Times Americans Proved They Were Clueless

Your average American has shockingly little contact with Spain. I went to a university with a lot of international students and have traveled widely in Europe, and I have still in all my life only ever met one Spaniard. What we do have a lot of contact with is Latin America, as Mexico is our downstairs neighbor and then Latin America just keeps rolling on from there.

So maybe this person can get a bit of understanding for hearing the term “Spanish” and immediately thinking about it as a language spoken by people from Mexico, Central America, and South America (and parts of the Caribbean). But the fact that further explanation didn’t jog their memory and make them realize that they had indeed heard of Spain… well, that’s not great.