I was recently joking about the culture shock of moving all of twenty miles from village to city when I first came to cardiff. it triggered something I'd fictionalised in a short story.
Characters and details are fiction, but I know an Englishman who was made uncomfortable when seeing a girl from a similar village. And when I was a student at the old College of Education, some university lads did get beaten up for a similar incident.
He liked the Spanish people; in some ways they reminded him of his mother's family in the Garw valley. The Spaniards were more laid back than the Welsh valley folk but had that strange mix of privacy and curiosity that had so confused him as a youngster. That, and their sense of identity that included country, area, town or village and even street sometimes as well as 'family'.
He realised it was the new millennium and all that, but he'd still no sooner risk a flirtation with a Garw valley girl than a Spanish senorita. It might all be different now, but he had his memories of how the valleys were when he was a youngster and his first visits to Spain in the late seventies. The Spanish men seemed so intimidating that he'd never have dared approach their sisters anyway. He had, however, really fancied Gwenda, the daughter of his Gran's neighbour. He was fifteen, shy, studious and had already found he enjoyed a wide range of books... and he was a wally, a geek, a nerd or whatever the current insult had been. He had vague recollections of being called a 'Quentin' at some stage but after a few years the insults tended to merge. Apparently, what put him beyond the pale in Cardiff High was liking maths, astronomy and chess!
Gwenda didn't know he was a Quentin and it wasn't until he went to college he realised you were not completely stuck with the identity thrust upon you by your peers. With hindsight he realised that to Gwenda he was an exotic species - a city dweller from the great metropolis of Cardiff. There were not that many cars in Garw in the tail end of the sixties and the seventies and not many Cardiff visitors. He simply didn't think of those things, he was just astonished that Gwenda talked to him and acted like the girls in school did when they were with the 'in crowd' boys. He might have been shy but he wasn't stupid. Ever time he visited his gran with his family he'd spend as much time with Gwenda as he could. He'd sent her a jokey postcard once; a way of letting her know when he was next visiting. She'd been thrilled. The girls at school had apparently been 'dead jealous'. Imagine that; girls his age who were jealous of Gwenda because of him! It seemed a postcard from Cardiff was almost as good as a love letter to the romance starved classmates in Gwenda's school.
Despite his heady success he hadn't even had the courage to kiss her before he was politely warned off making advances to a Garw girl. Apparently, outsiders were supposed to keep their hands off 'their' girls he was told by a group of local lads. It was only "a friendly warning, like"; it wouldn't be fair to beat him up if he really hadn't understood. He knew it was stupid; they didn't even like Gwenda as she was seen as a bit of an outsider - "a bit of a ponce" as they kindly explained, but rules were rules. He'd been scared and took the advice to heart. He also decided that explaining a ponce was actually a pimp and not a snob was not a good idea in the circumstances. It was a few years later that he appreciated how lucky he had been.
One of his friends (a fellow Quentin) became a student at Cardiff University. Simon told him an astonishing tale about some of his fellow students. They'd heard that the College of Education had a new bar and some very attractive females who might not be averse to their attentions. They discovered an unofficial segregation in the large open plan bar with women one side and men the other. The lads were intent on drinking, as were most of the women. Their tentative approach to grab a table on the female side was welcomed by the seemingly brazen womenfolk who flirted outrageously. They didn't actually 'cop off' but a fun time was had by all. Unfortunately, on their way home they were set upon for the crime of chatting up 'our women'!
Chris realised that the Garw youngsters had treated him with more fairness than their older, more educated counterparts who were going to end up as teachers. Chris was nothing if not a quick learner. He'd never tangle with any female who was seen as territorial property.
Luckily he didn't complain.