Interior design, landscapes and built environments

The interior design of houses and apartments here is frankly not very good and lacking in variety. The Texan language assistant agrees and said that he would never live in a Spanish apartment building because they are sterile. A typical front door has a key hole and a very low door handles that reach just above my knees. They are supposed to look like wood but look faker than the wood trim you would find in luxury cars. For furniture and decoration they might put up a family portrait or a miniature grandfather clock but nothing that feels very welcoming, like carpets and paintings. The floors are never carpet or woodpanel, just plain white tiles or gray cold marble tiles with patterned jagged dull-colored shapes. These tiles are used all over the convent, making it uncomfortable to walk around the convent without shoes or slippers. For lighting they use fluorescent lights and overhead lights embedded in the ceiling, things I consider "hard lighting." I would rate the interior design of houses and apartments on the same level as Taiwan's, where it is very similar. These two countries also share a similar nature in economic growth, with both countries developing rapidly from an agrarian model since the 70s, and they also share a very similar GDP per capita along with Israel and South Korea. Fast economic growth = middle class societies living in uniform housing with little aesthetic value?

Perhaps the nature of interior design can be explained by cultural values and lifestyle. Bars and restaurants and cafe-bars are a major fixture of any city here, each one receiving a decent number of customers every day and hour. The Texan language assistant observed that people do not really stress out over their profession/career, that people visit bars and restaurants at all times of the day, and that many more children and old people visit these cafe-bars than in the United States (here even babies in strollers are allowed in bars). When the pedestrian nature of retail areas coincides with the cultural tendency to spent time exploring streets and places to drink and eat, less value is placed upon home decoration, home maintenance and home improvement. As a consequence of the differences in physical environment and lifestyle between the United States and Spain, this city of 25,000 surpasses Riverside, a city of 300,000, in terms of the number of entertainment venues for the public. I counted five places that were playing music at 200AM on Sunday (Saturday night for those who don't like to think technically), and there were maybe three times as many bars open. In the United States there are only a few cities (New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta) that are known for having this sort of night culture. Instead, in mid-size cities like Riverside the people actually prefer privatized house parties or get-togethers over the weekends, depicting how the American ideals of privacy and personal control of one's life reign supreme over communal entertainment venues and public spaces.

The natural environment here is not too different from what one finds in California. My autonomous community, Castilla-La Mancha, is about a fifth the size of California and has grapes, wheat, cows and cattle. The towns are linked by highways and railways. When on highways I see large white mechanical wind turbines, vineyards (bodegas) and warehouses (almacenes) with numerous booths where cargo trucks can load and unload their stuff. So the landscape of my region is a cross between Ontario, Palm Springs, and the Central Valley, except the weather is colder and windier.