One year and a half late reply, but what you wrote here is nothing but the same stereotype this page criticises.
First of all, I'd like to know what do you mean by "a lot" and "still". According to 2010 data
, the primary sector employed a mere 4.6% of Spain's active population and constituted 2.6% of Spain's GDP. That includes farming as well as fishing, mining, logging and other activities.
Second, the fact that Mexican sombreros evolved from Spanish hats (when? how much?) is irrelevant. The Mexican sombrero is a very specific, very well known stereotype of Mexico. The gigantic, bent over itself version stereotypically associated with Mexico (such as the one seen in the illustration) has no equivalent in Spain, and looks nothing like a Spaniard's idea of what a farmer's hat looks like. Your claims of La Mancha being the largest area in Spain (it isn't) or 'a virtual desert full of farmers that wear sombreros' are particularly ridiculous to me, a La Mancha native myself.
You also gloss over the fact that the figure sports a divided mustache, almost like the slightly more separated version popularized by Cantinflas, a Mexican comedian. You can find Spaniards wearing it I suppose (Óscar Jaenada is the only one that comes to my mind) but the thing's not known as a Cantinflas Mustache for nothing (and Jaenada just happens to be a guy that looks very much like Cantinflas, enough for him to be chosen to play the character in the recent biopic).
There are things I don't like about this page (namely, the Real Life version, the image's caption and the over-repetition of "mixing Spain and Mexico is like mixing Britain and the US"), but the image does its job as it is.
Edited by Naram-Sin
Examples of confusion between different Latin American countries moved to Latin Land.
IMO, the picture doesn't illustrate the concept as a lot of Spaniards are still farmers, and the sombrero originated from Spain. Many still wear it. The fact that it's irony that it was found on an educational website shows that whoever added that comment should really use said website as it may also be teaching Spanish culture and that basically all of La Mancha — the largest area in Spain — and a lot of the land around its borders is virtually desert and full of farmers that wear sombreros. Now, something Spanish wearing one of those colourful ponchos from Central America would demonstrate better.
Or, this map of "Europe according to America"
? The one in Italian
◊ makes the tags clearer, but Portugal as Brazil and Spain as Mexico are pretty clear, anyway.
OH MY GOD; MY PARENTS ARE GARDENIIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!!! Hide / Show Replies