To be fair, in Spain, failing to pay a mortgage will mean not just losing the house, but pretty much anything else you own. A cousin of mine, very well off, bought a summer house, which quickly lost a lot of its value. In the US, she could have said screw it! and let the bank have the house, but Spain being Spain, she'd have to pay the difference between the house's market value and the remainder of the mortgage.

That's one of the reasons that in Spain you have such amazing mortgage rates compared to the US: The banks are taking less risk.