I think after putting most of Europe’s nose out of joint over the centuries, English people never expect any love from the continent. We see this every year at the Eurovision. We’ll never see another Katrina & The Waves again ?
Plus it’s nothing new mate, the English have been trashing Spain since the 16th century. It’s always been a favourite jolly boys outing for us, a bit of a tradition if you will.
The Cadiz expedition of 1625 was a notable one. Amongst many other great errors of leadership, this one always sticks in my mind:
“When Cecil landed his forces, they realised that they had no food or drink with them. Cecil then made the foolish decision to allow the men to drink from the wine vats found in the local houses. A wave of drunkenness ensued, with few or none of Cecil's force remaining sober. Realizing what he had done, Cecil took the only course left open to him and ordered that the men return to their ships and retreat.When the Spanish army arrived, they found over 1,000 English soldiers still drunk; although every man was armed, not a single shot was fired as the Spanish put them all to the sword.“
Sound familiar?
We used to enjoy having a good ding dong with the French too, but I think our relationship reached a bit of a middle aged stalemate and we went our separate ways like some sort of sad divorce. The French looking to Northern Africa for their jollies and the British chasing up the great game in the Middle East.
Of course we came to Germany too, more recently, but it’s just not as much fun. Maybe it’s the weather? Or the locals? Or all the rules?
Of course, full reparations have been made to Spain over the years by extensively supporting their tourism industry
??