Cross Culture Mgt: Spain

Introduction

Spain is a western country in terms of culture. It is described as a Latin Country due to the great strength of its Roman heritage in almost every aspect of Spanish life. Nonetheless, there have been many influences on various aspects of Spanish life, ranging from architecture to business etiquette, and the following paragraphs are going to present them one by one.

Architecture

First and foremost, Spanish architecture has drawn from a lot of influences due to its geographical and historical diversity. An essential provincial city founded by the Romans and with an extensive Roman era infrastructure, Córdoba became the cultural capital, including fine Arabic style architecture. Later such architecture continued to be developed under successive Islamic dynasties. At the same time, the Christian kingdoms emerged and developed their own styles, forming a pre-Romanesque style when it was isolated from the contemporary mainstream European Architectural influences during the Middle Ages, which later integrated the Romanesque and Gothic streams. The arrival of Modernism produced much of the architecture of the 20th century.

Education

The current educational system in Spain is known as LOE (Ley Orgánica de Educación). The education is free and mandatory for children aged from 6 to 16 years, supported by Government in each region. Education in Spain can be broken into 4 stages: Pre-school (3-6 years of age), primary school (7-12 years of age), compulsory secondary education (13-16 years of age), post-compulsory schooling (16-18 years of age). Note that pre-school is non-compulsory and free of charge. Students aged 7 to 16 undergo compulsory and free of charge education, and those successful ones are awarded the Secondary Education Certificate, which is a prerequisite for entering the next stage, the post-compulsory stage of schooling for their University or Vocational Studies. Afterwards, students could take the University Entrance Exam to continue their...