Prohibido Fumar

In Spain, the New Year comes with a revolutionary new law. No, not gay marriage. Smoking is now banned in workplaces and restricted in bars and restaurants.

If you’re not familiar with how fond the Spanish are of their smoking—and particularly their smoking in pubs and restaurants—it would be something akin to New York City banning taxi cabs, L.A. banning cosmetic surgery or Texas banning the contraction “y’all.” It’s just hard to imagine.

In Europe, only the Greeks smoke more than the Spanish. Today, the average Spaniard smokes about 2,300 cigarettes a year. Bars and smoking and drinking and chatting and eating, and smoking while eating, and drinking while smoking and smoking some more are all a major part of daily life for nearly everyone I knew in every part of Spain I visited in 1990. In my dormitory cafeteria, my fellow students smoked and flicked ashes onto the tile floor during meals and thought it very odd that I didn’t. Whenever Real Madrid would have a match, the toxic smog was so thick in the TV lounge that you literally couldn’t see the screen from the back of the room.

Apparently, bars larger than 100 square meters are allowed to have a separated smoking area like those glassed-in smoking lounges in airports that look like a steam room at the gym. The Spanish must be flipping out over this. Perhaps there has been an evolution, but in 1990, the concept of a non-smoking section did not exist. My Spanish friends would get indignant when I asked them not to smoke in my own dorm room.

Smaller bars can decide whether to go totally non-smoking or totally smoking. Interesting concession. My guess is that many Spanish bars will shrink to less than 100 square meters to avoid the restrictions. Perhaps larger bars will subdivide into two or more businesses, each with less than 100 square meters of floor space. So far, 90 percent of the smaller bars have opted to allow smoking.

The scourge of cigarette smoking in Spain was one of the things that cemented my allegiance to the United States of America, even while I became aware of how screwed up our country is in many other ways. Actually, I should be pledging my allegiance to California, a state with hard-hitting anti-tobacco campaigns, high cigarette taxes and a long-standing ban on smoking in public places—all of which have produced tremendous successes in reducing cigarette smoking.

Given that Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors nearly wiped out the entire population of indigenous Americans with influenza, measles, smallpox, slavery and outright genocide, it’s just a bit of poetic justice, a smidgen of karmic retribution that it was Columbus who introduced tobacco to Spain in the 16th century. The country has been chain-smoking ever since.

Let's all try to be understanding if Spain seems a little moody and jittery in 2006. If they get through this, we'll be better able to enjoy our sangria and tapas next time we make a trip to the madre patria. To that, I raise my copa and say "¡Salud!"

Tags: Spain, smoking, ban, tobacco