Pure-blooded Spaniards more or less resemble northern Italians (trust me, I know several and I have been to Spain); moreover, its not hard to find natural blonds in far northern Spain, and gingers are common in Galicia (NW Spain), but whats fucked up for Spaniards is the fact that when people hear or see the words: "Spanish speaker", they immediately think of swarthy, stumpy, greasy mestizos, not the people of Mediterranean or Alpinid phenotype
Similar things are happening to French speakers - worldwide, there's more nigger French speakers than ethnic white French speakers; I remember seeing a commercial I think about Google, promoting translation app; the girl was a Spanish speaker and the guy was a French speaker - he was black as fuck. It seems we're slowly getting to the point where French speaker is synonymous with black the way Spanish speaker is synonymous with mestizo/indio