But the relative isolation this harsh landscape affords also means the fishing villages, hill villages and maritime towns built on and under these slopes have been able to hold on to their charm and beauty as stubbornly as they've clung on to the mountains on which they're so precariously built.
Years of austerity saw the country achieve one of the EU's most successful financial bounce-backs, yet unemployment remains stubbornly high, spurring many young Latvians to move abroad.
However hard Ramos tried – and he tried pretty hard, handballing and kicking and pushing and protesting and flying in, getting wilder with every one, a mental soundtrack of cymbal crashes accompanying each tackle – Montero stubbornly, and comically, refused to pull out the card.
And yet I resisted, refusing stubbornly to take citizenship in Australia because, at the time, Italy wouldn't allow dual nationality.
These titans, and those who surround them, overwhelmingly and stubbornly refuse to conform to the simple premise of triumphant good versus vanquished evil.
Yet a team who have been routinely found wanting over the past 16 months are stubbornly refusing to rethink their strategy.
From not listening to staff and bending to whims of bigger jellies that live in the even darker ocean depths, to stubbornly maintaining the status quo, these poor invertebrates cannot help trying to be everything to everyone (however obvious it is that this just won't work).
That moment paved the way for a tense tie-break, won by Berdych after he stubbornly clawed back a 3-0 deficit, and the turnaround seemed to energise the powerful Czech, who raced to a 3-1 lead in the fourth set.
Even though our talks were sometimes quite dramatic and more than lively, I found them intellectually stimulating and admired her deliberate approach to all subjects, her thoughtfulness and her ability to stand her ground – stubbornly but persuasively.
There's something admirably forthright about Blair's willingness to do this and take the abuse, stubbornly defending his tattered corner from fairweather friends like the Mail and Telegraph, which I seem to remember being gung-ho in support for the war in 2003.
Worse still, he added, the government was increasingly depending on special operations forces, which have proved stubbornly resistant to making any deals with the cartels.
