We don't live every family in a house miles away from work, schools and friends. Many of us live in cities, within flats, with lines of metro or bus close by. Our children go walking to schools. Roads are fine and maintained so regular vehicles can be used instead of 4x4, bikes are respected. Roads have sidewalks to walk.
Also in Europe in the west we have narrow or paved historical roads, and in the east we have many poor quality roads. In both cases smaller (non-huge) car is beneficial.
Cities center are transitioning to no-cars, so paved historical roads is not an issue.
Europe is quite a mix also, maybe is an issue in your area, not in Spain.
If you come from somewhere like the USA, Canada or Australia, it's hard to imagine that's even possible. Actually, it isn't possible in the suburbia's those countries have built to house their people. But it turns out it is not just possible if build your cities differently, it's better in some ways. It costs less because there are no cars, you waste far less time in commute, and its healthier because people get more exercise (they use their legs to move around).
"They have ditched cars" is an exaggeration of course. A lot of them still have cars. But most days, they won't use it. Daily commutes are done on foot, or bike. Long distance commutes have a public transport leg. It's hard to get your head around unless you live there for a few weeks.
Car culture is recent and pretty uniquely American. I lived in a pre-car city with a lot of ~8ft lanes and "double lanes" that were converted into one-ways to accommodate modern cars and trucks.
It's true they predate them, but then so do most American cities. When the car arrived the American cities opted to expand their cities, giving everyone their own block of lawn to live on. The European cities could have expanded in the same way too. Utrecht went as far as to build freeways to make it possible. But in the end, they opted not to and Utrecht in particular turned their brand new freeways into canals.
> Car culture is recent and pretty uniquely American.
American certainly has it's own unique culture, but I think we are discussing a specific characteristic of that culture which it shares with other countries like Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The density of most cities in those countries is so low owning a car is mandatory. Existing without one is almost impossible. I know because live in one. Quoting a Japanese exchange student who lives with us for a while - to her surprise even with two cars getting to everywhere we had to be in an average week was a major logistical exercise. In the countries @n3storm is talking about, car ownership is completely optional.
e.g. London.
And it is a bad thing for cars. It's just not a bad thing for people, because good alternatives to cars exist.
Even among the American general populace, most have traveled to a country besides Canada.
A majority of Americans have traveled to two or more countries:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/12/most-amer...
It became a bit of a discussion point during the ride with the those I visited.