Spain too; but legally sharing books and media without profit it's allowed.
Still, they should pay me in order to listen all the mediocre music and crappy 'best sellers' they often produce. More than often I'd just buy some indie book from a small publisher which has much better stories than the whole mainstream.
Heck; every time I try to read some Spaniard technotriller it justs sucks because they focus on crappy emotions everytime focusing near nil on scientific facts or tecnological backgrounds. If any, of course. Hello, Gómez Jurado with the Red Queen sagas.
Meanwhile, people writting half-fantasy/half-geopolitics fiction such as Fabián Plaza with its book depicting a paranormal Cold War were the Spanish Francoist regime never ended and the USSR took the whole Germany for itself, you will get more enganing books. The hippies in Woodstock summoned magical Lovecraftian monsters and the CIA/KGB among paranormal agencies try to fight these. The even mention Orgonic fields and
tons of American floklore on paranormal experiments from the CIA/USSR.
We all know it's actual bullshit but it's documented bullshit.
Modulo the magic, the author applied as a diplomat for Spain a few decades ago so he knows
how to create a thriller by predicting how the characters will behave psichologically much better than the Gómez Jurado's books creating
an Aspie Mary Sue character getting aspull skills.
The mainstream alternative? Some Humanities woman as the maincharacter alleging bullshit 'prime number finding' in order to boost IQ as a goverment experiment against another high IQ psychopath.
The media in Spain sucks because Spain arrived late to a scientifical mindset socially -thanks, Francoist /s- and male/female Humanities people dominate both the press and the literary world. Instead of Gideon Crew like books (which are a bit bullshit, but with a bit of realism too) like sagas, we get drama bound thrillers with no actual research; if any, hidden Apple product placements.
You would say, heck, Dan Brown it's the same and Tom Clancy's novels are a joke against the ones from actually versed people throwing stereotypes away because they did a good research (the US is not just a bigger Texas and Spain is not a big Andalusia), but that's not the issue here.
The matter it's that most of the readers in Spain are women, and somehow they are afraid of reading a thriller with less drama and emotions and more action (action women do exist you know) and resolution and developing actual skills o the spot instead of aspulling them.
Just look at text adventures. Anchorhead it's just a modern Lovecraft retelling but it has a female protagonist and you as the player should drive her solving all the ingame puzzles. If something like that existed in 1998, the Spaniard should be able to write tons of interesting media (books and series)
where crimes were not solved with people
just happening to be in the right spot at some specific time. That's a cheap writting and an obvious neglection to the reader allowing him to join the proofs together.