TRINITY MATERIAL FOR ISE II - SOCIETY AND LIVING STANDARDS - 2

2.  Society and Living standards

The meaning of "society " may have a different idea depending on  place and time. Life and customs  vary considerably from country to country, so,  what is considered the norm in one place, may be an obscenity  in another.   In Spain, during the Civil War, there was a feeling of community because civilians helped one another out. 

When the war ended, the Welfare State was founded. People were provided with free eye-tests, glasses, medicines and dental check-ups . There was a sense of the strong helping the weak.  In time prosperity became more obvious.  However, in Spain, there was no freedom of speech, as there was a dictatorship.

By the end of the 1950s, many people were purchasing washing machines and televisions. Some were even buying their own flats.  

The consumer society was  born. Politicians told people that the citizens had never had it so good.  But while young people the 1960s challenged  the conventional view of society in the Uk and France,  Spanish students could not express their views.  If they expressed their views in public, they would be arrested.

Spain was undergoing an enormous change in the 70s, democracy came in 1978, and with it, many freedoms, for instance, no longer was it a crime to be gay, nor were single mothers despised.

Today, people show greater tolerance towards different family structures such as single parent families and there is a wider acceptance of different races and sexual orientations . However, trust is in short supply, judging by the number of security alarms fitted to our houses and cars and the emergence of neighbourhood watch schemes as  social institutions.

By the 1990s Spain was living a permanent fiesta, the crisis in the 80s gave way to prosperity in the 90s.  Everyone was buying a house, banks were lending money with hardly any collateral, people were borrowing more than they could afford to pay back.... Spain was heading for disaster.   

And here we are, in the year 2015, still suffering the hangover of the madness of the 1990s, with salaries that are reduced by an ever increasing tax burden and rising prices.   Serious cutbacks in education and the health service is proving too much for the Spanish society, once again, there is a feeling of doom.   However, politicians keep saying that the economy is improving.