NOVEMBER 20 — If you are interested in seeing the landscape around you, travelling by train is by far the most rewarding mode of transport.

This week I have travelled by train between Spain’s two biggest cities, Barcelona and Madrid, and the journey offered a revealing glimpse into the country’s national character — or its lack of truly a national character. And a lot more besides.

One of the most striking aspects about Spanish culture is that it is so diverse and so strongly regionalised.

Even now in the 21st century, when complaints about cultural homogeneity are justifiably widespread, each region of Spain has managed to retain its own distinct traditions, ways of life and even language, to the extent that it’s not really possible to talk about anything being typically "Spanish” — it all depends where you are.

The reason for these strong regional differences become immediately apparent when you travel the 600 kilometres between Barcelona and Madrid by train: the country is just so big, and there is just so much space.

Leaving Barcelona, it doesn’t take long for the industrial outskirts of the city to make way for agricultural fields — especially the endless rows of vines, now cut down to the ground following the autumn harvest, which produce the world-famous cava sparkling wine.

As the train cuts through the pleasant rolling hills of inland Catalonia, the openness becomes overwhelming, with endless rows of fields occasionally punctuated by grand old farmhouses and small, neglected-looking villages but nothing at all resembling a major settlement until you finally speed past Lleida (or Lerida in Castilian), 150 kilometres to the east of Barcelona.

The next port of call is Zaragoza, the only decent-sized city along the route, but either side of that stop there is nothing — literally nothing — for miles and miles.

The landscape takes on an arid, almost desert-like appearance, with no signs of habitation or cultivation, not even electricity pylons or telephone cables to break up the uninterrupted view of sandy grey scrubland.

Even travelling at 300 kilometres per hour on the high-speed "AVE” train you can go 10 or 15 minutes without seeing any sign of life at all, with this vast expanse of land still largely untouched by human hands.

Barcelona’s iconic Park Guell... Spain is such a large country that you will see vast swathes of empty land between cities. — Handout picture via AFP-Relaxnews

For an Englishman, this is quite a shock. Where I come from, wide open spaces are virtually unknown. This is especially the case in the busy south-east to north-west corridor where the population density is so high that towns have more or less merged with each other, creating a near-broken snake of urbanisation stretching all the way from London to Manchester.

This impression is all borne out by statistics: the population of England is 54 million, with a landmass of 130,000 square kilometres; the equivalent figures in Spain are 46 million people living in 500,000 square kilometres. In other words, England has eight million inhabitants packed into nearly a quarter of the space of Spain.

Of course, it is still possible to find rare patches of wilderness in the United Kingdom: the Peak District in the Midlands, the wild moors between Lancashire and Yorkshire, the open spaces of Devon and Cornwall, the wide countryside of Northumberland and the Lake District.

But these exceptions are rare, relatively small and easily bypassed by busy motorways, doing little to prevent movement from one city to the next.

England is so small that travelling from one place to another, even at opposite ends of the country, is no great problem: jump in the car at London at 9am and, traffic permitting, you can be in Manchester by noon, passing several large cities en route.

Spain is not like that. Travelling from one major urban centre to another requires a major effort, with few stopping places on the way, and is therefore not undertaken so lightly or so easily.

Little wonder, then, that Spain has retained its strong regional identities whereas England hasn’t. Or, at least, not yet. Travel within Spain is now becoming much easier with the introduction of the high-speed train line, which has been operational for less than a decade, and the proliferation of cheap internal flights.

The distances between Spain’s urban centres will not be changed, of course, but navigating them is becoming easier. And as that happens, protecting each region’s currently strong individual identity will become harder to maintain.

The same thing, I guess, is happening all over the world with the global population explosion matched by easier access to long-distance transport and the influence of mass international media and entertainment.

Does that matter? There are distinct advantages in breaking down the differences between people: there can’t be any racism if, ultimately, we all become one hybrid AfroEurAsian race. If you’re the same as me and they’re the same as us, there’s less room for blinkered prejudice to flourish.

But one of the richest aspects of human life is its variety, and the Disneyfication-McDonaldsisation of modern life is without doubt threatening that multi-coloured tapestry.

Perhaps we can do both. Perhaps we can keep on growing the global population through better healthcare and keep on using trains, planes and automobiles to travel and trade widely, whilst simultaneously protecting local cultures and traditions rather than seeing them knocked aside by the forces of globalism.

Perhaps we can’t. But surely it’s worth trying?

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.