the spanish aristocracy's penchant for fascist totalitarianism has not changed one iota in over a thousand years.
it's a country that has never interested me to visit, personally.
Discussion
I can understand almost genealogically why you feel this way.
Spain despite being considered a bête noire is still a very interesting case to think about it.
It’s a perfect case study of how a declining aristocracy turns into tyranny when its defenders cannot argue for it in face of its attackers. Which, mind you, I don’t consider to be automatically a bad thing.
true. it may actually reflect on the spirit of the people to be prone to rebellion, that excessive force is required to contain it.
idk what people are like on the iberian peninsula, but the farmers out here on madeira are certainly quite stubborn folk.
oh yeah it's also notable that the Fatima apparition event is very important to iberian catholics, which is somewhat at odds with Rome
I’d like to also note the rocky relationship between the Vatican and Opus Dei.
oh, i knew this word, from the Samuel Barber (i think) no, maybe that Agnus Dei (Lamb of God). hah, this is Opus Dei that i know:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB9lObWclFQ
i thought the name of the branch that operates in portugal that it's about Fatima.
and yeah, i dig the vibes of the madeiran catholics. just not my thing.
I’m talking about a catholic institute mostly based in Spain called Opus Dei (the Work of God in latin), that aims at linking catholic laymen together from different professions and walks of life and foster a community between them where they help each other. Opus Dei provides means to help achieve this goal. Some of their members were ministers in Franco’s government in Spain. I invite you to read more about it, it’s quite interesting.
And their relationship with the Vatican knows its ups and downs.
From the few iberians I met and befriended for a while, they’re stubborn and they always competed with us frenchmen that they know how to protest and riot better than us.
yeah, i get the whiff of that with most of the portuguese i have met so far. passionate and fierce people.
the differences between cultures is so fascinating. bulgarians, and serbs, they also compete with each other, on the west they are very cranky and irritable, so much so that the bulgarian word for serb is related to the word for "irritable" or "itchy", and the serbs love to emphasize their eliding of the L from the name to call them "boo-gars" and yes, actually, this is a reference to the Bogomil cult, which was a weird christian sect that practises, essentially, swinging. the bulgarians are very obsequious and taciturn, and were a huge problem for the ottomans because of their habits built from so many imperial occupations, from the byzantines, to the austro-hungarians and the ottomans, and today, the clandestine opposition to brussels is very easy to see if you just ask random bulgarians what they think of the EU.