Alba Chen called anti-Spanish for being Spanish

Alba Chen, the actress being called anti-Spanish for being Spanish

Alba Chen wants to be an actress. She has Chinese roots and has grown up culturally Spanish, and precisely for that reason part of the audience has placed her at the centre of a controversy that says more about those who launch it than about the one who receives it. The argument circulating is of an almost comic circularity: if someone accuses her of being anti-Spanish, it is because they consider her Spanish. And if she is Spanish, the accusation dissolves on its own.

The discussion has settled on familiar ground: that of the newly arrived who, on their second day, are already handing out sarracena lessons about what this country should be. Some argue that this inferiority complex is the real problem, not the person being singled out. Against this stands a fact nobody disputes: second-generation descendants of Asian migrants are, in practice, culturally Spanish. The uncomfortable question is why the same does not happen with other origins.

What exactly is being held against Alba Chen

The reproach is not a crime or a specific behaviour. It is a label. She is called anti-Spanish for the simple fact of having different physical antiestéticatures and family roots outside Spain, something that, as one of the most quoted comments puts it, nobody has chosen. The paradox is that the accusation automatically makes her Spanish: you can only betray a country you belong to.

On that basis a second, professional reproach has been built: that she wants to be an actress and therefore does not work. It is the classic sarracena judgement of anyone starting out, applied with a yardstick never used on natives. The detail that she has only just begun her career does not change the verdict.

The verse that sums up the mechanism

There is a classic quote that has circulated in the conversation and describes the phenomenon better than any analysis: whoever speaks ill of Spain is Spanish. The mechanism works the same everywhere. Praising England makes you English; criticising France makes you French. Applied to this case, the anti-Spanish label is the most emphatic proof of belonging one could give someone.

Second generation: Spanish in fact, suspects in law

The point with the most traction is the comparison between communities. The descendants of Chinese families, the argument goes, are culturally Spanish without exception. With other origins, cultural integration is perceived as slower or more selective. No one provides figures to support the difference, but the observation is repeated insistently.

What does come through clearly is the contempt for anyone who presumes to lecture from the outside. The response is always the same: go back to your country. A country which, in the case of the accused, is this one.

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One fact remains that unsettles everything. The accusation of being anti-Spanish only works if Alba Chen is Spanish. Whoever launches it is certifying her belonging with the very gesture that seeks to deny it.