There is also a religious element to suicide that cannot be overlooked.
Also, I Spain your view of Spain is tainted. I think very few people would choose an average city in Spain over e.g. Copenhagen where 20% of the Danish population live.
Also, I Spain your view of Spain is tainted. I think very few people would choose an average city in Spain over e.g. Copenhagen where 20% of the Danish population live.
In reality the average Spaniard isn't experience the majority of that, as those are perceptions that arose from the rose-tinted glasses of tourists. Most tourists don't know about the Eurozone crisis, the regional disparity, and the consolidation of Spain's economic growth engines to 1-2 cities.
Spain is a good developed country with a decent QoL as is reflected by it's HDI and developmental indicators (and the fact that it has outpaced historically richer and more developed Italy is a testament to that), but tourists almost always take a rose-tinted view whereas locals almost always take a negative view.
And I think this is the crux of the issue with how the "World Happiness Index" is used in American discourse - in the US almost no one vists Europe or other parts of the World for extended periods of time and most Americans lack familial or social ties in Europe. As such, idealized images of Europe ("a socialist paradise" or "white Christendom under siege") have taken hold in popular discourse and are used as proxies for the American culture war.
If you're a tourist, you get to experience only those parts. If you live there, you have to experience the other 99% of the life also and it's not so great.
I’d never want to live in perpetual summer. Seasons brings joy.
Even this is a typical myth that I often hear from Scandinavians. In fact different parts of Spain (or England or France) have also clearly demarcated seasons.
If you want to experience the joy of Autumn then the crisp, long days of an English Fall are incomparably more distinct than the unrelenting darkness that’s almost indistinguishable from Winter in Scandinavia, for instance. And when Spring comes to the valleys of the temperate regions of Spain, then the blossom and explosion of wild flowers is miraculous.
But like I said, from preschool onwards Scandinavians are indoctrinated with the belief that they live in the best of all possible worlds, and no amount of actual experience can ever dent that notion.
From the gently self-deprecating nature of your answer I’m guessing you’re British - and this is indeed the whole point of what I’m saying.
I genuinely and deeply miss this aspect of the English character which is totally lacking in Sweden - the websites called “shitLondon” or the insistence that English food is inferior to Italian or French cuisine or this repeated idea that it always rains (it doesn’t). That self-mockery simply doesn’t exist here, apart from when it’s some sort of humble-brag.
Having a culture that produces happier people in worse circumstances doesn't make those people less happy.
The question is whether stoicism in the face of what most people would categorize as suffering should be classified as “happiness”.
In my case, the cure was traveling and living abroad for 7 years now, it made me realize that Spain is actually a great country.
Also a genetic component.
If this is a dig at the largely pork/cabbage/potato-based diet of Northern Europe, you will be relieved to hear they don’t follow it.
Source: Am one.