Spaniards in general (and Andalusians even more) are very fond of the night, while Brazilians have a different perspective. The clock and the latitudes explain this.
In most of Brazil this does not happen. Not only is it closer to the Equator, making the duration of nights and days more even, but the time zones are more calibrated to natural cycles. Right now, in April, the sun sets about 6 p.m. and rises about 6 a.m. When the dawn breaks, there is hardly half an hour of skylight before the sun appears. The same for the dusk after sunset. To most Brazilians, the night IS DARK. To most Spaniards, Summer nights are not dark until 9 p.m. or later.
This makes a lot of difference. Brazilian meals are all earlier. Though modern life has screwed our biorhythms a lot, most people still remember that they forefathers used to break fast at 6 a.m., lunch at 10 a.m., have a coffee break at 2 p.m., dine at 6 p.m. (or earlier) and, if the need arised, have a late supper at 9 p.m. (supper was mostly for lent time, when people used to eat less during the day and called this ‘fasting’). Nowadays, most Brazilians will break fast before 9 a.m., lunch around midday, have a coffee break late in the afternoon (around 3 p.m.) and dine early in the night, at about 7 p.m. This, of course, if you are not going out…
In Sevilla, spending the night by the riverbanks; drinking, playing and chatting; was something free for all, even young teenagers and couples with their children. In Brazil, going out in the night is definitely not a usual “family thing” (though this is slowly changing). You usually go out at night if you are on a date, a private meeting (family, business, or the like) or some shady business.
Aside from this, the two cultures are very different, despite some similarities.
- Spaniards prefer wine, Brazilians prefer beer. However, mainstream Spanish wine is usually very fine, but mainstream Brazilian beer is usually …. [censored]
- Most Spaniards seem to have a casual relationship with cars. Nobody seemed to make much of having or not having a car. In Brazil, buying a car is a step towards godhead.
- Spaniards read much more than Brazilians. Most Brazilian houses don’t have any books and recent surveys found that 75% of the Brazilians didn’t read anything last year (except, of course, posters, banners, ads and such innevitable things you must read to move around in society).
- Drinking alcoholic beverages is something much more casual in Spain than in Brazil, if I remember it well. It is not something that the “tough boys” have to do to show that they are “macho” because everybody does it.
- There’s the bullfighting thing. In Spain it is a big issue. In Brazil it is a cruel, backward tradition that attracts less and less attention. Brazilian bullfighting, however, was never like the Spanish one, it involved teasing the bull and jumping over it, or riding it. The bull was never killed and some farmers kept trained bulls because they really wanted to see if a fighter was killed. Yes, you got it right: the type of bullfighting that existed in Brazil was more like trying to kill the bullfighteer than the bull. But, nowadays, this is a dying tradition. It has been replaced by Texan-style “rodeo”, which is, of course, very gross and alien to our cultural tradition.
There are some places in the South were they have a cruel type of bullfighting on the weeks leading to Easter. It is called “farra do boi” (bull party) and was brought to Brazil by Azorean and Basque immigrants. It consists on teasing and wounding a poor bull until it dies. It is a clandestine practice, punishable by hefty fines (for the consenting bull owner) and jail time. - Spaniards speak a more “correct” form of Spanish, even when they let their regional accents reign. I mean: they do pronounce words differently, they do have different regional vocabulary and they do have a few distinct grammar features, but, with the probable exception of rural Andalusians, they are closer to RAE Spanish than any Brazilian ever is to standard Portuguese. Brazilian Portuguese is so divergent from Standard Portuguese that it is considered a “cluster of dialects” of its own and I swear that if spoke my regional accent before any foreigner with five years of steady learning he would not understand any thing.
I say this because, after a couple of days getting used to their accents, I never ever had any trouble to understand anyone. Gee, I even grasped the subject of a quarrel between a bunch of gypsies. - In Spain people have a more casual attitude towards foreigners, at least if they are of the right color. In Brazil people are often too interested on a foreigner. In Spain, when someone noticed I was a foreigner,they’d just ask if it was the visitors first time in Spain, or if they were new to that particular place and then gave directions. They never frowned, or stared or seemed to have any great reaction to it. In Brazil, even when people don’t actually pest you with questions, everyone around turns the head to hear and see you (or planning how to profit from you).
- Brazilians like to touch and to be touched. Spaniards are not sensitive about it as Americans (frankly, there seems to be no difference between poking and stabbing an American, they feel it as an aggression nevertheless), but they don’t touch you when talking.
- Brazilians, like Southern Italians, like to use their hands while speaking, not only to touch each other for a variety of reasons, but also to express more vividly what they want to say. In Brazil, this is a result of amerindian influence (Tupinamba people, for instance, would use both words and gestures to talk and could talk for a long time without actually “speaking” any thing). There are, actually, many things about Brazilian culture that are expressed only by hand gestures, because it is almost impossibly to explain what these gestures mean. In Spain, people seemed to be a lot more restrained in their ways.
- Spaniards are more comfortably than Brazilians in public spaces. Cafes, bars with tables on the sidewalk and such things are much more common in Spain than in Brazil. At night, especially in big cities, Brazilians want to be “inside”, not outside. In fact there is a different culture for “inside” places (like restaurants, pubs, pizzerias, malls, etc.) and “outside” places (Carnaval, musical shows, festivals). Clothes, etiquette and behavior are all different.
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