“Look, if you think that the hardest part of getting to Spain is the cold, you're very mistaken,” says a young Cuban in a TikTok video where he shares the challenges he has faced while adapting.
The content creator @estibito_vlogs explained what the three most difficult things were since he arrived: “The first thing that cost me was understanding the Spaniards when they spoke quickly, brother, that’s not Spanish, that’s Formula 1, I kept wondering, is he greeting me or scolding me? and by the time I finally understood, they were already on another topic.”
"The second issue was bureaucracy, and let me be clear, if you’re not stressed about paperwork in Spain, it’s because you’ve already given up, appointments that disappear in three seconds, documents that no one explains to you, officials who speak to you as if you were a lawyer, I already have a master’s degree in European paperwork at a God level," he remarked.
Finally, she noted: “The third one, my favorite, is relearning to live without shouting, because in Cuba, speaking loudly is normal, here you say good morning with enthusiasm and people get startled, they looked at me as if I were stealing, but little by little you adapt: you learn to speak softly, to be patient with the paperwork, and to laugh when a Spaniard throws 20 phrases at you in 5 seconds, while you are still processing the first one.”
Her account generated numerous reactions on social media. “Speak softly like the Spaniards?” wrote one user, while another agreed that “the bureaucracy in Cuba was inherited from Spain.” Others commented humorously: “Learn to speak without shouting? How does that work, if that's part of who we are?”
This testimony is part of a growing trend among Cuban emigrants who share on social media the contrast with life on the island. In another video, @estibito_vlogs himself said: “I came prepared for many things, but these five left me as cold as a Galician winter,” highlighting the punctuality of public transport, urban cleanliness, and respect for regulations.
Similar stories have gone viral, such as that of a Cuban woman who recorded her mother surprised by the urban cleanliness: “What cleanliness! Look how they are cleaning it early in the morning,” or that of a young man who celebrated ‘living in a country where you can choose things’ by comparing the freedom of choice in Spain with the state control in Cuba.
Other stories, such as “I Was Left Speechless”: Cuban Shares Five Things that Surprised Him in Spain, reinforce the same idea: for those arriving from a reality marked by scarcity and bureaucracy, simple things like road education, the silence in the streets, or the possibility of choice become transformative experiences.
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