We Are Not From Here: The Stand-up Show Speaking to Mallorca’s Newcomers, Long-timers and In-betweeners
When you move to Mallorca from somewhere else, there is a moment that arrives quietly. It often comes months or years after the move, once the practical things are settled and the novelty has worn off. It is the moment you realise you now live between worlds. You are not entirely from there anymore, but you are not fully from here either. You translate yourself in small ways every day. You learn when to hold back, when to speak up, when to laugh even though you are not entirely sure you understood the joke.
It is this space that comedians Xavier Jallois and Abdullah Osturk walk straight into with their tour We Are Not From Here. The show has toured across Spain to full houses, bringing together people who have, in one way or another, experienced the quiet strangeness of being new somewhere. And, it has sold out so quickly in Palma that a second performance has had to be added.
Xavier grew up in Chile. He is half French and moved to Spain six years ago to study film. Abdullah moved to Madrid at twenty three from Turkey on a full scholarship to study economics and finance.
Neither man imagined that the core of their adult life would be telling jokes to strangers in a second language.
“It started very small,” Abdullah tells me. “I took some film and scriptwriting classes, and I tried an open mic in Istanbul just to see. I was terrified. But after that, I thought, okay, maybe something is here. Later in Madrid I found out there were English open mics. I went to one. Then another. Then I met Xavier.”
For Xavier the start was equally intense.
“My first open mic felt like jumping out of a plane,” he says. “The first part was just silence. Pure silence. Then the last joke worked, and the room laughed, and I thought, alright, we can try again.”
They laugh about this now, but anyone who has ever stood in front of a room and attempted to be funny knows that silence is not neutral. Silence is brutal. Which is why many comedians describe the early days as a kind of compulsion. You only continue if something in you needs to.
Madrid Comedy Lab
Madrid does not have the obvious international comedy identity of Berlin or Amsterdam. Yet something has been building.
Abdullah and Xavier are the guys behind the Madrid Comedy Lab, the city’s only dedicated English language comedy club. It has become a cultural hub for people who communicate in English but live in Spanish: Students. Newcomers. Brits. Americans. Italians. Germans. Latinos who find Spanish comedy culturally familiar but linguistically difficult. Spaniards who prefer the rhythm of English humour. People who simply like to laugh.
“It is one of the most diverse rooms I have ever seen,” Abdullah says. “You have people from everywhere. And everyone is there because they want to understand each other.”
Xavier agrees. “There is something beautiful when a group of people who have nothing in common except that they did not grow up here all sit in a room and laugh about the same thing.” This is where We Are Not From Here was born. Not from a theory. Not from a grand idea. From small rooms where people needed somewhere to belong for an hour.
The Show: Big Feelings, Small Observations, Shared Recognition
They talk about arriving in Spain and not understanding social rules. They talk about language misunderstandings. They talk about restaurant bills that take twenty five minutes to arrive. They talk about being called guiri. They talk about the elasticity of time in Spanish culture. Abdullah laughs when this comes up. “I still struggle with punctuality here,” he says. “If I go to meet a lawyer at ten, and they arrive at eleven, I think, what is happening? But then at the same time, I sit in the sun with friends on a terrace and I think yes, I understand this life.”
Xavier adds, “The pace of life here is different. It can be frustrating. But it can also be good. You learn something about yourself in it.”
The humour is observational, but beneath it is something more vulnerable: the realisation that belonging is not something given. It is something negotiated.
Mallorca, perhaps more than many places in Spain, is a patchwork of identities. People come here to start again, to retire, to escape, to work a season, to raise families, to reinvent themselves. Some stay six months. Some stay thirty years. Some never learn Spanish. Some become more Mallorcan than the Mallorcans.
But almost everyone remembers the moment they realised they were not from here either.
The show does not patronise this. It does not suggest that everyone should blend in perfectly. It suggests instead that belonging is made in moments: shared laughter, shared awkwardness, shared understanding.
And it does something else. It opens the door to talking about immigration, culture and identity without turning those conversations into conflict.
“Comedy can say things that are hard to say directly,” Abdullah explains. “If I make a joke about people assuming I am Moroccan because of my name, it is funny, but it is also saying something important about how people see each other.”
Xavier puts it more simply: “If it is funny, people laugh. It does not matter where you are from. Laughter is universal.”
The Reality of Touring: Self-Produced, Self-Run, Always Adapting
There is no glamorous tour machine behind this show. They are doing everything themselves.
“We handle ticketing, promotion, posters, everything,” Abdullah says. “And then we also have to deal with the venue. Sometimes the lighting is strange. Sometimes there is background noise. Sometimes the sound system is not right. You have to adapt to each new room.”
Comedy is especially sensitive to environment: a slightly too bright room. A ceiling that is too high. Chairs arranged too far back. These things change the rhythm of laughter. Every night is a recalibration. But Mallorca has welcomed the show strongly. The first date in Palma sold out swiftly enough that a second earlier show was added.
“There is something very warm about performing to people who also moved,” Xavier says. “They understand the feeling. You do not need to explain everything.”
So Who Is the Show For?
Not just foreigners. Not just expats. Not just English speakers.
“If you have ever felt like you do not fully fit in,” Abdullah says, “then the show is for you.”
If you have lived here long enough to have a favourite bakery but still occasionally mispronounce a word, the show is for you.
If your children correct your Spanish. If you love Mallorca but sometimes need to breathe. If your family back home does not understand your life here. If you have tried to explain sobremesa to someone and realised there is no direct translation.
This show is for you.
As Abdullah said as the interview drew to a close:
“Come. Laugh. It is not about where you are from. It is about being human in a place that is new. That is something we all understand.”
Tickets available now. https://fienta.com/we-are-not-from-here-live-in-mallorca-2
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