Height
 

What is your height? In a group of Spanish and English are you obviously English because of your size or do you blend in reasonably well?

I am 5ft 3in so am relatively short for an English woman yet I feel like a giant with some of my Spanish friends. My OH is 6ft 2in so he really does stand out like a sore thumb.

One of my neighbours is less than 4ft so it looks really funny when my OH stands talking to her. Her chairs have the legs cut off so that her feet can touch the floor.

What about you?

Rosemary

Re: Height
 

An interesting subject especially regarding the Spanish where there seems to me and quite a few others who have mentioned it, to be a huge increase in their height over the period of only two generations.
I have heard many ppl.incl.the Spanish themselves put it down to the improved diets since Francos time, but I think there must be quite a bit more to it than that.
However as you say many of them still appear to be quite a bit short compared to most N.Europeans.

Regarding their chairs I find them quite a problem myself being so low down as well as uncomfortable and lacking enough padding.
I have dodgy knees and also carry a few extra pounds so getting back on my pegs after sitting a while can often be a problem.
Also some bars use the very cheapest of plastic chairs which may be ok for the average Spaniard but are a big no no for me.
I honestly lost count of the number that have collapsed under my weight leaving me flat on my back on the floor, not only myself, but occasionally my pals also.
First thing I do now if possible is to double them up one on top of tother making them higher as well as stronger and safer.

I could go into the subject of Spanish beds as well, as supplied in cheap hotels and hostels.
My own personnel trail of destruction is by now well into double figures. :o

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I'm quite tall for a Spanish woman: 1.73 m I think that's about 5.8? My mum is maybe 1.62 m My brother and father are only 5-10 cm taller than me, so is my British husband. Fortunately I'm not keen of high heels, so no problem with not wearing them and protect my husband's ego at the same time. This also means that I can walk by myself, I have to cling to anything and anybody when I wear those things in special occasions :lol:

It's quite rare that I have to look up to Spanish women, younger or older than me -or British for that case. I'm almost a head taller than most of my Spanish friends and some of my British ones, but I never thought of me as being particularly tall: that would be any woman over 1.80m They asked me to play basketball at school though.

But other than my height... I'm brunette, brown eyed and get an easy tan when I get a bit of sun on me, so definitely Mediterranean looking, but for some reason people think I look French :confused:

You can now find 1.90 and 2m long beds; when I was young they were shorter and my feet were hanging over the edge a bit, so they are manufacturing bigger furniture. It used to give me the creeps because I thought something under the bed would go for them... :rofl:

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Well having my tootsies sticking out of one end was only a minor problem compared to having my more amply proportioned regions disappearing through the centre of the bed in the middle of the night with one hell of a bang waking up half the building and leaving me with my arse end cooling off on a bare tiled floor. :o

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I met a young Spanish man at the hospital who made my OH look short. Unfortunately he is already suffering for his height because he walks hunched over talking to his comrades.

Rosemary

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I'm only 5' tall but look down on my elderly Spanish neighbours who are 78 & 82 years old.

But I'm going to a meeting in the Ayuntamiento on Friday and always dread it, as for 2 hours I have to sit on a hard plastic chair where my feet are dangling in mid-air and I end up with pins & needles in my legs :(

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I am 6' 1" and had many problems with bed length. I ended up making my own in Gib and transported it in kit form on the roof rack of my car across the frontier.
Customs officer wouldn't let me cross because he said it was wood, I said no a bed, he then sent me to the office.
A woman officer came out and she was taller than me, I explained the problem of bed lengths and she agreed with me and sent me on my way.

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British people think my OH looks French too :rofl:

There is definitely a generation of short Spaniards, those that grew up during the early decades of Franco where food wasnt good. Funnily enough my OH's great grandad (raised pre-Franco) was 6ft 1, her Dad only 5ft 3, and her brother now 5ft 8.

Among my generation, around 30, there is no difference in heights between Brits and Spaniards (and Americans). I read this in a scientific paper once, suggesting that short Spaniards are purely down to poor diet in childhood

A different paper also said that there is no difference in skincolour between a Spaniard and a North European when there is no sun (comparing in winter or if a Spaniard lived in the UK)

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There are a lot of elderly ladies (mainly) in our village that are very short and also have very bandy legs, I guess that's also down to bad nutrition - rickets?

On the plus side, I don't feel such a midget here as I did in the UK!

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Most probably

Nutrition was notoriously bad in Andalucia with many kids being rasied on bread and olive oil. Things were no better pre-Franco either as Andalucia still had a system where the landowners basically owned the peasants as they bought and sold them with the land and then kept them on the border of starvation so they'd come to work each day

There is an excellent film about this, but in Italy called Novecento by Bertolucci. And how Italy changed during the turn of the century. One of my favourite (and longest) films

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What utter rubbish. Many people from Africa for example are tall despite lack of food.

Its genetics not food.

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I am 5' 10" and blonde, fair skinned (I'm often asked if I am German by Spanish people who don't know me) and my OH is 6' 2" and dark. We often have problems with too short beds when staying away from home.

I have a good Spanish friend who is very petite and when she introduced us to her mother and some other family members, they craned their necks to look up at us and her mother said we were giants!

Just as well she never met my father, he was 6' 6", and both my sister and brother are taller than me.

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OK, you must remember that I have a degree and masters in biochemistry and genetics :)

Its not as simple as you think. Genetics play a part, but basically genetically speaking, Western Europeans are incredibly similar. We are mixtures of the same tribes. In Africa you have tribes that seperated tens of thousands of years ago and havent mixed since which is why there is actually more variety among the African peoples.

Some people like to quote that there is a North African influence in Spanish people, but this isnt true either. Higher %s of people in France or the UK have genetic markets indicative of North Africans than Spaniards do.

Oh and if you think Spaniards are short then go and watch their basketball team! They are European Champions and Olympic silver meddalists and the 2nd best team in the world behind the US

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So why are the grand-daughters of the little old ladies I mentioned earlier at least a foot taller than them? That's a big leap in genetics in just 2 generations!

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The Queen is only 5'4 and her ancestors were never malnourished:)

I am 5'7 and spent a lot of time looking up to the Dutch when I was in Holland. one of the tallest race in the world. They are also one of the healthiest but are big smokers.

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Were the fathers mothers and grandfathers of these girls all tiny people also?

Re: Height
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height

Wikipedia is a help sometimes. You see there is no difference in height between young Spaniards and Brits

One of the things I hate people saying is that people are "evolving" either to be taller, cleverer, fatter, whatever

This isnt the case at all. The human race hasnt evolved for the best part of 100,000 years. If you transported a human from 50,000 years ago and put him in modern society then he would grow up and be like everyone else

It is human society and the environment that is constantly changing and developing.

As for jackytoo, yes some people are tall and others short :) But there are no great differences between the different European nations among generations from the past 35 years where noone has grown up hungry. There are great differences between the older generations for this very same reason

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As I said earlier the difference is so great it's difficult to understand. Most Europeans have been getting progressively taller with each generation but none to anything like the extent of the Spanish from what I have seen.

Another thing I noticed during my years in the Canaries was a difference in ppls.height between different islands those in El Hierro appearing particularly short as I recall.
Whether this is down to diet over the years or genetics or both, I'm not too sure, however the islands were settled at different periods of time by ppl.from different areas of the peninsula so maybe this also had a bearing on it.

My prediction for the future,for what it's worth, is that the ever increasing height of ppl. in the Western world at least, will now begin slowing down or maybe even stopping as an ever decreasing amount of time is spent in an upright position.

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El Hierro is probably so small that they depend on fish for their diet. Fish is very healthy but doesnt contain natual growth hormones that humans can use.

I dont expect humans to get that much taller, unless our diet changes again through increased processing and industrialisation.

For example, it could all become GM and from cloned animals who are pumped with artifical growth hormones and antibiotics. This could effect the way we look physically. Indeed some cite the artificial growth hormones (used since the 50s in the US, banned in Europe) as the reason why American children reach pubity a couple of years earlier than Europeans, when we effectively have the same genetics.

Man boobs (Moobs) are apparently caused by the increased amount of oestrogen found in processed foods e.g. in soya, palm oil (used as fillers) and the plastic lining of microwaved meals :)

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OH and I are just about the same heights as you both are.

Up until now OH has always moaned that he cant have a decent bath as usually they are small but our house now has a lovely big bath.

He calls me a midget sometimes but I feel tall when I see some people.

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However, I see them growing even bigger, much as giant vegetables do. Lying down doing nothing stuffing their faces and growing taller and wider at a rate of knots.

Just look at the size of young peoples feet these days. Girls with size 9´s and boys with massive size 14´s. Whats that all about?

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Don't know the explanation but the older spanish are definately much smaller on average than other Europeans. We used to live close to Tiempo Libre where all the spanish pensioners go on subsidised holidays. They always went about in large groups (took ten of them to buy 1 bottle of water in the supermarket:rofl:) Very noticable that they were all about 4'6:D

A Friend's Son plays basketball for málaga. Don't know his height except to say very tall. His parents are both about 5'5.

Re: Height
 

Well I can only speak about the people in my local village and, yes, generally the older men are also short - they don't seem to have the bandy legs as much as the ladies though, their sons and daughters are noticeably taller and the teenage and the twenty-something grandchildren taller still. As I said, that can't be down to genetics in such a short space of time.

For example, I am only 5' and look down on both abuelos next door - they often talk about the terrible hunger when they were young - he had to leave school at 10 years old, doesn't read & write and can't tell the time - he worked on the fields apart from a stint in the army and also a spell working in a factory in Germany. He still works on the campo every day at 78!

His three children - in their 40s - are taller than me and are all overweight and the grand-daughter who is 19 is a good 7 or 8 inches taller than me, she has a two-year old daughter herself - it'll be interesting to see how she turns out.

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Yeh, it obviously can have a queer effect.

I watched a documentary about villages located around some huge lake in Russia into which the run off from a pill factory had been dumped for several generations.

Apparently the water from the lake was the main source of drinking water and also believed to be the reason why most of the male population in the surrounding villages had turned more than a little bit ginger beer.

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If we were in the UK I would say look at her feet, much as we look at a puppys feet to judge how big it could grow to. Unfortunately Spanish parents dont have the choice of footwear that is in the UK so cram their kids feet into small narrow shoes from day 1 thus restricting their growth.

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My God, you come out with the most biggoted tosh I've ever heard. You should be reported for hate crimes!

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No it's just that they wear away with time :p

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Yes, well I've yet to find a pair of trainers or shoes in Spain that I can get my great oversize pasties into.

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Where do you guys shop? I've not found any difference

I'm a UK size 11, ok not so big. But half the time they had run out of this size in the UK. I think because they used to understock it.

They always have sizes 45 (11) and 46 (12) in Spain wherever I go (e.g. El Corte Inglés, the sport shops, Camper). If you are bigger than that then it will be difficult. Maybe ask in the "tallas grandes" section of El Corte Inglés.

On the other hand my OH is a UK size 3 (35 in Spain) and could never find shoes that fit in the UK. She doesnt have small feet because her parents shoved her into ill fitting shoes though!

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I'm a little bit bigger than a normal 12 and very much wider too.
My lad struggles to get into a size 13.
The Spanish must have very skinny feet as well as being on the short side, so I've never seen any extra wide fittings either.
It's a bit of a struggle even back in the UK but luckily I can get it sorted on the internet now via the "Big Mans Shop" where I get most of my stuff.
There's another one quite good also called "Big Ozzy".

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Heigh ho,heigh ho............:rofl::rofl:

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Which one is jacky then ?

Not HAPPY I suppose. :rofl:

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Genetics and diet make sense to me and I'm still able to observe things around me without going to specsavers. I've watched young people of British stock going to Spanish schools around here, lots and lots of them, and saw them years later, going out with their Spanish friends.

If I hadn't known that they had come over from the UK 10 to 20 years earlier, I would have said that they I couldn't tell them apart from their Spanish mates. They look about the same height too.

And I believe that old people shrink, not just in Spain but everywhere. I'm not looking forward to that.

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Not just shrink exactly, much more a case of changing shape, as far as I'm concerned.

As I've lost height I seem to have expanded around the middle for some strange reason.

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Only a personal observation, but it seems to me that Spanish people must be getting taller and bigger if available shoe sizes are anything to go by - I take a size 40 in shoes and at one time found it very difficult to buy shoes here except in the "tallas grandes" section of El Corte Ingles with a very limited selection. Now they are available everywhere. The narrower fitting they mostly come in is ideal for me.

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Thanks Lynn, you made me realise how big my feet are! :p

I'm 2 inches shorter than you and still use one shoe size bigger!!! But for me the shoes are still too wide as my feet are long and thin, I have to try several models in order to get a pair that hold them properly... otherwise it is easy for me to leave my shoes behind when walking, and you should see me wearing high heels... I also have the Greek feet, not the Egyptian one, so one size is too big and the other too small.

Thanks, mum, I didn't get your eyes and hair colour, but at least I got your feet! :rofl:

Seriously, I think that only the 15% of the population have Greek feet, and it used to be a thing to be proud of, it comes from the Greek statues of gods and heroes! They are supposed to distribute the weight better... but it's difficult to find comfortable and nice dressing shoes.

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My eldest son (nearly 15) is about 6' tall (in old numbers) yet is by no means the tallest in his class where all the others are Spanish.

I suspect that, as a bold generalization, the Spanish are a lot shorter and, perhaps, a lot rounder :p. But this is certainly changing.

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Keeping in mind that the average ladies size in the UK is a 16... No, I see more slim older ladies in the UK than in Spain, so the rounder bit is true :lol:

As many of you said, in the last 2 generations we seem to have grown a lot :thumbsup: , but you can also see a lot of fat kids and young adults, which is very worrying as this was not the rule before :thumbdown:

Re: Height
 

Spaniards normally explode at around 50 but are thin before that. Brits (if they are going to be fat) normally get fatter much earlier.

Most 25-40 year old Spaniards are thin, but as we've said the latest generations seem to be fatter.

However, last week there was a group of young British 20-somethings on holiday in our block, sunbathing by the swimming pool every day all week. My MIL who is visiting said she'd never seen such fat young people, although she wasnt suprised as the girls had eaten 2 big packs of crisps before lunch :rofl:

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Sorry! At least you can wear high heels if you can find some to fit, I never do as they make me so tall I think I'd look like a drag queen.:D