I can be, if you don't server everything through databases and app servers. Remember that HTML was really designed to work reasonably well in the age of dial-up modems, so it flat screams if you use it correctly.

(Also note that coming from the age before CSS dramatically helps both speed and code complexity - table-based layouts were certainly abused, but they had their advantages, too - and should still almost always be used for actual tabular data!)

Have a look at this, if you want a more modern way to build sites this fast: https://jamstack.org/generators/