Picture the outline of Spain. Be honest, did you include Portugal?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My mental picture of “Spain” is the entire Iberian Peninsula. Is yours?

2

I pictured the entire Peninsula. Even now I have to make sure I don’t include Portugal.

I should know better.

3

I…uh…actually imagine Portugal INSTEAD of Spain.

I don’t know why. Just, in my brain, Spain is the small one.

4

I didn’t get much beyond “it’s kinda liver-shaped, isn’t it?”

5

I got it right, and even put in a few cities.

6

My mental image is a picture of the entire Iberian peninsula, with Portugal smudged out or demarcated in grey.

7

I include Portugal, but it’s really no different than when I include Canada when I think of the outline of the United States. :wink:

8

This, except I picture Spain as violet and Portugal as yellow. There’s probably a mid-70s elementary school geography book to blame.

9

I think this experiment would have worked better if you’d spoilered the bit about Portugal instead of putting it in the title.

10

I picture it correctly, thanks to a '70s Mad Magazine article, showing Spain as a bull’s head. (Also, Nevada is a slot-machine coin dispenser, and Jordan is a guy in desert robes.)

11

Entire of Iberia, but I defend it by picturing it during the period between 1580 and 1640.

12

Oh, God, I did it, I did it! I’m so ashamed. Spain, I’ll never do it again, I swear! Let me prove it to you! I can get better, I know I can! You just have to give me another chance! Please! I’m begging you! I swear on my mother’s grave that I’ll never think of Po… that country every again!

13

I had a jigsaw puzzle of the (1970s) European map, pieces shaped like the countries (minus tiny places like Andorra) so I always think of Spain and Portugal as separate entities.

I had a jigsaw map of the US from the same company, and they basically said “fuck it” with the smaller New England states, so I mentally combine Vermont and New Hampshire, or Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island…

14

I don’t think it’s Spain who should be annoyed. It’s Portugal. Spain gains territory, but Portugal ceases to exist.

I did it too.

15

I’m not really sure. To be honest, I think of Spain just like France, Germany, and Poland…a squarish blob with jagged edges. With or without Portugal, it seems pretty accurate.

16

I pictured them together, but Portugal grayed out.

17

Pretty much just Spain, but that’s because I lived in Portugal for two years. Still, the tendency to just see the Iberian Peninsula is understandable.

18

Entire peninsula. I KNOW that Portugal hooks onto the west coast somehow, but I can never remember if it’s sitting on part of Spain or hanging off part of Spain, so I just throw it into the whole picture.

19

I pictured the entire penninsula, but with the border between the two.

20

I exclude Portugal from my mental image of Spain. I exclude Northern Ireland from my image of Ireland. I include the Maastricht appendix in my image of the Netherlands. I’m very precise in my mental map-imaging.