[anthk]

I am from Spain. May I introduce you to the old "picaresca" from The Lazarillo of Tormes?

We Hispanics gave the world great people, but we got lot of hustlery and bribery since the Roman Empire. Italy is like that too.

A lot of great Spaniard writers said that they were fed up of Spain and the Hispanic culture as a whole, from Pio Baroja to Estaislao Figueras.

https://wikiless.org/wiki/P%C3%ADo_Baroja?lang=en

And Pio Baroja should be the ultimate Hispanic figure, the one who put all the Christian bullshit away and fully embraced Humanism and scientific Enlightenment from the 16th Century as the students in Salamanca did, but, you know, we might have been cursed, because even if Spain was the proto-embracer of Humanism and Enlightenment, (even before Lutherans, y'all HN readers please look up "school of Salamanca"), we burned our crap down three centuries later.

[chespinoza]

I'm Chilean and I read Lazarillo de Tormes when I was 12 at school, do you know that the Roman Empire also influenced the British isles and every place they conquered? What's your point? Christianity also isn't particular to hispanics countries, robbery was a way of life in northern tribes too. The statements here I've read are really ignorant, you can't generalize hustlers and bribery 'cause in every part of the world you'll see people doing that, educated and uneducated, the lack of values is not a cultural thing, saying that is racist, you can vote me down all you want, that won't change the level of ignorance I'm seen here in HN.

[anthk]

>the lack of values is not a cultural thing

More than the lack of values, the "getting away with that". I am not saying we are all thiefs, but little rascals/rogues doing "alegal" stuff.

It happened in every side of politics, no matter left or right, rich or poor, smart or fool.

OFC there's corruption in Middle Europe, I could say a lot of the French and the Germans, along Icelanders and the Danes. But at least they keep the ethics and resign. Here the Spanish verb for resign "dimitir" it's a Russian name, right? Because no politician would do their shit when they are caught.

Here in Spain by mouth everyone hates the cheating politics, but IRL, in the back, everyone agrees with them and they admit they would do the same in they had their place.

If Spain fixed it shit together, it would be a torch of Enlightenment for the whole Americans. But we need a slight change of mentality.

No, I don't mean we should became Nordics, as we are great in many terms, we are the 1st country doing organ donations. We should be like that on corruption, denouncing every crap, no matter left of right.

People gets politics in Spain as if they were a soccer match. And that's ridiculous.

[cplanas]

And yet Spain (and Italy) are relatively stable first world countries. Damn, I live in the US, and I would say there is way more hustlery here than back in Spain.