Should you ever kiss a nun?
This is not a question I ever expected to be asking myself. And yet, as I edge towards my fifth year in Barcelona, it is a question that has moved to the forefront of my mind, bringing together two of the key themes of my stay in the Catalan capital.
The first is kissing. In Spain, as you probably know, it is traditional to greet women with a kiss on each check. That sounds simple enough - certainly compared the the bewildering variety of cheek kissing combinations that different French regions offer - but has nevertheless raised a number of questions in my head.
The idea that I had formed over many years of visiting Spain is that you kiss all women on greeting. This seemed admirably simple when compared to the uncertainty around British greetings, where you never quite know if a handshake, air kiss, cheek kiss or even hug may be in order.
But the reality of the greeting kiss in Spain, as I have painfully discovered through years of misadventure, is a far more shaded experience, with ifs and buts and escape clauses littered liberally throughout.
Should I, for example, kiss my daughter’s playgroup teacher who I see every morning and night, I wondered? Yes, you might think: I know her well enough and we get along. But no, according to my Spanish girlfriend, who explained that there is an “if-you-see-them-every-day” sub clause to the kissing contract which dictates that it is a bit too much to kiss someone you see on a daily basis.
I thought I had grasped this. But it turns out there is actually an exception to this exception and you SHOULD, then, kiss someone you see everyday if you’re then not going to see them for a while (if, say, your child’s playgroup is about to go on Easter holidays).
OK: but what about for people in authority, for want of a better word? Should I, for example, kiss Ada Colau, the mayor-elect of Barcelona if introduced to her.
No. And - possibly you saw this coming - yes.
It all depends on the context, apparently. If I were introduced to Ada Colau by a mutual friend in a casual context then a kiss would be the right option. But if we were to be introduced in a more formal setting then a handshake would be better. And if, I asked my girlfriend, I were to be introduced to Ada Colau by a mutual friend in a formal context, would I kiss her?
No, she said, after a moment’s thought.
“How do you know this stuff?” I asked.
“I just do,” she replied. “It’s like British people knowing when to buy other people a drink.”
But how about a nun? Should you, I asked my girlfriend as we made our way to a social do at the local nunnery, kiss a nun when first introduced?
Maybe I should explain. In Britain I don’t think I met a nun in my whole 33 years there. Nor do you tend to see them around: nuns are less widespread in Protestant countries - a legacy of the first Protestant reformers - and only 45 women became nuns in England and Wales in 2014, up from just 15 in 2009.
By contrast, in Spain some 400 young people became monks or nuns in 2013, some 76% of these women, joining one of more than 6,000 religious communities country wide.
It is little surprise, then, that nuns are far more prevalent on the streets of Barcelona than in London and I quickly became accustomed to seeing them pass by, friendly smiles on their faces, as they went around their daily business.
Even then, I was still slightly surprised when my girlfriend suggested we had check out a local nursery that was run by nuns as we looked for a place for our young son to spend his days. I didn’t have anything against nuns, of course. But I had little notion of what they do in their day-to-day business and the idea that they looked after children was unexpected.
In the end, we decided to go for the nun nursery and it proved an excellent decision. The nuns there - who work alongside “standard” (in the sense that they aren’t nuns) nursery teachers - are always brilliantly friendly, a serene look of calm on their faces that is hugely welcome to any parent that has spent half of the night wiping child’s vomit off their pyjamas. I’ve come to look forward greatly to my brief chats with them when I go to pick up my son.
But how on earth do you greet them? Is a kiss too overly friendly? A handshake too cold? These people spend seven hours a day with my baby son, after all, so I didn't want to mess this up.
In the end I went for a handshake. There’s no guidebook on etiquette in Spain to govern how you should greet a nun. But if my ever-informed girlfriend is in the right, then men should shake nuns’ hands in greeting while women who know them well can give them a kiss on each cheek. And in the end, that felt about right.
So there is one conundrum of Spanish life conquered. Give me another five years and I’ll get onto the rest.
(NB should I be wrong on my kissing etiquette, then please do let me know in the comments.)
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