Spanish culture includes a reflection of the various people that occupied Spain throughout its history and its unique position at the intersection of the Mediterranean, Africa, and Europe. Spain has experienced remarkable and rapid cultural changes over the last decades. However, it remains a normative society where people values and follow their traditional culture. Hofstede has a cultural model that helps understand the country's cultural values by providing the scores in five dimensions. Identity is an essential factor when analyzing the culture of Spain since it provides an insight into the nationality, religion, and ethnicity of the residents of Spain. Each culture in Spain indicates a particular identity developed from people's characters. This paper aims to discuss the different customs depicted by Spanish culture regarding cultural values and identity.
Cultural Values
Hofstede's cultural value dimension is a model used to understand cultural differences. The model contained the proposed four dimensions, which provides a framework for analyzing cultural values. The dimensions include individualism-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity-femininity (Hofstede, 2009). Researchers have developed a framework to group countries together depending on their value scores, which considers identical political systems, common philosophical influences, similar religious practices, beliefs, related historical background, shared language, and geographical proximity (Minkov et al., 2017). Each dimension will describe Spain's cultural tendencies and provide a numerical rating of its cultural values.
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Power Distance
The power distance dimension expresses the attitude of the culture towards inequalities existing among individuals in the society. This dimension addresses the fact that people in society are not equal (Hofstede, 2009). It is described as the degree to which the members of the organizations or institutions with less power within a culture suppose and accept the unequal power distribution (Beugelsdijk & Welzel, 2018). Power distance also represents the level of equality and inequality and the level of upward mobility and hierarchy within a specific culture (Huang et al., 2019). Concerning leadership, power distance may represent an individual’s orientation towards laissez-faire leadership and a culture’s tendencies towards authority. Spain has a high score of 57 in terms of power distance (Huang et al., 2019). The score suggests that Spain is a hierarchical society where people in prominent positions extract more benefits than those not in authority (Beugelsdijk & Welzel, 2018). Spanish people accept a hierarchical order where they accept their places in the community without any further justification. Hierarchy in Spanish organizations is seen as a culture where the boss is the ultimate ruler, and they influence every decision made in the organization (Beugelsdijk & Welzel, 2018). If the boss loses interest in a subordinate staff in this culture, they can organize to fire them without any other consideration. Besides, it is a culture that reflects inherent inequality. In the hierarchical culture, it is difficult for employees to confront their superiors since they do not take negative feedback from workers seriously.
Masculinity-Femininity
Hofstede describes the masculinity-femininity dimension of cultural value as representing two models of thinking in the traditional values on different role distribution according to gender (Hofstede, 2009). The masculine culture emphasizes competition and achievement. Similarly, feminine culture focuses on quality of life, relationships, and nurture (Huang et al., 2019). Therefore, a higher score on this dimension suggests masculine culture, which indicates that the culture is driven by success, achievement, and competition. Success, in this case, is defined by the most victorious individual in the field, beginning at school and progresses to occupational life. On the contrary, a lower score suggests a feminine society whose central values are quality of life and caring for others (Beugelsdijk & Welzel, 2018). A feminine culture regard quality of life as an indicator of success in society. Spain gets a 42 in this dimension, a lower score indicating an overall feminine culture (Huang et al., 2019). Excessive competition is not appreciated in this culture, and polarization is not well considered. Spanish children are taught how to search for harmony instead of striving to be biased in their quest for success. Spanish people sympathize with the needy or weak people. In terms of management, bosses gather the views of their subordinates before making decisions. The country opposes the culture that allows the winner to be the ultimate ruler.
Uncertainty Avoidance
The dimension describes how well individuals can cope with anxiety and how society addresses the uncertainty of future occurrences. The ambiguity of future occurrences leads to several uncertainties, and different cultures have adopted varying ways to deal with the uncertainty (Beugelsdijk & Welzel, 2018). The score on uncertainty avoidance is the degree to which the culture feels threatened by unknown and unclear events leading to the creation of institutions and beliefs to avoid such situations (Minkov et al., 2017). Spain has an uncertainty avoidance score of 86, which defines it clearly (Beugelsdijk & Welzel, 2018). Spanish people tend to avoid laws and rules that make life difficult for them, and they have a rule for everything. They are regarded as the second noisiest nation globally. People in this culture avoid confrontations since they believe it leads to more stress. There is great regard for undefined, ambiguous, and changing situations.
Long Term Orientation
This cultural value dimension explains how different cultures sustain the connection with their past while addressing some of the current and future issues. A low score on this aspect suggests a normative society where they view societal changes with doubt since they maintain time-honored norms and traditions (Minkov et al., 2017). Cultures that score high in this dimension encourage efforts and thrift in modern education to prepare for future changes. Spain obtains an intermediate score of 48 in this dimension, but they are generally a normative culture (Beugelsdijk & Welzel, 2018). Spanish people have more concern for the present than the future. They look for quick results without much regard for the future. Besides, Spanish culture needs a well-defined rule and a clear structure that prevails against the more relaxed life they live (Minkov et al., 2017). Spanish people prefer quick results and quick actions over long-term critical thinking. This culture loves to party, and the only long-term information they maintain in their brain is when the next fiesta will be held.
Individualism
The essential aspect addressed by this dimension is the extent of interdependence among individuals in a society. It explores whether people regard their self-image as "we" or "I." In a collectivist culture, individuals take care of themselves as a group. However, in an individualist culture, community members take care of themselves and their family members only (Minkov et al., 2017). Spain scores 51 in this dimension (Beugelsdijk & Welzel, 2018). Spain is a collectivist society compared to other European nations, while it is an individualist society compared to the rest of the countries in the world. As a result, Spanish people have been able to link with other cultures, especially non-European (Minkov et al., 2017). Employees consider teamwork a natural phenomenon, and they work naturally without any extra motivation from the executives.
Identity
Cultural identity is defined as the sense of belonging towards a specific culture. An individual develops a sense of belonging through a shared set of beliefs of living, principles, or companionship. Generally, identity can be regarded as owning the culture and its several components of gender, religion, language, nationality, and ethnicity (Hall, 2020). Owning the culture indicates that the members embrace all the norms and customs that are adopted throughout history. Therefore, cultural identity helps individuals identify with others sharing similar belief structures and traditions (Hall, 2020). It also reveals a person's heritage. Cultural identity is more of foreground or foundation on which other components are established (Hall, 2020). Individuals embrace the norms and traditions exhibited by their grandparents and parents and adopt them as they grow. Cultures continue to embrace these adopted practices making them their identity, which helps them understand other people sharing the same beliefs and traditions.
Aspects of cultural identity include religion, ethnicity, and nationality. Nationality is the status of belonging to a particular country (Hall, 2020). It determines their identity since a person adopts the culture of their birth nation. Ethnicity is the status of belonging to a particular social group having similar cultural and national traditions. People in the same ethnic group share a similar culture, society, history, language, ancestry, and tradition (Hall, 2020). Religion is a set of principles and moral beliefs relating to the existence of God. It is an essential contributor to identity since it aids in determining the moral and personal features of an individual (Hall, 2020). Religion plays a crucial role in shaping cultures. Besides, cultural identity has a direct effect on the performance of children in education.
Spain is a country located in southwest Europe between Portugal and France. It occupies about 85% of the Iberian Peninsula and borders the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. Every state or region in Spain has a distinctive cultural identity that residents value so much. Most of the things perceived as uniquely Spanish always have a regional or local origin (Clegg, 2018). For instance, southern Spain, particularly Andalucía, is known for the flamenco style of dance and music. Spain has a unifying and strong national identity despite the diversity of its culture. The subject of national identity is a delicate topic in Spain since several disparities exist within the nation. Depending on the regions, people choose to value their local identity more than national identity or vice versa. In regions such as Catalonia and Basque Country, affiliation and loyalty to an individual's local identity are more crucial than national identity (Clegg, 2018).
Moreover, there is an interrelationship between language and identity in Spanish culture. Most Spanish people speak the local dialect when conducting their daily activities, including businesses. Notwithstanding, most Spaniards speak Spanish, and almost everybody within the country that speaks local dialect understands Spanish since the latter is the official language in the whole country (Clegg, 2018). Other widely spoken dialects include Aranese, Basque, Galician, and Catalan. Catholicism is the most prominent religion in Spain, although 2% of the population are religions other than Catholicism (Clegg, 2018). Besides, more than 26% of them are non-believers or atheists. The Christian tradition of this culture is evident in several aspects of its daily life, including city monuments, local celebrations, and street names.
Conclusion
Conclusively, Hofstede's cultural dimensions depict several cultural values in Spanish culture. The model analyses the culture in five different dimensions to obtain an insight into its cultural values. The power distance dimension is used to define society in terms of the dominant leadership type. The Masculinity-femininity dimension analyzed the culture in terms of role distribution according to gender. More dimensions described in the essay include uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and individualism. The essay has also provided an overview of the cultural identity aspect of Spanish culture. Various aspects used to analyze the cultural identity of Spain include nationality, religion, and ethnicity.
References
Hofstede, G. (2009). Geert Hofstede cultural dimensions. http://taylortraining.com/clients/mcc/Hofstede_Cultural_Dimension_Explained(external).pdf
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Clegg, J. (2018). How are the Spanish Language and the Culture of Spain Connected? Superprof. https://www.superprof.com/blog/interesting-info-on-spanish-culture-and-language/.
Gerlach, P., & Eriksson, K. (2021). Measuring Cultural Dimensions: External Validity and Internal Consistency of Hofstede's VSM 2013 Scales. Frontiers in psychology , 12 , 1056.
Hall, S. (2020). Cultural identity and diaspora (pp. 231-242). Routledge.
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