Well, the history of Spain is very complex, and we still have many of the same underground conflicts that led us to our last civil war, so it's pretty difficult to write anything like "Spain in a nutshell" referring to mentality or culture.
If I had to say something, I'd say that we have a love-hate relationship with our cultural heritage and history, always comparing with our neighbors (mainly blaming the government etc) but, at the same time, we understand that the mixture of lifestyle, history, culture, language and weather differences is not something easy to find outside. I think there is like a nation wide unreasonable pessimistic consciousness on Spain by Spaniards, always supercritical regarding themselves until someone else appears on a public forum to criticize:
- The colonial empire.
- Racism and discrimination in Spain today.
- The "unique" relationship with some peripheral regions.
Then their little nationalistic egos go completely apeshit.
People here see things that are fucked up and assume it's basically the worst thing ever, but the thing is, aspects of society are fucked up everywhere and it's really a grass is greener sort of thing. Quality of life in Spain by most objective measures (health/happiness) actually rates pretty high and most people who have gone to live elsewhere may prefer to come back.
Also, we have some customs that do not help to improve our image in protestant-driven-work-ethic countries (read The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber), most of them are just inherited from the past, but lost the real purpose behind such practices. Like, when you find everything closed on Sunday, this made sense in the past because everyone was in church, and it was kind of a holy day, but very few attend mass nowadays.
Bookmarks