Censorship in Spain

Censorship is always an interesting topic to discuss when comparing the United States to other countries around the world. In my opinion, we Americans take ourselves way too seriously sometimes and make many topics and conversations "taboo." In comparison to other countries, we practically try to act like saints. This has only become more obvious now that I have begun to live in Madrid and I'm exposed to the media here.

I was already aware of how liberal European countries were when it came to what could be aired on television or be posted on walls before I got here. I was made aware of the common practices at beaches here, such as women tanning topless which although it is practically forbidden in the U.S. (women can't even breastfeed in public), here in Spain it is normal and done everywhere. There are even completely nude beaches in Europe so it is no surprise to me that it is normal for breasts to be shown in commercials or other advertisements. I even saw a news broadcast where a woman's completely nude body was shown, the only part that wasn't shown was her sexual genitals. I've also seen posters where the naked body is shown as if it were a normal thing, and in some ways I think it should be considered normal. What surprises me the most about this is that given it's history, Spain is the center of the Catholic religion. With that fact alone I would think that Spain would have a stricter censorship in place for things like this however that is not the case. In fact, America, which is considered the melting pot of cultures and religions, is more conservative than most countries I've learned about.

This level of censorship doesn't only apply towards the human body though. This factor might surprise Americans the most but there are more things we would find shocking that is shown in the United States. The news doesn't shy away from showing scenes of violence, blood, or dead bodies being handled at crime scenes. The image I found the most shocking was the body of a dead child being lifted up by people. There was nothing covering the child or the blood drenching its body, but my host family seemed unfazed by such an image. I could almost guarantee that if that image was shown on the evening news in the U.S., there would be an uproar and the channel would probably suffer a great backlash from it's viewers. I've seen this type of news broadcasts shown in other countries as well. It is very common for the news in Puerto Rico to show bodies of victims as well, but I've never seen one as gruesome as the one I saw of the dead child.

I can honestly say I respect Europe and it's lower level of censorship. I often feel as though we Americans make the simplest topics more obscene then they actually need to be. I also feel that this attitude of trying to cover up what we don't think is right is what is leading future generations to be more irrational and curious about topics that they might no be ready to handle. If we took a more European approach to things, then perhaps things would be a little different. Unfortunately a change like that is something that would take years to happen.