She has a fatal weakness for the past

Party it is plain old-fashionedness that makes Spain feel so special. She has a fatal weakness for the past. When the French were building in the Gothic style, she was still building Romanesque. When they moved to the Renaissance, she was still building Gothic. She retained her medieval values when they had long been abandoned elsewhere in Europe, so at the Spanish universities in the eighteenth century they were still wondering whether Copernicus was right,  and anxiously debating whether sky was made of metal or fluid.

J. Morris, Spain (1964. revised 1979), 26