I think it was V S Naipaul who wrote about how he was forced out into the traffic while crossing a bridge in Madrid. As I recall, the response to his angry remonstration was along the lines that he should go back to his own country since Spanish culture did not recognise an obligation to cede space to others. Never a truer word! Scarcely a day passes without me having to stop to avoid someone who has abruptly changed direction. Or who has emerged from a shop to join the pedestrian traffic. Or has decided to turn off to go into a café across my trajectory. It all rather reminds me of the drivers in Tehran who used to take all the mirrors off their cars to demonstrate that it was the responsibility of other drivers to anticipate their every move. Nowhere in the world can cultural norms be expected to be consistent with each other but this behaviour is squarely at odds with the fact that the Spanish, both young and old, display far more of the civility and good manners that used to be associated with the British. But in this one area, at least, they do seem to be lacking in social antennae. Or even just a sense of the existence of others. I don’t think it’s a question of consciously denying other people their ‘rights’. I‘m convinced it’s just an absence of any awareness that they are there! Spanish individualism??