Spain’s childhood: Forced church, chores, and family labor

What we hated as kids: Mass, visits, and working for free

There was a generation that became expert at hiding boredom. Not in class, nor on the bus: in the living room of someone else's house, back against the wall, while their parents had coffee with strangers the child would never see again. That lasted an entire afternoon. And you couldn't say anything.

Childhood as a chain of obligations functions almost like its own literary genre. Going to mass on Sunday, kneeling after communion and pretending to pray; eating whatever is served until it's gone; spending the summer with a vacation workbook; and, when required, helping out in the family business. What today is called work-life balance was then simply called being a child. These are the things we hated as children that no one asked if we wanted to do.

Mass, processions, and visits that lasted all afternoon

Kneeling after communion and staying there for a few seconds with your head down, as if thinking deep thoughts, was a choreography many mastered before multiplication tables. Some note that in their town, people still went to mass in the nineties and Holy Week processions continue to take place. Going to church was mandatory, period.

The other ritual was the visit: eating at friends' or grandparents' houses and dying of boredom while feeling superfluous. Several participants remember it as torture. The final blow came in summer: at the beach, without friends, counting the days to return and run to see real friends. Swimming alone wasn't an option. It was torture.

Chard, beans, and brains: The dining table as a battlefield

There is a scene repeated in almost every home: a plate filled to the brim and the child sitting before it, spoon unmoved. The punishment trinc relentless logic: if you don't eat it now, you'll have it for dinner tonight; if not, tomorrow for lunch; and so on until you finish it. This is the account of one participant in the thread.

The catalog of pavor includes boiled beans with a drizzle of oil, vinegar, and salt, and even worse when made into an omelet. Also chard and green beans al dente, a ration-sized stew, breaded brains, and testicles that some still remember disguised under the name canguro.

Some offer a curiouser explanation: that the body eventually craves the nutrients it needed as a child. Hence, some of those children who hated chard now eat it with olive oil and salt, to the point of not recognizing themselves.

Santillana workbooks, sun digestion myths, and vomiting trips

Summer wasn't a break; it was another form of school. Vacation workbooks piled up on the table, and the beach came with fine print: don't go in the water. No running, jumping, or getting wet, because blood turns to water. Two and a half hours in the sun without swimming. The digestion myth was strictly enforced and allowed no rebuttal.

To the travel chapter were added kilometer-long trips to the coast, with vomiting on curves and cured meat sandwiches to kill hunger. And other less epic but equally long moves: a whole month in Belgium at a great-aunt's house, in a village with more sheep than people, with school starting in late August before returning to Spain.

Ages 10 to 18 in the family business for €50 a week

Here, the issue stops being folklore and enters economic territory. There are accounts of teens who worked for the family from ages 10 to 18: in summer, from 8 AM to 10 PM, Saturdays included; during the school year, every afternoon after lunch. No contract, no insurance, and tools that weren't exactly harmless. The pay: €50 a week. Zero days off.

The detail that breaks any domestic statistic is the end. When dividing the inheritance, the business went entirely to other siblings, without a cent for the one who had spent half their youth there watching friends head to the pool. No one disputes that a teen should help out; the line between training and exploitation is something else.

What remains of that discipline

The most benign reading says that this forged character and taught the value of effort. The least accommodating response is that depriving a child of age-appropriate pleasures leaves a mark that doesn't fade with years. Both can be true at once.

The harshest account is of those who broke at 18, found a summer job—fighting fires, low pay but with rest—and left. Logically, that stage cost them social relationships with peers: friends rarely counted on them. Others, however, have ended the journey elsewhere: what weighs heaviest now isn't the obligation, but no longer having those who imposed it.