When I started climbing the business ladder in Spain, I had to walk walls anddown corridors ofwhose walls were lined with companies, either private or public entities, and one of the things I noticed is that Spanish employees, unlike American ones, hardly smiled, expressly the civil servants, unlike Americans. So, almost whenever I stepped into an office area or shared an elevator in these old chaotic or new office buildings to fix my paperwork before I hired asomeone who could do leg workerwork for me, I found long faces who barely greeted me, or openly looked away and didn’t wish to look at me, let alone smile, despite I lookedin spite of me looking straight at them. I said hello, but there was no way I could change these mortuarysulky visages, and during my visit to the Ministerio de Hacienda or Interior, they appeared to be inlooked as if they were at somebody’s wake.