who went and studied in Barcelona. He shagged a bunch of girls there, but 100% were students and tourists from other parts of Europe/elsewhere. He reported the Spanish girls were extremely closed off to foreigners and stuck to tight social circles. Said every other playboy he knew there said the same. IIRC he knew one foreign guy who'd been there for 3 years and had a long-term Spanish girlfriend... apparently met via social circle.
I know this might sound political, but when I referred to Spain, I wasn’t thinking of Catalonian girls. To me, Catalonian girls behave more like southern French girls—probably because they share similar cultural roots historically.
As for the rest of what you said, Chase, which I do not doubt to be true (the social circle dynamics are definitely a thing in France too, though I have personally never found them to be a serious barrier because in clubs they sooner or later leave their general group and split up)
Yet, all too often do I see men complain about X and Y women being difficult (we all remember RooshV ranting about Denmark, even writing a book (!) about it... well all know what happened when I lived there....).
It is actually pretty common to hear local men complain about their local women (heck Scandivians too even - I complain about them myself - I find them boring and unsexy in behaviour but I guess I have my reasons). We have for instance heard plenty of French guys complain about French women—actually more often than we hear Italian men complain about Italian women. Ironically, Italian women are probably the easiest for me to connect with and pull - maybe it is because I just click with them?
Anyway, I have a short analysis to present.
First, we need to distinguish between two different groups of men here: local men hitting on local women, and tourists hitting on local women.
Starting with commonalities: what do tourists and the stereotypical "Southern European guy" have in common? some form of sexual hyper-aggressiveness—direct game (different is how it is delivered and in what state the men are in, southern men do it sober, tourists do it drunk... lol).
Let us discuss the tourist hitting on local girls more, and we shall start with the stereotype - "the British Bloke" (the biggest tourist group in Spain). The British guy comes in with banter and cheeky lines, which might work where he is from, but it falls flat on French, Spanish, or Italian women. Trust me. My friends and I have observed this for years. British, Scottish and Irish men (but you can add American men here too) often struggle with these women because their courtship styles clash hard with local norms.
Then there is the Southern European guy—just very direct, often aggressive, but still charming (no banter and stuff - more stereotypical "romantic"). And when most men in an area behave that way (as you rightfully pointed out), women develop a defense mechanism (Anti-slut defence for example). Basic sexual economics—see Roy Baumeister’s work on the subject, which I think you are already familiar with. So they will usually go in direct, and try to hard screen for easy women, while women will use this (being aggressively hit on by men) to increase their sexual market value (or as Sociologist Catherine Hakim would call it "Erotic Capital" - inspired by Bourdieu of course) in order to, increase their chances of making men commit long term (remember, familly values are important down there, and the further south, the more important - Catholics are not anti-sex per.se, they are mostly just pro-familly). And therefore, things gets hard for these men. They have to either play the numbers game, or commit (over time) to get the girls.
Now, back to the "English speaking" tourist: so when a drunk British tourist (or American, Irish, Scottish—they are all the same to many of these "local" women) charges in with banter and direct lines… and/or sexual direct style or caveman escalation, it simply won't work. And here It is not just the default ASD (anti-slut defense) that kicks, which is higher in such environments due to local male behavior (France being the notable exception due to what I call "French Transcendental Feminism" - but that's a different story)—but also because their approach clashes with the social frame of the girls they hit on (in addition to these men often being annoyingly drunk). The way "flirting" is often understood in English-speaking contexts—cocky-funny, bantering, cheeky lines—just doesn’t translate well here. This also goes for Scandinavia, although totally uncomparable to southern Europe (Scandinavia it is all about being explicit - sexual prizing cranked up to 11 mixed with basic rapport).
If you want to succeed with these women, go indirect. Use DHV (demonstration of higher value), humor, social proof, verbal tools like NLP, or even my own style of game (I know it sounds like bragging - but sex talk works great on these, although with adjustements of course- yes all my pulls from Spain involved sex talk!), and boom—they are into you. And it is not that difficult really. Been to spain like 10 times, to different location.
Calibrate to your circumstances. Women are women, and they all work the same, but the way you convey the attractive traits can differ. That is where culture and sociological factors come in. I remember back on mASF people where all about psychology (and for good reasons). I remember making a case for anthropology and sociology. Turns out, they both really have place in our field - a very important one indeed. A good PUA is a good sociologist/anthropologist - he learns the tools to analyze his circumstances, and the better a PUA he is, the less time it will take for him to crack the code and recalibrate to his new circumstance. Whenever I head to a new place, it usually takes me 1-3 nights out to really figure things out (depending on how much past knowledge I have of their culture and how much their culture resembles one I have dealt with in the past). The first night is usually just "scouting for good venues" and "acquiring data", which I break down the next day in order to make a viable game plan.
P.S. To this day, I have seen plenty of French guys hook up with British girls (heck, one guy even pulled a Brit at my place when we randomly teamed up to wing a two-set - I had pale skinned celtic looking one! Yay!). But in all the years I have lived there, I have
never seen a French girl hook up with a British, Irish, Scottish, or American guy. The only exception is Canadian men—mostly because many speak the language (e.g. Quebec) and therefore share some cultural roots, but they are by no means rocking it.
PSS: Without disclosing too much personal info: one of my coachig clients lives in a major Spanish city and is rocking it. During none of our sessions did he ever complain about the local girls. He surely had some calibration issues that many normal guys would face, but he never considered them "harder" than elsewhere.
-Teevster
