All I got was this lousy straw donkey

April 3, 2018 2:07 PM

Standard British (and maybe other places) comedy trope- people go on holiday to Spain/the Med and bring back a straw donkey. But did it happen IRL? And why?

Plenty of people I knew when I was small (in the late 80s and 90s) went on the standard package hols. But I can't remember any of them bringing back donkeys,or seeing one in their houses. Is it one of them telly tropes that's a shorthand, or was it a thing that happened? Gracias.

posted by threetwentytwo to Grab Bag (8 answers total)

Yes, it happened in the late 1960s and early1970s, when foreign travel first became affordable for working class people. I remember my aunt and uncle and their friends all bringing back straw donkeys from Spain in about 1970-71. By the 80s and 90s, they were no longer popular which is probably why you don't have any recollection of it.

But 40-odd years ago, they were really popular souvenirs for people to bring back, along with sombreros (yes, I know, they're not Spanish but still ...) and castanets. People were less sophisticated in those days, and cultural stereotypes meant that people associated those things with Spain.
posted by essexjan at 2:15 PM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Straw donkeys, crappy plastic flamenco dancers, painted plastic castanets... definitely real, and very much the tacky souvenirs of choice for my parents' generation.
posted by pipeski at 2:26 PM on April 3, 2018

crappy plastic flamenco dancers

Those are *traditional*. People used to put them on the TV set, but lately that's become difficult. Fortunately we're working on a solution.

...No things made with seashells? Because I used to see lots of aesthetic abominations made of seashells at seaside towns back in the 80s-90s.
posted by sukeban at 3:18 PM on April 3, 2018 [6 favorites]

My gran had castanets with painted flamenco dancers on them from when I was a kid in the 1970s. I think my Mother-in-Law still has some of the seashell horrors, they should be on a long list of tat that grandparents get brought by small children which they can't then bin.

Also, cstross should put seashell gift horrors in his next Laundry story.
posted by biffa at 4:06 PM on April 3, 2018

We definitely brought back the castanets, and may have brought back a straw donkey when we went to Marbella in 1972. I don't remember for sure: I was only three.
posted by scruss at 5:01 PM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Don't forget the bullfighter poster with the name hand-stamped in a different font! I just realized last week that mine, some 40 years old, is in the background of all of Mr Corpse's conference calls.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:52 PM on April 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: I'm glad it was a real thing- sukeban has reminded me that I had a very treasured seashell thing that housed a Virgin Mary statue that my brother bought back from his holidays!
posted by threetwentytwo at 5:25 AM on April 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

I went to Spain a few years ago and a friend specifically requested I bring her back a straw donkey, because her mother had had one from a trip to Spain probably made in the 1960s or 70s. Though I searched high and low, I could not find one anywhere.
posted by Polychrome at 10:06 AM on April 4, 2018