[Redway]

Flo. Chinyere constantly telling Nigerians not to move to the U.K., that Spain’s the best. If Spain worked out for you, that’s great, but as far as I can tell it’s definitely not the better of the two places to live if you’re someone who needs history, continuity, legacy and a broader all-round sense of community across generations. There’s none of that whatsoever in Spain.

Spain might sound like a more attractive location on paper to the U.K.; a more tropical destination, sure (that-it is); but rarely outside of the U.K. and maybe certain parts of America and Canada do you see such concentrated, long-standing enclaves of community, across many different tribes, including deep presence in Peckham (more Yoruba), Houston (more Igbo) and the official Igbo community in Liverpool, the oldest official Igbo community outside Igboland (possibly even in the whole world, because this was in 1935, when suggestions of a pan-Igbo identity were still in the early-ish stages, even in Nigeria itself. Ọ̀gbakọ́. Yam-festivals. International slavery-remembrance day (23 August), weekend-òwámbẹ́s, a strongly-established second-generation generation all being brought up in very similar but very different ways, and with its proximity to and even influence of more general established black-community culture, as well as American/British cultures in less racially-defined ways. The carnivals, the festivals, the networking-spots and platforms (e.g., Igbo Cultural-Support Network/ICSN). The restaurants and general easy availability of Nigerian-food access, even if you don’t live in a major city. The huge number of churches, from Pentecostal to Nigerian Anglican/Catholic ones to Assemblies of God. Spain ain’t got none of that. And quite-frankly, the U.K. is at-least on-par with the U.S. as having the best TV in the world (Nollywood and Nigerian movies in-general, at-least the actually-well-written ones, being another supplementary frontier). Spanish TV is dead. Nice beaches, warm weather, nice holiday-spot, a fraction of what the U.K. has in terms of overall Nigerian community (and it really is only a fraction), maybe a bit cheaper, and that’s it. I don’t think an enormous number of people from some of these more intertwined backgrounds would actually wanna live there. It could be quite isolating for many.

And I'm going to guess there isn’t the range of particular Nigerian ethnic groups (Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Edoid/Bini, Urhobo, Efik, Kalabari, Igala, you name it) in Spain. No mixed-race communities borne of the back of mixing, all with their own story to tell and part of the chapter to add. It seems sparse and not built on strong intergenerational foundations, no matter how nice an all-inclusive 2-week trip to Ibiza is or the culture of siestas (which the U.K. could do with a bit more of).