I had the opposite discovery when I went to work in Spain and colleagues ogled my basic Parker pen like I was a prince or something.

It's not a panacea in France though, since people usually buy their kids cheap ones which leave a lasting bad impression. Many people get very defensive about handwriting and that is partly accountable to the terrible fountain pens they had to learn with.

Fountain pens were very common in Spain too not so long ago. I went to school in the 80s and many children had fountain pens. Erasable pens mostly finished with them, and nowadays children learn writing in a very different way (they start writing in caps, and only later they learn cursive).