Spain

E

Social Structure

Up to the 1960s Spain had a highly traditional class structure that was dominated by agricultural workers: generally peasant farmers in the north and landless farm laborers in the south. Both the industrial working class and the middle class, which was employed mainly in public service or commerce, were much smaller than those of other western European countries. A tiny, often aristocratic, elite made up of large landowners and a few industrialists held most of the wealth. Upward social mobility was minimal and depended primarily on the acquisition of land.

Since the 1960s major change has occurred in Spain’s social structure. The rapid decline in the importance of agriculture decimated the rural workforce and destroyed the social significance of landowning. Meanwhile, the industrial working class has grown. As elsewhere, it has begun to merge with the lower reaches of the middle class, a greatly expanded group employed in a vast array of semiskilled, nonmanual occupations. Like industrial workers, this labor force is employed mostly by small firms or government bodies. Only in Madrid, Barcelona, and a few other cities do significant numbers work for large companies.

The upper levels of the middle class also have grown considerably, with the increasing importance of managerial and professional occupations. The most successful members of this group have become part of an upper class now defined purely in money terms. This class is composed of leading figures from the worlds of business and finance, as well as a few sports stars, popular singers, and media celebrities, and the remnants of the landed aristocracy.

F

Way of Life

Although the way of life in Spain has undergone considerable change since the 1960s, it retains a number of traditional and distinctive features. Perhaps the most dramatic change has occurred in the status of women. Into the 1970s women remained legally tied to the home. Now most younger Spanish women take up a career of some sort, and the number of women in responsible positions is rising, though slowly. Relatively few young women are willing, or able, to devote the long hours their mothers did to household tasks. Yet despite the increase in working women and a rapid decline in family size, the family has retained its central position in Spanish life. According to polls, Spaniards regard the welfare of their family as by far their highest priority, and they spend the greatest portion of their leisure time within it.

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Spaniards also have much more contact with their neighbors than is usual in developed societies. This gregariousness is encouraged by the fact that the great majority of Spaniards live in apartments, usually as owner-occupiers. Around a fifth of families have a second home, typically in the town or village of their origin, or at the coast. Car ownership is rising toward the level common in western European countries. By contemporary standards, however, Spaniards in general seem rather unconcerned with material possessions, preferring to spend their money on social activities such as eating out.

Food and drink play an important part in Spanish life. Regional dishes remain a source of pride, and typically use local ingredients, often vegetables, strongly flavored sausages of various types, or fish. Spaniards in general eat an uncommonly large amount of seafood. In the form of tapas (appetizers served with a premeal drink), regional dishes are an essential element in informal socializing. At the same time, fast food has made inroads into Spanish eating habits, meat consumption has grown markedly, and beer has replaced wine as the country’s most popular alcoholic drink. Little change, however, is apparent in the most distinctive feature of Spanish meals: their timing. The preferred hour for lunch remains 3 pm, while evening meals rarely begin before 9 and may go on past midnight.

Although socializing in its various forms dominates Spaniards’ list of preferred leisure activities, sport is increasingly popular among the young. The most popular spectator sport is soccer, followed at some distance by basketball. Cycling, track-and-field events, and tennis also attract considerable interest. Bullfighting is enjoying renewed popularity, but only a minority of Spaniards follows it seriously and more than a few actively oppose it. A more genuinely national Spanish field sport is hunting, mainly the shooting of rabbits and game birds.

G

Social Issues

At the root of most major social issues in Spain is the country’s unemployment problem, which since the 1970s has been the worst in the developed world. Especially hard hit are women and, above all, young people. Moreover, benefits for the unemployed are meager by European standards. As a result unemployment is closely associated with poverty, which remains relatively common in Spain. The lowest average income levels are found in the rural western part of the country. But most of Spain’s poor live in cities, where poverty is often related to other social problems including homelessness and drug addiction (see Drug Dependence).

Social welfare experts believe that the use of illegal drugs is widespread in Spain, especially among the unemployed. Drug use, in turn, is linked to the country’s rate of HIV infection, the highest rate in Europe, as well as to crime. Assaults, burglaries, and other offenses often connected with drug abuse have become a major concern, although Spain’s crime rate is low by international standards. However, crime in Spain has risen in recent years and also changed in nature: Organized crime is now a significant problem in Madrid and along the Mediterranean coast.

Severe understaffing of Spain’s police forces and social services makes it hard to respond to these issues, although awareness campaigns have helped slow down the spread of AIDS. Some regional governments have attempted to reduce poverty by providing income support for the most destitute. But the central government policy has primarily sought to attack the problems indirectly, by continuing to reduce unemployment, an approach that has had only limited success.

A new issue came to prominence in Spain in the late 1990s and early 2000s: racism. Until then there was little evidence of hostility toward foreigners in Spain, which has traditionally been a country of emigrants rather than immigrants. Apart from the gypsy (see Roma) community, which continues to encounter considerable prejudice, Spain’s population was remarkably homogeneous (uniform) in its ethnic makeup. That situation began to change with the arrival of considerable numbers of immigrants, mainly from Morocco and other parts of North Africa, and from Latin America. These immigrants suffer both at the hands of unscrupulous employers and as the target of resentment from poor native Spaniards. In 2001 the government introduced a restrictive and discriminatory Aliens Act, but that policy was reversed when a Socialist government came to power in 2004 and granted legal status to immigrants who were working.

IV

Culture of Spain

The first great flowering of literature and the arts in Spain coincided with the country’s brief dominance of Europe—and much of the world—a period that lasted approximately from 1550 to 1650. In painting this so-called Golden Age (Siglo de Oro) witnessed not only the genius of El Greco and Diego Velázquez but also a string of lesser masters. In literature its major figures included Miguel de Cervantes as well as a host of other writers, several of whom were inspired by Catholic mysticism. In architecture and philosophy the country also produced major works during the Golden Age.

After the Golden Age a decline took place in Spanish power and in its cultural life. A long period of stagnation was broken only by a few individuals, notably the painter Francisco Goya, who worked in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Reaction to Spain’s stagnation came primarily in the form of cultural expression, namely by the Generation of 1898 (see Spanish Literature). This literary movement represented the most significant response to Spain’s disastrous loss in the Spanish-American War of 1898 and to what the writers viewed as Spain’s general backwardness. Among its best-known members was the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno. At around the same time, modernismo—a style similar to art nouveau—flourished in Catalonia. Its leading advocate was the architect Antoni Gaudí. Spanish composers Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados also achieved international recognition.

The first decades of the 20th century are considered Spain’s Silver Age. In addition to the Generation of 1898 and Gaudí, its representatives included Pablo Picasso, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century; surrealist painter Salvador Dalí; and surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel. Among the greatest literary figures of the 1920s and 1930s were the poets Federico García Lorca and Vicente Aleixandre. Aleixandre was later awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

This fertile cultural period abruptly ended with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and the subsequent dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Censorship and a prevailing atmosphere of conservatism stifled the arts for four decades. With the reestablishment of democracy after 1975 came an upsurge of creativity that continues to the present day. Varied in its influences and styles, it encompasses fields in which Spain has traditionally been prolific, such as literature and painting, as well as other fields such as sculpture, film, music, and dance. Emblematic figures include film director Pedro Almodóvar, sculptor Eduardo Chillida, architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava, and operatic tenor Plácido Domingo.

A

Literature

During the Golden Age of Spanish literature, from about 1550 to 1650, Spain produced novels, plays, and poetry of outstanding quality and lasting influence. Cervantes wrote Don Quixote (1605), one of the earliest and greatest novels, which changed the face of fiction. Dramatists of the Golden Age included Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón, and Tirso de Molina. Spain experienced a renewed period of literary vitality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For more information, See Spanish Literature.

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