Spain as a wretched concept
Disunity in perpetuity
The decline of the Spanish Empire was one of the most extended in history, and possibly the most curious of all. Barring an extremely bright and powerful reversal in the middle of the twentieth century, Spain’s economic heft and international influence have been on the wane for half a millennium. Clear signs of big trouble to come in fact coincided with Spain’s very peak. The Pizarro brothers, Diego de León, Quesada, and other conquistadors and explorers enshrined their names on the pantheon of world history in the early sixteenth century. Yet in the hundred years following the death of Hernán Cortés in 1547, the Spanish Empire declared itself bankrupt a total of six times.
There is surprisingly little literature on this topic, in Spanish or in any other language. Outsiders will weigh in, but are mostly unable to deduce what exactly went wrong. Pieces of propaganda popular outside of Spain — such as the so-called ‘Black Legend’ — have permeated deeply into the foreign consciousness, leaving a skewed impression.
Still, an outsider’s insight can often be more valuable than discussions dependent upon the ossified frameworks familiar to those within the country. After all, if a person has been ill for centuries, it would be a good idea to seek medical treatment from a third party.
In 1870, the Spaniards did just that. An Italian nobleman, Amadeo I, was approached for the position of ‘King of Spain’. After little more than two years, Amadeo left the country, presenting the following abdication letter:
It was a great honour given to me by the Spanish nation, by electing me to occupy its throne; an honour even more appreciated, since it was offered to me enshrined with the difficulties and dangers that go with the enterprise of governing a country so deeply troubled.
Encouraged, however, by the resolution of my own standing, by which I seek danger, rather than avoid it; determined to be inspired solely by the good of the country and to place myself above all parties, resolved to fulfil religiously the oath I had sworn before the constituent assembly, and ready to make every kind of sacrifice to give this brave people the peace it needs, the liberty it deserves and the greatness to which its glorious history and the virtue and constancy of its descendants entitle it. I believed that the short experience of my life in the art of commanding would be made up for by the loyalty of my character, and that I would find powerful help to avert the dangers and overcome the difficulties that were not hidden from my sight, in the sympathy of all Spaniards who love their homeland, eager to put an end to the bloody and unfruitful struggles that have long been tearing apart its insides.
I admit that I was deceived by my optimism. For two long years I have worn the crown of Spain, and that Spain lives in a constant struggle, seeing further away, each passing day, the time of peace and joy that so much I long for. If the enemies on this struggle were foreigners, I would be the first to take up arms against them. But all of those who, with the sword, with the pen, with the word, worsen and perpetuate the evils of the nation are Spaniards, all of them invoke the sweet name of the Patria, all of them fight and stir against her. And in the thick of this struggle, among the confusing, deafening, contradictory groans of the political parties, among so many contradictory and so opposite manifestations of public opinion, it is impossible to tell which one is the correct one, and even more impossible to find a single remedy for so many colossal evils…
Rest assured that when I remove this crown, I don’t let go of the love for Spain, as noble as it is ill-fated, and that I hold no other thought in my head than to not have secured all the goodness that my loyal heart desired for her.
—Amadeo de Saboya, Palacio Real de Madrid, 1873
This well-suited war veteran, an Italian aristocrat — the son of King Victor Emmanuel II himself, from the Italian tradition of Pompey, Augustus, the Médicis, the Malatestas, and the Sforzas — had tried and failed miserably to govern the Spaniards. How, then, did they even manage to handle themselves before?
Blood and soil
What is it that makes the Spanish unique? Answering this thorny question will necessarily flatten the variety of character types that will always exist in a singular people, even those from the same region in the same time period, let alone across all of history. For instance, the Spanish Civil War was triggered when a Galician General (Francisco Franco) led an uprising against a Galician Prime Minister (Santiago Casares Quiroga) after a Galician politician (José Calvo Sotelo) had been shot dead by a Galician Socialist radical (Luis Cuenca Estevas) in July 1936. As amusing as it would be to claim that the Spanish Civil War was no more than a Galician conspiracy, this event demonstrates how, even within small region, a people can have wildly varied dispositions, political or otherwise.
An opportunity presents itself when nationhood can be crystallised and be looked upon; when war or the threat of mass violence is present, with the best of the Spaniards coming out to confront foreign foes of greater numbers. In the following excerpt, a Genevese lieutenant in La Grande Armée expands on his impressions of the Iberian Peninsula:
The tall and barren mountains which surrounded and crossed Spain were populated by warlike races, always armed to do contraband, accustomed to repel the regular troops of the national side, which were sent to chase them. The indomitable character of the peninsula’s inhabitants, the mildness of the climate, that allowed to live under the open sky, and to leave one’s home if necessary; the inaccessible shelters of the mountains of the interior, the sea which bathes an immense coastline, all of these crucial circumstances coming from the national character, from the location, from the climate made it infinitely easier for the Spanish to escape the oppression of the victor, and to multiply their own forces, moving themselves quickly to the points where the French were weak or to dodge the enemy’s attacks…
There exists in Spain a nobility of cities as well as of men. The Spaniards preserve so much respect for their old institutions, that their capital still bears the name of villa, or country town, whereas some poor villages pride themselves on that of ciudad, or city, either because they have received this title and the privileges attached to it, as the reward of some great proofs of devotion to their country or sovereign, or inherited it from the ruined towns upon which they themselves are founded. When a Spaniard is asked where he was born, he answers, ‘I am the son of such a town’; and this expression, which intimately identifies him with the place of his birth, causes him to attach more value to the dignity of his native city…
The Spanish were a religious and warlike people, but not a military one. They also detested and despised anything similar to line troops. However, they lacked good officers and all the means that make up a well-regulated army. They considered the present war as a religious crusade against the French for the Patria and for the king… At the first challenge of battle, men from all the provinces ran almost naked to the great gatherings which they called their army. The ardent desire they had to win made them endure with admirable patience the privations to which all the power of the strictest discipline known would not have subjected the best line troops.
There was generally manifested by the peoples of the provinces, even at the time of our victories, much disbelief about the advantages we reported. No Spaniard was willing to believe in the disasters of Spain and to give her up for defeat; such a sentiment, which was in the soul of all of them, made the nation invincible in reality, in spite of individual losses, and the frequent defeats of their armies.
—Albert de Rocca, Memories of the War of the French in Spain, 1816
Arguably, this temperament precedes even the Roman conquest. Livy, narrating Cato’s consulship during the Iberian revolt, describes how entire Iberian tribes were willing to kill themselves rather than face bondage. Strabo, too, details the lives of those living in the northern edges of the Peninsula during the Roman expansion:
The rough and savage manners of these people is not alone owing to their wars, but likewise to their isolated position, it being a long distance to reach them, whether by sea or land. Thus the difficulty of communication has deprived them both of generosity of manners and of courtesy. At the present time, however, they suffer less from this both on account of their being at peace and the intermixture of Romans. Wherever these [influences] are not so much experienced people are harsher and more savage. It is probable that this ruggedness of character is increased by the barrenness of the mountains and some of the places which they inhabit…
Of singularities like these many have been observed and recorded as to all the Iberian nations in common, but particularly those towards the north, not only concerning their bravery, but likewise their cruelty and brutal madness. For in the war against the Cantabrians, mothers have slain their children sooner than suffer them to be captured; and a young boy, having obtained a sword, slew, at the command of his father, both his parents and brothers, who had been made prisoners and were bound, and a woman those who had been taken together with her. A man being invited by a party of drunken [soldiers] to their feast, threw himself into a fire. These feelings are common both to the Keltic, Thracian, and Scythian nations, as well as the valour not only of their men, but likewise of their women. These till the ground, and after parturition [childbirth], having put their husbands instead of themselves to bed, they wait upon them…
It is a proof of the ferocity of the Cantabrians, that a number of them having been taken prisoners and fixed to the cross, they chanted songs of triumph. Instances such as these are proofs of the ferocity of their manners. There are others which, although not showing them to be polished, are certainly not brutish. For example, amongst the Cantabrians, the men give dowries to their wives, and the daughters are left heirs, but they procure wives for their brothers. These things indicate a degree of power in the woman, although they are no proof of advance civilisation. It is also a custom with the Iberians to furnish themselves with a poison, which kills without pain, and which they procure from a herb resembling parsley. This they hold in readiness in case of misfortune, and to devote themselves for those whose cause they have joined, thus dying for their sake.
—Strabo, Geographica, 7 BC. Translated by H.C. Hamilton, 1854.
If you get crucified, you just need to look on the bright side of life.
Strabo describes many other European peoples in his work. From both of these texts, one can get certain ideas that the peoples on Iberia have certain dispositions that make them distinct:
Punctuated differences between small areas that, even if banal to the outside observer, are frequently brought up by inhabitants of the Peninsula.
The relation of these inhabitants to their space, their family, and their home — whether it is their hometown or their own small parcel — is bound on their very existence (due to geography and ‘national character’) .
Because of this, belonging to the land and ownership of it are tied together with a religious-type devotion, as the properties are more in need of fierce defence, whether against a neighbouring village, or an ocean away.
These characteristics — not necessarily exclusive to the inhabitants of Iberia, but very much present — manifested themselves at different levels through the various societal structures of the mediaeval period: thousands of set-in-stone parishes, military orders, warrior nobilities, mercenary companies, multi-national commercial ventures, and missionary expeditions.
From four kingdoms into (almost) one
The Christian kingdoms responsible for pushing the Muslims out of Iberia slowly came into existence in the High Middle Ages. The character of each of these kingdoms was inextricably linked to their respective geographical positions:
Castile, which had become independent from and later absorbed León, had a more strongly monarchical political structure. Castile led the Reconquista efforts from the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula, through the great expanses of the inner Iberian planes — Castilian being another name for the Spanish language.
Portugal, originally part of León and Castile, settled its peninsular borders by 1249, expanded into the relatively nearby Atlantic coast islands of the Azores, Madeira, and Cape Verde in the fifteenth century, and eventually founded an empire which would outlast Spain’s.
Navarre, originally known as the Kingdom of Pamplona, was inhabited mostly by Basques. It contained itself to the western Pyrenees and the Basque Mountains, with more compact townships. Despite limited expansion in the Iberian Peninsula itself, Basques were heavily involved in the colonisation of the New World.
Aragon, born from Charlemagne’s Spanish March, would form a dynastic union with the Catalan County of Barcelona and push down the east coast of the Iberian Peninsula, conquering Valencia and Majorca. Compared to Castile, Aragon had a more commercial orientation and oligarchic political structure. It settled its Iberian borders by 1298; after 1298, far from staying in place, the Catalan and Aragonese aristocracy would expand across the Mediterranean (see map below).
Despite differing political systems and conceptions of the national interest, by the end of the Reconquista, the Catholic kingdoms had merged into one. The personal union of Castile and Aragon began in 1479; Navarre was added to the new polity in 1512; as was Portugal after the inheritance of the Kingdom of Portugal to Philip II of Spain in 1580.
The Iberian peninsula might now have been unified, but keeping it so was a daunting task, requiring a delicate balance of competing and often directly contradictory interests:
There is also a great distance, from founding a special and homogenous kingdom within a province, to putting together a universal empire of different provinces and nations. For the former, the uniformity of laws, similarity on customs, language and climate; at the same time that they become united, they separate themselves from strangers. The same seas, mountains and rivers are for France an innate area and a wall for her conservation. But with the monarchy of Spain, the provinces are many, the nations are different, the languages are various, the climates are opposed. Just as it is necessary to have the capacity to conserve, even more so to unite.
—Baltasar Gracián, The Politician King Ferdinand the Catholic, 1640
Compromises, customary traditions, and many different sets of laws (fueros) were maintained, as the map below demonstrates:
For their part, the Portuguese rejected the unifying efforts altogether, with Portugal regaining her independence from Spain in 1640. Appropriately enough, this roughly coincided with the end of the Spanish Golden Age. Outwardly, this may seem a relatively unimportant factoid; however, Portugal’s very existence was an open challenge to the Spanish Project, as it served to permanently divide what the Romans and Greeks once called the singular geographical area of ‘Hispania’ or ‘Iberia’.
Meanwhile, in what was left of Spain, the three crowns of Castile, Navarre, and Aragon maintained separate legal traditions for centuries. Remnants of this survive to this day in Spanish civil and tax law. Whether by cynical political manoeuvres — such as Navarre keeping its special legal status in exchange for giving support to the new Bourbon king in the War of Spanish Succession — ‘pragmatic compromise’, or the constant threat of violence, distinct languages, laws, and cultural traditions were generally upheld, and centralisation efforts were consistently frustrated. The sprawl of languages and dialects also served to undermine Spanish unity, as did genuine cultural differences between regions.
Of course, most polities have had similar difficulties integrating diverse regions into a single system, but in Spain, these difficulties seem to have been more fundamental; more deep-rooted. Even as late as 1906, one British author, comparing Barcelona to the rest of Spain, wrote:
…here in Barcelona you are in a new world. The city is quite modern, the shops are full of foreign goods, the people are restless, even energetic; you hear of political clubs, of labour meetings, of outrages, of thefts, of bankruptcies, of great commercial ventures, of bad faith, of republicanism, of socialism and anarchism, of free thought, and all the blessings of modern civilisation. Barcelona is very discontented with the rest of Spain. ‘Look you’, said a tradesman to me, ‘these Spaniards are a lazy lot: here in Barcelona we work — my faith!’
—Edward Hutton, The Cities of Spain, 1906
A missing intelligentsia
In 1492, Castile incorporated the Muslim kingdom of Granada, thereby completing the Reconquista. Columbus discovered the New World in the very same year. Two years later, the King of Spain and the King of Portugal — with papal oversight — divided the entire planet into two spheres of influence in the Treaty of Tordesillas. In 1499, Portuguese sailors established a new commercial route to India; instead of slowly trekking across Eurasia, they sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. In 1516, Charles V was crowned King of Spain, the first of his name; in 1530, Charles was also crowned King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor, thus becoming the most important European leader since Charlemagne. In 1521, Cortés and his men toppled the Aztec Empire less than twenty months after setting foot on the Yucatán Peninsula. Just one year later, in 1522, the Magellan-Elcano expedition completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth. It very much looked like the next chapter of world-history would be written from Iberia. We now know that this did not happen. In fact, reasons for this failure were entirely foreseeable.
In order to manage the his vast and increasingly far-flung territories, Charles V made use of similar principles to those already adopted by the metropole. Charles had famously planned early on in his reign to cede the management of his territories to viceroys and royal councils, and his Holy Roman Empire possessions to his brother, Ferdinand I. This set an important precedent for the structure of the Spanish Empire. Phillip II would follow on his father’s orders:
Be very careful not to sign private letters in the Chancelleries or other courts of justice, on account of the parties involved, because you know that in order to do wrong they often take the King's request as a command, and in order to do good they do not all obey his orders. You will also be careful not to write or entrust anything particular to anyone by word of mouth, if you do not want to pay for it afterwards with their crooked acts. Also be very careful not to give, neither in word nor in writing, a promise of anything in the future or as an expectation, for ordinarily it is not a good thing to anticipate the time in such things. I have here ordered the Council of Aragon, and instructions shall also be made to you on the government of the kingdoms of the Crown and on the manner of signing, to which I refer, and you shall use them in accordance with what is contained therein and with the aforementioned. Though I warn you that it is necessary that you should be very well advised in this matter, because you could more quickly make mistakes in this government than in that of Castile, both because of the fueros [regional sets of laws] and constitutions being such, and because their zeal is not less than those of others, and they use them [set of laws] more and have more excuses, and there are fewer ways of being able to find out and punish them.
—Emperor Charles V, Instructions to the future King Phillip II, 1543
Phillip II, who supposedly had the ‘largest brain in the world’, inevitably had to rely on people with such different goals and mindsets as Stadtholder Egmont and Cardinal Granvelle, financiers from Genoa and Germany, as well as the thousands of Catholic priests who maintained the enormous imperial bureaucracy. Members of the latter class, who pledged their obedience to God and Rome, were naturally more inclined to follow the Vatican’s rules rather than a mortal king’s mandate. All of these groups in Spain had conflicting interests and differing belief systems, which helped contribute to mismanagement, financial crisis, and constant rebellions.
After Phillip II’s death in 1598, the next three kings showed a degradation of the royal character. Inbreeding and lack of interest in effective government turned mighty warriors into sickly do-nothing kings. Ultimately, Spain would become a satellite of France following the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. Especially after the ascension of the House of Bourbon to the Spanish throne in the early eighteenth century, the Spanish government and aristocracy would take their cues from the French. As the Spanish ambassador in France commented to Louis XIV: ‘Lord, from this moment there are no more Pyrenees’.
Of course, cultural exchange with one’s neighbours is natural, and hardly ever respects borders. Yet as far as cultural exchanges go, this one was remarkably one-sided. Afrancesados (Spanish and Portuguese who supported the French occupation of Iberia, lit. ‘turned-French’), such as Javier de Burgos, collaborated with the French invaders and helped briefly establish a Bonapartist regime in Spain. De Burgos fled to France after the restoration of the Bourbons, but later returned and became a prominent liberal politician. The Napoleonic Civil Code served as the basis for Spain’s own Civil Code. After Napoleon, French influence in the rest of Europe was considerably diminished. Yet in Spain, French continued to be the preferred foreign language for almost two centuries, taught in Spanish schools over English up until the ’80s.
It is remarkable just how many of the greatest Spanish contributors to Western civilisation found their success outside of their home country — something that might be expected of a smaller country, but not somewhere of Spain’s size. In the literary scene, we find that some of the greatest classics of Spanish literature were censored — such as Lazarillo de Tormes — or had to be published outside the country altogether — such as Saint John of the Cross’ most important literary work, Spiritual Canticles, first published in French in Paris. In the sciences, soldier and inventor Jerónimo de Ayanz helped pioneer the use of the steam engine, but hardly saw any financial backing from the royal coffers (despite being on good terms with Phillip II). In the late nineteenth century, Isaac Peral designed and oversaw the production of the first operational military submarine, but the army and government refused to fund his venture, dooming the project. Just as Marie Curie found success in France, so too did Luis Fernández Álvarez and his family in the United States; and just as Joseph Conrad found unbridled recognition in London, Picasso and Buñuel made it big in Paris. In short, Spain was suffering from continual brain drain. One has to wonder what could have made these great minds stay in their homeland.
What goes around comes around
The nineteenth century was a tumultuous one for Spain. The Spanish Empire effectively collapsed, with only the African possessions of Morocco and Equatorial Guinea remaining under Spanish control. First, in the Spanish American Wars of Independence (1809-29), Spain lost all of its Southern and Central American colonies, beginning with Argentina in 1810, and ending with Bolivia in 1825. Then, in 1898, the Spanish-American War forced Spain to cede Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. This was well before the heyday of decolonisation: the British Empire hadn’t even reached its territorial peak by the time the sun had fully set on the Spanish Empire. And yet the Spanish somehow managed to (partially) default on their debt on seven separate occasions, breaking their own record.
Military disasters abroad were accompanied by political chaos at home. After the defeat of Napoleon, Spain see-sawed between varieties of absolutism and varieties of liberalism, with no end to the disorder in sight. As the population of cities grew, bourgeois writers reflected on the world around them and their distinct environment, giving a fillip to regionalism, with the rexurdimento in Galicia and the renaixença in the Catalan-speaking regions; meanwhile, the Basque-supported Carlists led major insurrections in 1833, 1846, and 1872.
With this as his backdrop, philosopher and essayist José Ortega y Gasset analysed his country’s history in his famous 1921 essay ‘Invertebrate Spain’, which argued that the country was still suffering from Castile’s failure to centralise the Spanish state they had been primarily responsible for bringing into the world. ‘Castile made Spain, and Castile unmade it’, Ortega y Gasset wrote. He concluded by proposing how best Spain could fix their mess:
This essay was not meant to do anything but to diagnose the biggest ill present in our country, Spain. The causes? The remedies? It seems too difficult for me that someone would come up with the correct recipe. The origins of this horrible disease are old, very old; as a matter of fact, they are tied to the very root of our ethnic spirit. The peoples triumph for their virtues and good qualities, but fail by not attending to their defects. The stone giant forgets that his own feet are made of clay. Spain, rather than its feet, has had a head made of clay. As years pass by, and with them meditations and experiences build up, the suspicion that our weakest quality has always been the intellect grows on me. We never had much, and almost always we’ve neglected this nurturing. How to convince an entire people that they are not very intelligent and that they won’t be saved while they are not convinced of this? I won’t be the one having the insolence to attempt it. Now, I finish these studies over the present-time of Spain with three simple observations:
1. A people live off from that which gave them life in the first place: aspiration. To keep it together, it is necessary to always have before their eyes a project which evokes a life in common. Only the great, bold endeavours awake profound vital instincts on the human masses. Not the past, but the future; not the tradition, but the enthusiasm.
2. Those great endeavours cannot, for the time being, consist of nothing more than an enormous dynamic reform of the inner life of Spain, oriented towards an international destiny: the spiritual unification of the Spanish-speaking peoples. Spain must return to the melting pot of an absolute reform by which, merging its parts, can combine them; Reform and America.
3. None of this can begin without convincing ourselves that in Spain today, as it always has been, there are very few, very gifted men. If all of them are not placed in the place in which they can perform their best, everything will be in vain. Worship to the select man.
—José Ortega y Gasset, Invertebrate Spain, 1921
Over the last century, with four regime changes under Spain’s belt since publication, it is clear that, regardless of the regime’s very real flaws, these three proposals were best put into practice under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco from 1939 to 1975. José Antonio Primo de Rivera, arguably the philosopher par excellence of Francoism, expanded on these ideas in a series of speeches in the ’30s:
277. Here is what demands our complete duty towards the Patria and the State which shall serve her: That all of the peoples of Spain, no matter how diverse they might be, feel harmonized towards an irrevocable unity of destiny…
279. We want that all of the peoples of Spain feel, not only that patriotism that pulls us to the soil, but the patriotism of mission, patriotism of that which is transcendental, patriotism of Gran España.
—José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Breviary, 1936
The Franco Era was a unification and centralisation effort without parallel in Spanish history. Franco, aiming to create a unified Spanish state, revoked the official status of the Basque, Catalan, and Galician languages, and abolished many (though not all) of the historic privileges of the regions. Meanwhile, the underappreciated Spanish economic miracle lifted millions out of poverty and transformed a country torn apart by bloody civil war into a modern nation-state for the first time.
However, this modernisation required compromises; compromises which would eventually turn the regime against itself. After more than a decade of economic autarchy, the Franco Regime accepted economic aid from the US in 1953; in exchange, American bases were opened up in Spanish soil. Then, in 1959, the Stabilisation Plan liberalised the economy and opened Spain up to trade and foreign direct investment. There is no doubt that these reforms were necessary for the stalling Spanish economy, but it also served to enable various forms of pressure from the hegemon of the ‘Free World’ — a risk seemingly better understood by the democratic French than by the nominally ‘Fascist’ Spanish.
In the latter years of the Franco Era, the regime’s harsh line against regionalism began to weaken. Prominent political figures such as Jordi Puyol (physician, member of a prominent banking family, and President of Catalonia for twenty-three years) and Manuel Fraga (Minister of Tourism and Information in the ’60s, and President of Galicia for fifteen years) rose in notoriety and came to be the leading men in their home regions, helping reactivate Spain’s suppressed fissiparous tendencies. Meanwhile, Opus Dei technocrats — men such as Alberto Ullastres and José María Albareda, two of the most important reformers — were actively seeking for Spain to join the European Economic Community, and thus the other political trends set by their northern neighbours. It is these two forces — revived regionalism and new-fangled European integration — that have done the most to undermine the integrity of the Spanish state in recent decades. In a not-so-ironic political move, the Christian and card-carrying Falangist Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez deliberately legalised the Spanish Communist Party during the Easter Week of 1977, with most of the country on a holiday break.
In foreign affairs, Franco did not present any plausible alternative to the plans of his technocrats, failing create a meaningful long-term partnership with even a single foreign state. After two of his fellow army commanders died in plane crashes at the start of the Civil War, he refused to take a flight for the rest of his life, only travelling outside the country three times after the Civil War ended — to meet Salazar, Mussolini, and Hitler — although he did receive visits to Spain from various foreign heads of state. Franco also failed to form any real relationship with the other Spanish-speaking countries. By contrast, Charles de Gaulle, from a country with few natural ties to the region, went on a grand tour of Latin America in the ’60s, delivering pro-French speeches to massive crowds.
Conclusion: Disuninity in perpetuity
With the turn to ‘democracy’, the new Constitution formalised these relationships in the bureaucratic superstructure. Spain pivoted from a self-described ‘Una Grande y Libre’ (One, Great and Free) to a scattered union of seventeen regions with self-government of (among other policy areas) education, healthcare, languages, agriculture, industry, and fisheries. The regions will often pay more attention to the European Union and its associated directives and regulatory frameworks than the Spanish central government.
Internationally, Spain consistently fails to command the influence that would be expected of it. It soon becomes clear to any third party that Spanish politicians have little to no interest in playing EU politics to advance the national interest; at best, they will will advance the interests of a region, a political party, or, rarely, an interest group (such as big business); and sometimes their own personal interest. It is common in the EU context for a Spanish bureaucrat to play the junior role to the French or Dutch. One particularly striking example of Spain’s lack of international influence is that none of the three EU-CELAC summits — meetings involving Latin America, the Caribbean, and the European Union — have taken place in Spain. The smaller EU-LAC has had two meetings in Madrid, but for some reason is headquartered in the famously Hispanic city of Hamburg, Germany.
What Spain will look like a century from now is of course unclear. But if nothing else, it seems almost certain that the Spain of 2124 will bear little resemblance to the Spain of 2024. Ortega y Gasset didn’t want to prescribe a concrete solution to Spain’s long-standing problems. Here at the Pimlico Journal, I’ll be daring enough to do so, calling for an admission of failure and an orderly dissolution of the Spanish Project. But that is for a future article.
This article was written by Suevi Man, a Pimlico Journal contributor from Spain. Have a pitch? Send it to pimlicojournal@substack.com.
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Q sorprendente cantidad de anecdotas que no se sabe a dónde van.
Tanto cainitas como orientalizantes.