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Spain is a large, predominantly catholic country located in western Europe on the Iberian peninsula. The population exceeds 46 million according to early 2014 estimates made by The Economist Intelligence Unit (2014). The people of Spain speak Spanish and in some regions they speak an additional language. Spain, in its current state, has existed in one form or another since 1479 after the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon (Douglass, 1991).

Spain is a constitutional monarchy, however this system of government is relatively recent. Spain was under an authoritarian dictator, Francisco Franco, for over 35 years, ending upon his death in 1975. Under Franco many of the micro-cultures of Spain were repressed and not allowed to practice their distinct languages or cultural activities. Once Juan Carlos I took over as Monarch in 1975 many restrictions were lifted and the microcultures began to flourish.

Prior to describing the culture of Spain and going further into its history, definitions for terminology must be established. Neuliep (2009) describes the major cultural dimensions. These include individualism-collectivism, high/low context, time orientation, power distance and uncertainty avoidance. This analysis will focus primarily on the individualism-collectivism, time orientation and high/low context aspects of Castilian culture while briefly addressing values, power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Finally this paper will compare Castilian Spanish culture with the culture of the United States of America.

Neuliep, (2009) defines culture as "an accumulated pattern of values, beliefs and behaviors, shared by an identifiable group of people with a common history and verbal and nonverbal symbol systems" (p...

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...cteristics of the United States military are defined by Hofstede (2011) as traits of large power distance cultures such as "power is a basic fact of society," "subordinates expect to be told what to do" and hierarchy is existentially unequal (p.9).

Uncertainty avoidance measures a culture's feeling towards the uncertain or unknown (Neuliep, 2009, p.74). Hofstede (2011) clarifies this concept stating that "uncertainty avoidance is not the same as risk avoidance; it deals with a society's tolerance for ambiguity" (p.10) adding that it is a metric for comfort in unstructured situations. A weak uncertainty avoidance would be able to find comfort in open-ended situations. A culture with a strong uncertainty avoidance is riddled with urgency and anxiety when dealing with unfamiliar situations; they hold a belief that what is different is dangerous (Neuliep, 2009, p.75).