Transformed Spain Finds Place on Cultural Map : Europe: In a single generation, the country has gone from rags to riches. Summer Olympics and Expo ’92 bring sweeping changes.

Few nations have undergone a transformation as profound as Spain’s in a single generation.

Until well into the 1960s, Spain was one of the poorest countries in Western Europe. Now it has the ninth-largest economy in the world.

A leading economist, Ramon Tamames, thinks it not at all improbable that within a decade, perhaps a little more, Spain will have overtaken Britain, tied Italy and come within striking distance of France in national wealth.

For 36 years, under the iron rule of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, Spain was ruthlessly run, repressive and often absurdly backward.

But from virtually the moment the aged Franco died in 1975, the nation raced to embrace democracy. Concepts such as free elections, free markets and free speech are now taken for granted.

Spain is arguably the most forward-looking country in Europe today. An almost feverish dynamism appears to have swept it, notes writer Bill Bryson.

Suddenly everything is happening in Spain: the Summer Olympics in Barcelona; a six-month world’s fair in Seville; a galaxy of cultural activities in Madrid arising from its selection as European City of Culture for 1992; celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of both Columbus’ voyage to the New World and the unification of the country under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, which ended nearly eight centuries of Moorish domination.

Everywhere there are new museums, new offices, new airports, new railway stations and entire new neighborhoods.

Yet “Spain is still much the country it always was: A nation of proud, courteous and immensely easygoing people who clearly place a higher value on the rudiments of civilized life--conversation, family, friendship, good food, especially good food--than on the accumulation of raw wealth,” Bryson says.

Even on weeknights, the bars and cafes in most Spanish cities still buzz at 3 a.m. In Spain’s most frantically nocturnal city, Seville, the world’s fair, Expo ‘92, stays open each day until 4 a.m. Otherwise, it is feared, the local people would hardly come.

Although Spain has been unified for 500 years, in language, culture, outlook and geography it could hardly be more fragmented. Millions of Spaniards do not speak Spanish as a first language.

“Spain is not a country, but a country of countries,” says writer Antonio Gala. “Diversity is sometimes a problem for us, but it is also our glory.” The greatest threat to Spanish unity is in the drizzly factory towns of the Basque region, where separatism has been an often violent issue for decades.

Perhaps no place better captures the confident new mood of Spain than Barcelona. Already one of Europe’s most beautiful and vibrant cities, Barcelona in recent years has seemed intent on becoming the world’s finest urban environment, Bryson observes.

More than $7 billion has been lavished on the city in preparation for the July 25 opening of the Olympics.

Tourism is Spain’s biggest industry, an $18.5 billion-a-year business. Spain receives more than 50 million tourists a year; the population of the entire country is 38.5 million.

Most of these tourists head for Mediterranean resorts. But as recently as 35 years ago, no one came to the south of Spain for a holiday.

“It was like someone today building a hotel in the middle of the Sahara,” recalls Jose Luque of his father’s decision to open a beachfront hotel in 1957 in the fishing town of Marbella.

Now Marbella is one of Europe’s most glittering resorts--the haunt of princes, sheiks and movie stars, with more Rolls-Royces, so it is said, than any other city but London.

From 1960 to 1988, tourism grew at such a phenomenal rate that many people thought it would never end.

The worry now is that it may indeed have ended. Insensitive overdevelopment of the Mediterranean coastline, an abundance of jerry-built hotels and the crush of overcrowding have discouraged many discerning visitors.

And the rise in the value of the peseta since Spain joined the European Community in 1986 has ended Spain’s days as a cheap destination.

The lovely and historic Seville is trying harder than most to attract new tourists.

Seville is banking on Expo ’92 as its bridge to a prosperous future. The fair fills an island in the Guadalquivir River. Forty million people are expected to visit Expo, which opened April 20 and runs to Oct. 12.

Among Seville’s numerous new assets is its first opera house--a late addition for a city that has been memorialized in at least 10 operas.