I have lived in Spain. Taxes are high, salaries are low, bureaucracy is a lot worse than the US, most people live in small apartments and they certainly don’t own US sized houses. Cost of living can also be high, if one tries to meet the same standard that he would have in US (electricity, gasoline prices are a lot higher).

I could pick pretty much any US state over Spain and with a US engineering salary enjoy a vastly better standard of living.

Enjoying a materially higher standard of living with large houses doesn't really match how people actually enjoy experience and happiness. The thorough social disconnect in the US, in great part explained because said large houses have to be set up in the relative middle of nowhere, counts far more for "standard of living" in my book as well as those of a lot posters here.

Addendum: used to live in a very wealthy suburb in the US. Said houses are creaky, have constant humidity issues because the mildest of winds would blow out the roof tiles, and have a very low standard of construction coming from other places. More square footage is not indicative of a higher quality of life; many rooms sat mostly empty and did nothing for us.

Spain is much smaller than Europe and houses are much smaller and salaries are smaller and the political divide is much worse in Spain. Two different states want out and after a vote they arrested the head of state for those regions. The legacy of Franco..

Did you check your numbers this time or are you still just making things up? I'm going to trust you know nothing about the politics of Spain and ignore that comment.

> Two different states want out and after a vote they arrested the head of state for those regions. The legacy of Franco..

You must be trolling. You literally had a civil war for the same exact reason... Unfortunately, no state allows any subset of itself to secede.