Expat Interview: Cecilia Avanceña
Expat Cecilia Avanceña came to Spain in 1987 on a scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This native of the Philippines translates Spanish, French, German, English and Tagalog. She is also an artist, with a PhD in Sculpture. You can learn more about her work here.
CiM: Why and when did you move to Spain?
CA: I moved here in 1987 because I had gone to France and I was supposed to be going back to France to take translation and interpreting. I was waiting for the school and the permits. And all of a sudden the Spanish embassy calls and says “Hey, we got a deal for you. Take this test, and we’ll see what happens.”
So I showed up at the Spanish embassy, and there were about 60 people. What I was thinking was “I sit down. I take the test. I don’t lose anything.” I had been speaking Spanish since I was a child anyway, because that is what we spoke in my home.
Then about two days later, a friend who was working at the Spanish embassy called me and said, “Ok, when do you want to go?”
And I said, “What do you mean when do I want to go?”
“You got a scholarship to Spain!”
Actually, my office had kind of an arrangement to always be informed by the embassies about these scholarship programs, because we were working in language services. There were four vacancies to France and a waiting list of 120. And there seemed to be 20 vacant slots for Spain.
CiM: And why did you choose Madrid?
CA: If I was here for languages, Catalonia was going to be a problem. I have family in Barcelona. But if I was supposed to be here to perfect what I was supposed to be studying, I didn’t want to get confused. I mean, I was confused enough as it was because I was working in the French department, and all of a sudden they pulled me into the Spanish embassy. I speak Spanish, but that was not my work.
CiM: What big differences and changes did you experience when you first moved to Madrid?
CA: Well in comparison with France, this place was more user friendly. I think my point of view was culturally colored. I mean, I grew up in the Philippines, and the culture has a point of intersection with Spanish culture, which we didn’t have with French culture. So it was more like you were an outsider in Paris. But you come to Madrid, and it’s like living on your front porch. You just took that tent out and pitched it in the yard, but it’s still your house.
CiM: Do you feel that you have become Madrileña in some way?
CA: It’s not exactly becoming a Madrileña. It’s more like I feel more at home anywhere I go now. Sometimes I can be a Madrileña, and sometimes I can choose not to be. I mean there are things I like, and things I don’t. It’s simply like that.
CiM: What habits have you come to adopt?
CA: I cook typical Spanish dishes and that’s one thing I’m always grateful for, because I think in a certain way it saved me a lot of illnesses, because it’s so healthy. Cooking here is fun.
CiM: What are some things you miss about your hometown?
CA: I don’t miss my hometown! I miss my father’s hometown, Mahatao, because that is on a beautiful island, which is so unspoiled: Batanes. I’ve always loved going there, but it also means the sacrifice of not having any connection—no internet, no phone if you run out of batteries and they run out of electricity. But it’s a lovely place.
CiM: Do you have a favorite hangout in Madrid?
CA: One of the most interesting places that I’ve been to and I keep going back to from time to time—not every day—is the national library. It’s got a great collection of books, and also some of the best and cheapest food in the cafeteria.
CiM: How long have you been translating?
CA: I was recruited as a conference assistant in 1984 and began translating ad hoc then. I got into the PICC translators’ corps the following year. My languages are French, Spanish, English, German and Tagalog. I was really destined for this, despite all my claims to the contrary. I’m a fine arts graduate and I studied sculpture, but one of the things I found out about sculpture is that it requires infrastructure and you can’t be mobile—at least with conventional sculpture.
CiM: Do you feel like an expat?
CA: I suspect you do for some years or so. As an employee “por cuenta ajena” it can certainly feel that way. But when you’ve started a business of your own that pays taxes, it begins to feel like “rights and duties.” You get involved with other people, hear their problems, and then you’re not so different. At the very least, you’re in the same boat. Later, when you’ve been translating for ages, you notice you’ve been a bridge for as long. Your mind’s always between one cultural package and another, and, logically, a bridge belongs to all the shores it touches—not on any one of them, but it’s useless unless it’s crossing. You see your home as actually the planet, and never did I feel more identified than when astronaut Pedro Duque said, “It’s so beautiful from up there that you forget all the dirt.” It’s a real change of perspective.
For that matter, I envy a colleague from Saint Petersburg who worked in Houston—she linked up the Russians on the Mir with ground control. That’s the furthest I know language services have gone.
