CIA agent Jack Ryan is a lazy git who doesn’t work very hard. Otherwise, instead of racing about Tenerife trying to save the world, he’d be lounging around a pool all day.
An article in a UK tabloid stoked the fires of one of those travel myths which raises its nonsensical head every so often. Posh folk who, let’s face it, don’t ever work very hard, enjoy culture and active holidays, whereas ‘working people’ work so hard that all they can do is flop beside a pool somewhere warm whenever they get a break from the workhouse, or whatever occupational hellhole it is they work in. Before anyone gets all hot and bothered, these aren’t my views, they are the views of people who got all hot and bothered about the article.
Hotel pool and view of the sea at Costa Adeje.
It concerned a young(ish) reporting visiting Tenerife to get a handle on protests about overtourism. Much of the article involved the reporter being gobsmacked about how so many British holidaymakers travel to an archipelago lying off the coast of Africa to simply lie in the sun all day, and eat and drink in British restaurants and bars at night, pointlessly comparing and contrasting his experience with a trip to Florence. Doing this in a UK tabloid was only ever going to provoke outrage among those readers who enjoy doing exactly what the reporter was sniffing down his nose at. The article was misguided at best, and mostly guilty of confusing the purpose-built holiday resorts of Tenerife with the island’s true character.
But the UK press misrepresenting Tenerife and the Canary Islands as a one-dimensional fly-and-flop destination isn’t anything new or unusual. Some accompanying comments pressed my buttons more, especially the ones which regurgitated absurd travel tropes like how lying beside a pool all day as opposed to getting out and about exploring is virtuous evidence that someone is a) working-class and b) works harder than holidaymakers who prefer more active holidays.
Remote and rugged, the coast at Anaga.
Posh v Working-class
“This chap obviously doesn’t realize he is posh, he obviously likes culture and art and finer things…”
Only posh folk can appreciate culture etc. What a load of baloney. Talk about conforming to an outdated class stereotype. This sort of attitude is held by people who are slaves to typecasting, the product of generations of brainwashing to subconsciously believe the pigeon-hole they inhabit comes in one rigid shape. It’s almost a Victorian view of class divisions. Know your place in society and don’t dare shift from it. No thanks.
“The guy just doesn’t know he is upper middle class and therefore completely different to the resorts normal visitors.”
What the hell is a ‘normal’ visitor when it’s at home? The arrogance on display here is incredible. My way is the ‘normal’ way, which suggests everyone else is abnormal. Presumably, that includes, apart from all the posh folk who like local culture, the tens of thousands of visitors from other countries who don’t want to frequent British and Irish bars or stick to resorts. By the way, that includes Spanish holidaymakers as, and this might come as a shock to some, the Canaries are Spanish.
Think I’m being facetious with that last remark? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read something along the lines of this comment – “Nobody speaks any Spanish there and it’s full of the all day breakfast brits!”
Translated, this means ‘Nobody speaks Spanish in the resort I visited.’ Not the same thing at all.
Arrogance and ignorance are often cosy bedfellows. It can be difficult to spot which one is on display.
A Tenerife airport, but not the one British tourists fly into.
Hard Workers v Shirkers
Then there’s the attitude that really winds me up, even more than the tired cliches already mentioned.
“… working people’s holidays, they don’t take a one week break from hard work to visit churches and culturally significant venues.”
I’ve seen a variation of this many times over the years, the one which proclaims that people who work hard (this invariably refers to working-class holidaymakers) are too tired to explore the places they visit on holiday. The flipside of this is anyone who prefers exploration and culture obviously hasn’t worked hard otherwise they wouldn’t have the energy to do so.
It’s a ridiculous view which doesn’t make any sense. Hard work is hard work is hard work. It doesn’t come with a class-appropriate label attached.
In the end…
This last quote almost sums up how I think holiday preferences should be viewed.
“Many visitors are working class and just want to get away and relax in their chosen way for a week.”
I say ‘almost’ because there’s no need to limit this approach to ‘working class.’ It should simply read – ‘Many visitors just want to get away and relax in their chosen way for a week.’
And that’s it in a nutshell – ‘in their chosen way.’ So long as it isn’t disrespectful or disruptive what that ‘chosen way’ is, isn’t anyone else’s business or concern.
One of the four photos used on this post is an odd one out as the other three stood in for Myanmar in season 4 of Jack Ryan.
Incidentally, the Jack Ryan reference at the start is because I’ve just been watching the final season of the Amazon series where Tenerife stands in for Myanmar, and the locations used are worlds apart from the popular resort image. They’re definitely not places the UK tabloid reporter visited.
