REFORM UK politicians often insist immigrants should learn English – but how do the Spanish feel about Brits who haven’t mastered the lingo?
Sarah Pochin, a Reform MP, expressed outrage on Instagram after the Green Party posted a campaign video for the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election entirely in Urdu, Pakistan’s national language.
She said: “If you cannot speak English in this country, how can you make an informed decision about who to vote for?”
With these comments Pochin joins her party leader Nigel Farage’s calls for immigrants in the UK to speak English.
He claimed that one million people living in the UK can’t speak English, however fact-checkers have placed the real number closer to 161,000, based on the data from the 2021 census.
He also expressed his disapproval of road and underground signs in other languages.
London’s Underground features just one station sign in a foreign language: Whitechapel also displays its name in Bengali, a tribute to east London’s Bangladeshi community.
A frequent retort to these remarks by commentators on the left has been the ‘What about Benidorm?’ argument.
They contend that the situation resembles that of Benidorm, where fish and chip shops outnumber tapas bars and English signage is the norm.
LBC radio presenter Tom Swarbrick jibed with a caller earlier this month who claimed that England was being ‘colonised’ and questioned: “Would you say that about parts of Spain where Brits don’t speak any Spanish? Are we colonising Spain?”
READ MORE: Gibraltar hits back after Reform MP suggests the Rock could be used to process future asylum seekers
For British expats, this issue hits close to home, but how do Spaniards feel about immigrants speaking Spanish?
According to a survey by Funcas, 85 per cent of Spaniards think immigrants should adapt to the language and culture.
Meanwhile, in October last year, Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, leader of the conservative Partido Popular (PP), announced that under a PP government immigrants would be required to demonstrate B2-level Spanish – the equivalent of a strong A-level grade in the UK – in order to apply for citizenship.
Of the estimated 300,000-400,000 British expats living in Spain, around 30 per cent speak fluent Spanish.
Life can be navigated easily in English in many parts of Spain where health, legal and property services are offered in English.
In metropolitan cities like Madrid, where 23 per cent of the population can speak English, it can be easy to get by without much Spanish and there are ample job opportunities for English speakers.
In the integration debate, British expats are under the microscope, forced to consider whether the standards demanded at home should also be applied abroad.
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