MySQL Collation issue

[Doctor Luz]

Regular expresions don't work.

I've checked everything, collations, caracter sets...

I've seen pájaro is stored in the DB as: 70 C3 A1 6A 61 72 6F which is 7 bytes long. This is the utf8 code. These 7 bytes, viewed as latin1 appear as pájaro
However actually pájaro in latin1_spanish is 6 bytes long 70 E1 6A 61 72 6F

It looks like utf-8 data in DB is being taken byte by byte as latin1, ignoring character sets and collations. When I search for pájaro this word is translated to pájaro and then I find records because there is a match. However when I search for pajaro there is not any match.

I don't understand.

I will try to change character sets and collations to latin1 to see if I have the same problems.