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Public funding, private foundations and other often political power structures determine to a large extent the cultural output of a given country. A small handful of players have a lock on the hegemony of photographic culture in Spain. This produces a lot of inbreeding and narrows the general level of perception and appreciation of photographic art. Instead of being seduced by photography many would-be aficionados feel alienated by it.
This also leaves a lot of very good photographers out of the picture. Others try in vain to mimic what they perceive as the "in" style. All in all, a very sad state of affairs.

Master photographer Ralph Gibson notes in his excellent book Refractions that he continues to evolve in terms of his photographic development.  He goes on to say that this is a life-long process.    

In French, this is called formation permanente; in Spanish, formación continua.  All of the digital photographers I know are fully convinced of this fact whereas only a handful of film photographers subscribe to it.  Most of today's standout film photographers are totally unaware of new B&W film, paper and chemistry offerings on the market.  Others, although aware, are unwilling to experiment, having spent considerable time perfecting their film-developer combinations, albeit 2, 5 or as many as 10 years ago.  For them, the darkroom seems to hold no new secrets.   

Digital photographers proclaim with glee that digital capture has now surpassed 35mm, 120 and practically 4x5" film formats in terms of resolution.  Of course, there is no objective truth behind this claim. Obviously, none of them have even heard of Argenti Nanotomic-X let alone actually tested it.  

If we film photographers do not actively learn, rethink, experiment, innovate, then photography as we know it will cease to be a living medium.