Today Expansion, Spain´s equivalent of the Financial Times, has a poll among university students whose results I found surprising. In general, I believe that somehow I can understand and predict how people in Spain think. Here, had I been confronted with the questions beforehand, I would have failed miserably. Students are asked to rank ocupations from the most trusted to the least trusted.

Now, interestingly, among the most trusted people in Spain you find university professors, who I would say are normally the people you mistrust (or at least I did), when you are a student. Then students show tremendous trust for MDs, scientists and engineers. Those are top of the list. Instead the six least trusted professionals out of a list of 13 categories are judges, journalists, policemen, entrepreneurs, the military and the two worse of the list are politicians and priests.

Priests, in this formerly catholic country are actually the least trusted people in all of Spain. In terms of religion, Spain, and all of Europe for that matter is going the opposite way of USA and the Muslim world. Now I knew that religion was on the decline in Spain but never expected that on a trust ranking of 1 to 10 priests would score a mere 2.7 as judged by the trust that people have in them while MDs would score 7. Us entrepreneurs we scored 3.9. Pretty bad as well.

Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars

No Comments

Jean-Bernard on November 30, 2006  · 

Spain has always been the country that has had the least religious practice in Europe.
In the 1920s, less than 10% of sapnsih people were attending church, in Andalucia it was even less.
The northern Spain’s situation was a bit different, mostly in Euskadi.
Most interesting book: Anthony Beevor’s “The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939” which also deals with politics inside Spain both before and during the conflict.

3.0 rating

Leave a Comment

Español / English


Subscribe to e-mail bulletin:
Recent Tweets