'Hair For Valencianas'

In the corner of a page in the local Spanish newspaper I look at most days, whenever I can beat the other customers of the cafe getting it first, where readers are invited to send in their photos, of any topic that might be of interest for viewing. Observation of the city, it's people or whatever. The initiative is promising but most of those published seemed to be denouncement of something - dirty streets, illegal parking, overflow dustbins, etc.; typical of human nature, always criticize, rarely find something nice to praise.

Today's photo shows a shop-sign that's says 'Pelo para Valencianas' - Hair (wigs) for ladies of Valencia. That is, if you translate it literally to English. It was accompanied by the photographer's sarcastic remark that 'the shop only serves ladies who can prove they are authentic pedigrees of Valencia', and asked how they are going to carry out such authentication.

Looking at the photo, he couldn't have missed seeing the display, in the front shop window, special festive costumes, for occasions when the ladies in Valencia of all ages dress up in that kind of very colourful dresses called 'fallera', with voluminous full skirts with many tiers of gathered flounces. They also wear their hair in a traditional style to accommodate special decorative hair combs and flowers. When they are dressed like that, it's customary to say that they are 'Vestidas de Valencia' which means dressed in the kind of costume and style I just described. So the shop sign actually informs that they provide special hairpieces and wigs for such costumes.

Obviously the photographer, though himself a Spaniard judging by his name, Llorenc Soler, had been far too quick to criticize based on his ignorance rather than reason, taking the sign word for word, without the knowledge of it's true meaning. He has made the people in Valencia, or at least the shop owner and his staff, to be xenophobic if not worse. Had he taken the trouble to enter the shop and ask for an explanation, he would have learned something.

People are often separated not because of the differences between them, but because of ignorance of the 'others'. And too stuffed up or lazy to find out about them. Criticizing things they don't know instead of learning something worthwhile, beautiful or even useful to themselves.

Tags:Valencia,Culture,Ignorance

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