What does 老外 mean if the Chinese speaker is in a foreign country? In the following answer over 知乎 to the question 在西班牙生活是怎样的体验?:


  8-中西文化差别很大，前几天，我废了好多力气去解释什么是mianzi，还有因为文化差距，也很难跟老外走的很近，大部分都是中国人跟中国人，老外跟老外。老外很喜欢夜店，迪厅，什么的，答主还是不喜欢这些。这里karaoke 都是中国人开的，打不过的顾客也是中国人


I know 老外 means a foreigner. But in this case, it is awkward to call someone as a foreigner, since it is the answerer who is a foreigner (the answerer is Chinese who lives in Spain).

So my questions are:


Does 老外 mean a foreigner who is from the standpoint of the speaker? So is it OK to call Spainard as 老外 even if the speaker lives in Spain, as long as the speaker is not Spainard?
Or does 老外 mean non-Spainard foreigners (American, German, etc...) in this context?
Does 老外 mean a foreigner who is from the standpoint of the speaker? So is it OK to call Spainard as 老外 even if the speaker lives in Spain, as long as the speaker is not Spainard?


Yes 老外 is relative to the speaker's nationality or ethnicity, not their geographical location. If the speaker is a Chinese person living in Spain, then 老外 covers all non-Chinese people living anywhere in the world including in Spain.

Also note, technically 老外 means foreigner i.e. people with different nationality, but in real life usage it's most used for 'foreigners with dissimilar appearances from the majority of Chinese people'. For example, it's technically correct, but non-idiomatic to call Japanese 老外, neither does it sound intuitive to call a Chinese-American 老外.