humour or my face could have been red from a slap as well as embarrassment.

And Misubishi did have to rename its “Pajero” model after it found out that the word they should have used was “Pájaro” and the slight orthographic error was a huge blunder in meaning. (Look it up – this is a family friendly blog!)

I am going to stereotype badly here, but between the US and Europe there are differences in the way we speak to each other. When it comes to selling the US all-bells-and-whistles (some might say smoke-and-mirrors) evangelical hard-sell is not appreciated in Europe, and in Spain the immediate lets-get-down-to-business style is just plain weird. C’mon guys, you have to have a coffee or two, drink or three, night on the town, before beginning those all important negotiations. Oh, and unless you are a lawyer or banker, get rid of the damn tie!

At least in Spain business does get done. Meetings with a client I had in Saudi many years ago involved lots of chat and gossip and time restraints might mean the business would not be concluded that day and I would have to return again – and again! It once took me three days to present an invoice, but then, anything that involves a Saudi actually paying for services rendered is fraught with difficulty.

I presume the European relaxed style would be regarded as just time wasting in the States, so it’s a two-way street.

The good news for Americans, often to my chagrin, is that the US, as opposed to the British accent, is considered easier to understand by many Spanish, except when it is spoken too fast. Recently an American teacher of English lost a client because after several months of lessons, the student still couldn’t follow the fast paced speech. But, and here we can raise the Union flag with pride, the accent they personally want to speak is the British one, or so they tell me to my face.

Way back in the seventies, when Willy Brandt was leader of Germany, he told us Brits, “You can buy from us in English, but you must sell to us in German”. That should be a recognised fact of selling anything. You should approach your customer in his language and in ways he is familiar with. Do not expect them to understand your American Football or English Cricket metaphors. English sales people shouldn’t tell Americans the product will “go like a bomb”.

I teach many Spanish managers English because their companies want to do business with the English speaking world. I have lost count of the students I have met at the English Villages where I volunteer who want to perfect their language skills before taking up a new position in the UK or the States – and I am horrified at the English and Americans who come to Spain for work and then think they can learn the language once they are here. (Before I get comments from those of you who say this is not you, I know many of you did learn Spanish before coming here, but you will know, as I do, there are many who didn’t.)

And before those that know me comment that my Spanish needs huge improvement, let me point out I didn’t plan on living here. I just sort of ended up here after many years in other countries. I’m getting there, folks.

The salesman with whom I began this post should, if he was a good salesman, have known that Spain (or the rest of Europe) is not the USA. Successful sales professionals from distant lands have taken on a Spanish persona to accomplish their goals. Be warned, many are bewitched by the country and never return home.

Oh, and as far as I know, his Spanish language skills were zero.

As well as language teaching, I also coach Spaniards in interview techniques when applying for a position at one of the many multi-nationals that have made Madrid their European base.

Now the boot is on the other foot.

These Spanish business men and women have held executive posts for years and are now unemployed victims of “La Crisis” and looking for work. They know they want to work for and English or US company and have the language skills, but during our sessions I find myself ploughing through 14 (yes! Fourteen) page résumés (CVs). No HR manager wants to wade through a couple of hundred of those, so we work on some serious editing, which includes removing a great deal of exaggeration (or downright lies) and this is met with protest at every step.

Yet applying for a job is probably the greatest sales pitch anyone will ever make. The product is YOU and you had better know what you are selling.

Which reminds me of the lady who wrote in her cover letter that in her present position she had relations with one hundred and eighty-seven clients!

We all have a lot to learn.

A Day with a Knight

By Richard Morley.

The skinny, sad knight sat on the bench, expounding his view of a long gone chivalrous world to his chubby squire. Meanwhile a snow white stork flew overhead.


I was taken aback by the stork. Being no ornithologist it took me a few moments to realise that it wasn’t just a large seagull. Then I remembered that the town I was in was famous for them.

I was in Alcala de Henares, a town some thirty kilometres east of Madrid. One of the oldest towns in Spain it dates from well before the Roman Conquest and in its heyday was a far larger town than Madrid. Less than a forty five minutes train journey from the capital, Alcalá would not take kindly to being described as a Madrid Suburb, although it falls within the greater Madrid Communidad.

I arrived by train on a hot August morning. Alcalá is served by the Cercanias system of commuter trains that drag weary commuters into Madrid every morning. On leaving the station the visitor is immediately faced by a memorial to those citizens of Alcalá who took the seven o’clock train to Madrid one grey Thursday on the 11th of March 2004.

Just after 7:37 the seven o'clock train from Alcalá and its passengers were ripped by the force of terrorist bomb as it pulled into Atocha station, and by eight o'clock three more trains lay wrecked and stained with the blood of the dead and dying. Among the 182 people who lost their lives that day, many came from Alcalá. They have not been forgotten.

The terrorist bombing affected all; Young and Old.

From the station to the historical centre of Alcalá is a short walk and in fifteen minutes I was in the Plaza Miguel Cervantes. I take it you guessed from the description of the sad, mournful, sorrowful, rueful, woeful knight, (depending on which translation you read) or “El Caballero de la Triste Figura”, at the beginning of this piece that I am writing about Don Quixote.

Plaza Miguel Cervantes.

On the 29th of September, 1547, Don Quixote’s creator, Miguel Cervantes, was born here. It has always been one of those spooky coincidences that Spain’s greatest writer, Cervantes, and England’s greatest writer, Shakespeare, were not just contemporaries, but actually died on the same day, the 23rd of April 1616.

Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford upon Avon, set in the middle of “Shakespeare Country”, milks the reputation of its favourite son for every tourist penny it can get.

But Alcalá must share Cervantes with other places. Much travelled, he was a soldier, sailor, civil servant and crippled war hero. He was kidnapped, enslaved and ransomed. He had homes in Sevilla, Valladolid and Madrid. He was jailed for his debts and suspected murder and was lucky enough to marry a woman eighteen years his junior. So, he had a full life, which he wrote about in many other works besides Don Quixote.

But the knight of the woeful countenance has almost completely eclipsed his creator. It’s as if Shakespeare was only being remembered for Hamlet and nothing else.

So Alcalá honours its best known export rather than exploits him. The centre of town is given over to the Plaza that bears Cervantes name, you can find the tower of the long gone church of Santa Maria where Cervantes was baptised, and you can visit the house where he was born. However, Cervantes celebrity takes second place compared to his creation. The sides of the plinth of the author’s rather diminutive statue in his eponymous plaza are decorated with scenes from Don Quixote, the knight and his side-kick repose on a bench outside the author’s home in the Calle Mayor and the tourist shops sell Don Quixote tat. And the day I visited, a parade of giant figures was led by effigies of the sad knight and his sidekick.

Sancho Panza and Don Quixote take the sun outside Cervantes birth place.

But Alcalá has a history that goes back much farther than the day Cervantes was born.

Its name, Alcalá, comes from the Arabic for “the fort” and Henares is the river that flows there. And yes, unlike Madrid’s arthritic trickle of a stream, it is a real river.

Owing to the river there has been a settlement here since prehistoric times. And when the Romans came, they named it Complutum.

Now, a small digression to right a wrong.

In 1293 King Sancho IV, known as “The Brave”, founded a seat of learning in Alcalá. In the middle ages this was converted into a full university and named the Universitas Complutensis after the old Roman name for the town. The Complutense University is now the most famous university in Spain – but in Madrid.

The university flourished for three centuries in Alcalá until 1836 when the town upset the Queen Regent Maria Cristina by taking the opposing side in the Carlist wars. In a fit of pique she ordered the university closed and moved the entire faculty to Madrid. From 1851 until the 1970s, it was called the Central University of Madrid, but was then allowed to call itself by its original name. But in Alcala, they now have a new university, housed in the ancient buildings of the original, but they have to call it the University of Alcalá as The Central University of Madrid won’t let them have their name back. I think this is very unjust.

There should be a protest!

Sorry, where was I. The history of Alcalá goes back millennia. The town’s brilliant Archaeological museum in the Plaza de las Bernardas attests to that. Prehistoric settlements, mammoth and dinosaur bones, wonderful Roman mosaics are displayed quite magnificently in the museum. The building has lots of space and tells Alcalá’s story very well.

The Shady Acade of the Calle Mayor.

Compared with Alcalá, Madrid is just s recent upstart. The shady arcaded pavements of the Calle Mayor leading to the grand Plaza of the cathedral, the winding, narrow streets that mark the position of the old town wall, buildings twisted by deformations of ancient timber framing all lend a definite air of the medieval to the town.

The Cathedral Of Alcalá de Henares and its plaza.

From above, the old town looks rather like a flower, a tulip, the petals displaying the lines of the ancient lines of defence. Calle del Tinte ( the street where cloth was dyed) and Calle de Libreros (Street of the booksellers) are an indication of how town and gown coexisted in the ancient seat of learning.

The line of the old city wall is visible. Alcalá, a Spanish tulip.

The day I went, the streets were a riot of activity. In the middle of the long summer school vacation, volunteers were organising activities for kids. There were games, face painting, drawing classes, craft activities and plain silliness going on all around.

General silliness and fun for the kids.

The adults were not forgotten. Outside a bar in the centre of the calle Mayor, surrounded by a huge neck-craning crowd, a Mus tournament was taking place.

For the uninitiated Mus is a card game which I have tried unsuccessfully to understand. Played with partners like Bridge, somehow it’s possible to win and lose with the same hand (I think!). Partners secretly sign to outwit their opponents, the cards are strange, the play intense.

Playing Mus in the Calle Mayor.

After standing in the sun, watching the tournament for a few minutes, I was in need of refreshment, so at the neighbouring bar I took a beer which came with free tapas. There was a huge choice and I chose a simple dish of chorizo and potatoes to keep me going until lunch. But when a huge plate of tapas arrived, lunch became unnecessary.

Cold beer, free food and a wonderful half hour spent people watching. Life is good sometimes!

Alcalá has its own delicacy, if that's the word. A cake made from Almond paste, Puff pastry and merangue. A thousand calories in every bite - but delicious.

Alcalá is a busy town, but far less frenetic than Madrid. There is a surprise around every corner and a bar not far from that. I recommend a visit.

The Shady Plaza Palacio.

Alcalá is very easily, and incredibly cheaply, reached from Madrid. A ride from Nuevos Ministerios on the Cercania rail system will cost €2:70. Because I live in the east of the capital, I took metro line 7 to Estadio Olimpico, switched to MetroEste for two stops to Costlado, where I took the Cercania. The two different metro lines cost me €1 each time and the cercania ticket another €1:45. As it cost me a euro to get home from Nuevos Ministerios, I saved a whole 25 cents by taking the metro half the way. But it’s still dirt cheap.