Galicia and Spain’s other Atlantic regions are becoming increasingly popular holiday destinations for Spaniards, and people from Madrid in particular, as they turn their backs on overcrowded and overheated Mediterranean resorts in favour of the more temperate north.
But while welcoming the income from tourism, Galicians have also given a nickname to what they see as their notoriously haughty visitors from the Spanish capital: fodechinchos, which translates literally as “fish thieves”.
The Galician writer Ainhoa Rebolledo said a fodechinchos was typically someone from Madrid but that the term could refer to anyone from outside Galicia and generally denoted an ignorant or ill-mannered tourist.
“The typical fodechinchos doesn’t realise there are tides,” she said. “In the Mediterranean the tide is about 20cm and here it’s a matter of metres. The classic fodechinchos gets their car stuck on the beach at high tide.”
Fodechinchos are also accused of insisting on a free tapa with their drink, a tradition in Andalucía but not in Galicia, nor in Madrid for that matter, and of complaining that the signage is in Galego, even though the Galician language is readily understandable to any Spanish speaker.
Ok, hear me out, yes, written Galician is understandable by any Spanish speaker, but spoken Galician can sound really alien to Spaniard. I never forget one day watching in the TV the street reporter interviewing someone and I thought they were foreign until I suddenly caught a word, they were a Galician speaking Spanish with heavy accent! No way I would be able to understand that person if they had actually spoken Galician 😅
As per the article information, yes, of course, Madrileños are despised everywhere in Spain, if you live somewhere where they are not despised, is because they haven’t visited yet… (As with any generalization, there are som wonderful people from Madrid, not ALL of them deserve to be despised, but the majority…)
I’m Canadian and we get a lot of American visitors up here, especially for hunting and fishing. We understand the issues as we face similar ones.
And as you say it’s never ALL … but it’s enough of a problem that travelers/vacationers themselves should be fixing it.