Tourist Watching

Working in the Tourism Office of Malaga, I spend a large portion of my day tourist watching. My goal in the office is to determine where the tourist comes from before they talk, so that I can help them accordingly in English or in Spanish. For a tourist abroad, sports emblems are often used as a way to proudly represent their cultural identity. When a tourist walks into our office a wearing sports logo-- be it a hat or jersey, I am able to quickly determine where he is from. Hockey logos, especially the Team Canada emblem, quickly denote a tourist from Canada. National rugby jerseys, or hats with the letters RBS, denote tourists from the UK. The silver fern, symbol of the “All Blacks” rugby team, denotes tourists from New Zealand. Baseball hats, when worn properly, denote a tourist from the United States. I say this rule applies when the hats are “worn properly,” because the baseball hat has been transformed into a fashion statement here in Europe. There is a simple way to clear up this confusion. If the hat has a flat brim and an unofficial, wildly flamboyant pattern with the New York Yankee logo, it probably doesn’t belong to an American tourist. These are simple rules that are not always right, but for many people, sports logos are a deeply important symbol of national pride. For sports fans around the globe, national rugby teams, hockey teams, and baseball teams are fundamental forms of cultural identity.