Nudity and Spanish movies

I just finished watching Como Agua Para Chocolate, a Spanish (Mexican) movie which is apparently pretty famous. It was a pretty funny romance, a little weird with some one-hundred-years-of-solitude-esque fantasy elements liberally sprinkled all over. I've been watching a number of Spanish movies off late and have found that a vast majority of them involve copious doses of nudity. While, in just about every case, the situation warrants it or adds to the movie, it is nevertheless surprising or a really suspicious coincidence just how many of these movies (which incidentally populate the upper echelons of the top-X lists of most aficionados) involve nekkid people and some pretty steamy scenes. Why is this? Is it a social thing or just an artsy thing?

Incidentally, I find it refreshingly sensible that the (both male and female) nudity is complete, i.e., there is full frontal nudity on display. There are no shots left to the viewer's imagination - everything is honest. I've always found it seriously hypocritical that tits and ass are considered acceptable (in western cinema), but the rest aren't :S