My cynical opinion is that is a continuing result from the internal war Spain had in the 1930s.  Fascism is ultimately the ideology of the status quo and the mind set it engenders is actively hostile to innovation.

Couple with the cultural and intellectual deficiencies of Roman Catholicism and one has the recipe for stagnation.
 

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre