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Email in a Spanish office, and what stays off it
Marta's rule, comments about clients by phone or in person but never by email, is not peculiar to Cierzo. It reflects something real about how Spanish offices use writing. Spanish working culture leans heavily on talk. Things are often agreed by phone or across a desk and then confirmed in a short email, rather than negotiated in long written threads. A good deal of what an English-speaking office would put in writing, a candid assessment of a client, a disagreement with a colleague, a complaint about how a project is going, is handled in conversation, and putting it in an email can read as escalation. Writing is for the record. The register of email also differs. Messages to clients and the administration open with Estimado or Estimada and close with Un saludo, Saludos cordiales or, more formally, Atentamente, and they use usted. Within an office, Hola, a first name and a quick Un abrazo or Gracias are normal. What Alex drafts for Don Ramón, short, sincere, formal, with the apology in the first sentence and the substance offered in person, is exactly the right shape. Spanish apologies in writing tend to be brief; a long one sounds like an admission of something larger. The last point is about reply-all itself. Spanish has no special word for the disaster, but everyone has a story, and responder a todos is said with the same weary tone as in English. Íñigo's advice, apologize quickly, keep it short, and tell your boss yourself before someone else does, would hold in any office in the world. What is local is the way it ends: with the client turning it into a joke, and the joke becoming the story people tell about your first month.