Old, bloated regimes in their final spasms often attempt to absolve themselves of as much authority as possible, whether symbolic or formalised, to whomever is willing to take it, in an unacknowledged attempt to hasten their own demise. This suicidal impulse was most recognisably displayed in the last days of Imperial Russia, when the Romanovs donned red ribbons of solidarity with the Bolsheviks, who only a few months later would put them to death. In the case of the Soviet regime that succeeded them, that same impulse manifested itself in the glasnost reforms which sealed the fate of the USSR.
In 2023, by granting members the right to contribute in regional languages with the assistance of live translation services, the Spanish parliament became the only national legislative body in the world to permit the use of languages other than the country’s official language in parliamentary sessions. This is an exceptional situation not mirrored in other multilingual states (Belgium; Switzerland) or countries with protected language minorities (Russia). Barely a year later, the Spanish delegation to the European Commission asked twice for Catalan, Basque, and Galician to be recognised as official EU languages. In so doing, the Spanish state — left out of the G20 in favour of South Africa and Argentina and largely ignored in major multilateral geopolitical negotiations — manifests in the most poetic way its own desire to let others speak. Failing to project itself externally and struggling to maintain internal cohesion, it will die of exhaustion in the not-so-distant future.
The current dysfunction and the relative passivity of the population (as discussed in a previous article on the April 2025 blackout) converge to produce an apathy towards major changes in the short-term. Spain remains, in broad terms and compared to other countries, a safe and decent place to live. According to the latest figures, eighteen million British tourists still fly south every year. Spain’s current trend of decline, however, will not eventually lead to any kind of Spanish cultural renaissance, as some hope. The manifestations of Spain’s decay are by no means unique, nor necessarily more acute than in other Western countries. What is unique, however, is that Spain may have no solution to its present woes short of dissolution of this aged and tired national project.
Political Dysfunction
It is evident that Spaniards from different regions view each other at best with suspicion, and at worst with contempt. This factionalist sentiment does not stem from recent troubles, but instead appears inherent to the nature of the various peoples living on this rugged peninsula. The idea that Basques, Catalans, Castilians, and others are not, in fact, different, but are actually similar enough to form a nation like any other was actively fought by all groups during the periods in which serious attempts at centralisation were made and, for better or for worse, has failed to take root in the hearts and minds of the population at large.
To keep itself together, Spain has been wholly dependent on the deployment of a higher purpose which would demand social unity and total commitment from all her diverse subjects. The medieval inhabitants of the peninsula who believed in such a project and saw themselves as defenders of the Roman Catholic faith could unite behind this common cause, understanding the old Roman provide of Hispania to be the home of good Christians and their common turf to defend. Such a goal is non-existent for Spaniards as a whole today.
The burden of proof for the capacity of a people to perpetuate itself on its own falls upon each constituent group and individual thereof. They themselves must carry out their own existence in the presence and wish to flourish into the future, but the fulfilment of these requirements is not a given when a people lacks a cultural vitality of its own. Indeed, it is not so easy to evaluate what signals indicate the presence of such a vitality in the present era.
My own personal measure for a thriving Western nation is the desire of a people to spread knowledge in its own language. Catalans pass that test with flying colours. A Catalan news podcast aimed at a Gen-Z audience recently became the most-listened-to podcast in the whole of Spain. For various peoples around the world, Wikipedia offers an excellent channel for this ambition. Catalans, Basques, Galicians, Asturians, and other linguistic minorities believe strongly in their mission of spreading knowledge in their own ‘little language’ of a few million speakers, producing more articles than entire countries with hundreds of millions of people with access to the internet.
These good-spirited, bookish editors are driven neither by resentment nor hatred for Spain, but by a love for their own particular linguistic traditions. Articles in minority languages often have more complete and up-to-date information than their Spanish counterpart. On their own, when compared with speakers of the world’s second-biggest language, they remain a cultural force with which to grapple.
Economic Mismanagement
There remains a clear economic divide between Spain’s highly industrialised north and the tourism- and agriculture-orientated south, but the biggest economic challenge the country faces is the structural incoherence of government policy and the public sector.
This dysfunction is visible in many different arenas. Disputes over labour laws, which should be a relatively straightforward matter, now drag on for as long as they did during the mass lay-offs during the great financial crisis. The best example, however, is one which touches every Spanish citizen in one way or another: the tax system. The Spanish taxman, famous across the continent for his draconian methods, operates in a very different manner to his other Southern European counterparts. The Portuguese tax authorities copied the Scandinavian enforcement model; the Italian approach was developed as a response to the money-laundering activities of the Mafia. Hacienda Pública, on the other hand, are unique in their flagrantly extractive ethos.
By and large, SMEs in the hospitality, tourism, and real estate sectors — concentrated in the south — get a softer hand from the tax authorities, whilst the Basque country administers its own entirely separate system. Large businesses, on the other hand — concentrated in the productive centres of Madrid and Barcelona — are expected to develop political and financial ties to those in power in order to avoid endless litigation. EU court rulings have shone a light on the Spain’s repeated pattern of unevenly applied enforcement. For publicly traded companies, active collusion is not just encouraged, but expected. Those that don’t participate will end up on the sharp end of the stick.
Take Ferrovial, one of the world’s largest infrastructure companies. It manages airports including Heathrow, Glasgow, Southampton, and Aberdeen, as well as working on a variety of major projects across Britain, the United States, and Canada. Due to its huge revenues, the company was earmarked as easy prey by the authorities, and was subject to repeated investigations and prosecutions. Facing the prospect of litigation that dragged on for years, the company decided in 2023 to leave its base of operations in Spain altogether and incorporate itself instead as a Societas Europaea (a type of special ‘European’ public LLC permitted under European law) in the Netherlands, à la Airbus. While this decision shocked many in Spain, this was in fact a culmination of the company’s shift away from the country towards more friendly markets in Europe and North America, with employees in Spain now down from a peak of 35,000 to just 5,000.
All this to say that Spain would have a great deal to gain from some competent and reasonable government which met the bare minimum standard of effective and predictable administration of basic state functions. The problem is that this does not seem at all accessible thanks to the plethora of competing interest groups, beyond the norm expected in any pluralistic democracy, most notably including those representing the ‘autonomous communities’. When disputes between such groups cause the mechanisms of government to seize up, reform becomes impossible.
In order to escape this deadlock and achieve that competent and reasonable government, it seems likely that Spain would have to be radically reconstituted at the level of political organisation, with the central state dissolving and successor states, able to constitute some form of political unity, taking on the project of reform. Until then — although serious violence is unlikely — the Spanish state will continue to face interminable dysfunction. As this rot spreads, the dissolution option may well emerge gradually as the only acceptable resolution for all Spain’s constituent parties.
Alternative Solutions
You may accuse me of unjustified pessimism: surely, there must be some hail-Mary which could salvage Spain’s national project from collapse? I will consider the two most often-cited solutions, both of which I regard as non-starters: the immigration solution, and the Milei solution.
The Immigration Solution
The relative freedom of movement that has existed between Latin America and Europe has facilitated an inflow of millions of Spanish-speaking, nominally Catholic immigrants to Spain over the last decade, most of whom have fast-track access to Spanish nationality. It should go without saying that despite their ostensible connections to the mother country, these immigrants are far from culturally or genetically identical to the locals. Nevertheless, let us consider whether a continuation — nay, acceleration — of present trends could allow Spain to move away from regionalist pretensions and construct a more homogenous, though baser, national culture around the so-called ‘Hispanidad’.
This is the vision of every major political party in the Spanish parliament, and serves as an additional justification for mass migration to those deployed in many other Western countries — but could it work in reality? There is a similar process which has already taken place that could provide an answer to this question. From the nineteenth century up until the present day, internal migration has been a fact of life in Spain as in other countries. Conventional thinking would assume that this would help dissipate regionalist fervour, and for this reason it was tacitly encouraged by central government.
Nevertheless, when the first bans on bullfighting in Catalonia took effect and support for independence subsequently began steadily to grow in the early twenty-first century, it did so in a region where an estimated two-thirds of the population were already descended at least in part from non-Catalans who had moved to the region within the last century. An isolated, closed-off, genetically homogenous regional backwater this was not. As the protests calling for a referendum geared up, culminating in the worst political crisis in half a century, the percentage of ‘Catalans’ born to at least one non-Catalan parent had risen to three-quarters. At that time, a majority of these so-called ‘Catalans’ supported independence.
Similarly, in the Basque Country, the number of Basque speakers has risen consistently over the last few decades, despite the Basque Country also experiencing a high level of internal migration. Contemporaneously, the tradition of giving Castilian names to infants as a sign of high class has slowly given way in the face of a revival of traditional Basque names. It seems, then, that adoption of regionalist sentiments is not solely the result of deeply-held ancient loyalties, but also a way of adding greater force to the same kinds of parochial localist concerns that manifest themselves in other countries across Europe — giving the issue a troublesome stickiness.
Clearly, the migration that has already occurred within Spain thus far has not solved the problem. Prima facie, it is not clear why external migration would necessarily succeed where internal migration did not. More decisively, the relation of the new arrivals to the Spanish nation is fundamentally different from that of bona fide Spaniards.
This characteristic lack of attachment between Latin American migrants to their host country is nothing new, nor is it something that is exclusive to the Spanish-speaking world. In his classic Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970), the economist Albert Hirschman commented on the stability of Japanese society and politics — largely a consequence of that country’s ethnic and linguistic homogeneity — in contrast to the general instability of Latin America. In the latter region, ‘dissenters’ against the status quo tended to sort themselves out of the country altogether, going abroad in search of better prospects.
A closer look at Latin American migration patterns reveals that, indeed, a connection or sense of loyalty to the state in which one resides based on common heritage, language, or even religion is weak at best. The trails of millions of Central and South Americans towards the US-Mexico border over the last thirty years — a movement of people an order of magnitude larger than that from Latin America to Spain — is testament to this. On this side of the Atlantic, the sound of Peruvians loudly parroting with relatives on loudspeaker in a thick Andean accent is something that no doubt will be familiar to many Pimlico Journal readers traveling certain European capitals on dodgy metro lines. The strange phenomenon of the ‘British Latino’ and his many cousins (the ‘British Muslim Latino’, the ‘British Latino in New York’, etc.) are a similar example. When Latin Americans do choose to come to Spain, they do so not to build a new nation, but to pursue their own individual economic interests, just as do those whose destination is any other European or North American country.
Latin American immigration cannot, for these reasons, create a cohesive Spanish identity; nor will it revive the Spanish people’s will to flourish into the future. The fertility rates of immigrants to Spain barely manage to stand above the locals’ own abysmal levels, reflecting a similarly challenging picture across the Southern Cone. Far from a source of vitality, the speed of South America’s aging is rapidly catching up to that of Europe. Whilst Arab and Sub-Saharan African immigrants offer slightly higher fertility rates, they too converge on those of their host nation over time, and of course come without any of the attachments of language and heritage. Not coincidentally, these two groups comprise much of the immigrant populations of Catalonia and the Basque Country, creating unique regional hurdles to any future remigration effort. A cohesive migration policy would be challenging for any national government in the face of these variations.
The Milei Solution
A radically reforming government, led by a powerful executive with the help of a well-trained entourage and some fashionable electoral promises — could this break the Gordian knot?
The twentieth century provides a counter-example: at the tail-end of his dictatorship, the ETA (a Basque separatist terrorist group) killed Franco’s appointed successor as Prime Minister, Carrero Blanco. The movement they represented then went on a fifty-year terror campaign, taking eight hundred lives and guaranteeing the autonomous position of the Basques within a democratic Spain. Such was their response to the last attempt at centralisation by Madrid.
The independence movement in Catalonia reflects a similar struggle against national unification, admittedly by far less violent means: from the protection of the manufacturing industry, to support for Catalan language and culture, to the establishment of political autonomy, with two half-hearted unilateral secession attempts along the way. The lack of Spanish flags on some four-fifths of Catalan town halls and the support for self-determination by the Archbishop of Barcelona are the result of this unique kulturkampf.
A variety of regionalist political parties — from anti-establishment terrorism apologists on the left to ‘blood and soil’ nationalists on the right — have elected representatives at the local, regional, and national levels across Spain. Beyond the Catalan and Basque examples, these include BNG (Galicia), PNV CC (Canary Islands), UPN (Navarre), and Més-Compromis (Valancia), all of which are significantly stronger forces than their typically localist (as opposed to regionalist) counterparts in most other European countries. Such identitarian sentiments are reflected in the polls as well, and are very much present in the broader political life of the country. The day after the amnesty for those involved in the illegal Catalan independence referendum was formalised, pro-independence parties announced their intention to pick up on the referendum route again, despite support for independence dropping to a decade-long low.
With the strength of this opposition, it seems clear that any government elected on reformist platform, whether populist or technocratic, will fail to create support for constitutional changes among the regions or to override their attempts to resist it. The status quo favours existing interests, and they do not wish to see any change which would diminish their hold over central government. Any ‘Milei’ figure, even having secured an election victory on a regionally segregated electoral map, would face the competing interests of seventeen autonomous communities with distinct cultures and economic circumstances. The chances of overcoming this are low at best.
In the words of Ortega a century ago:
…[if] the national nihilism of Galicia or Seville does not cause dread, this indicates that the full depth of the disaster has not been noticed yet.
Again, regionalist preferences are not new, nor have they been overcome after centuries of civil strife among belligerent groups and repeated attempts to build a single national sense of belonging. A ‘Milei’ solution, simply put, is untenable.
An Orderly Dissolution
To place a future Spanish dissolution in time or to describe precisely the sequence of events which would lead thereto would be highly speculative. That said, the current trends of decay and corruption favour the established centres of wealth-creation and those who lead them to take the initiative: Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Navarre.
The easiest option, assuming a broadly peaceful scenario, is a successful independence referendum — but strange as it may seem, this may not even be required. In the 1991 referendum on the dissolution of the Soviet Union, six Soviet republics didn’t bother to participate, choosing to simply declare themselves independent. Of the remaining republics, all of them overwhelmingly voted in favour of keeping the union, and yet the USSR dissolved shortly afterwards. Similarly, in 1993, the Czechoslovakian leadership dissolved the country without any kind of formal vote. As the centre begins to unwind in the face of economic hardship and large-scale corruption, regional elites could push further on independence entirely on their own, potentially with little resistance from the rest of the country.
We should not entirely rule out even stranger scenarios still. As far-fetched as it may sound, if a small population (such as that of the Balearic Islands) wished to be converted into ‘the seventeenth state of Germany’ (as cheekily proposed by the Germans a few decades ago), it is hard to argue that Spain’s inept central government would have any right to stop them. Majorca’s population is already heavily economically dependent upon (and in large part made up by) German and British tourists and expats, with the Canary Islands in a similar position. Would the rain-floods that overwhelm the archipelago on a yearly basis be better handled under a leadership based in Madrid, Majorca, or Berlin? That’s certainly not a call that I — somebody who has seldom stepped foot on the archipelago — should feel confident making.
The velvet divorce of Czechia and Slovakia provides a fine blueprint for handling of post-dissolution issues in Spain. The two nations went through the fall of Communism, a national divorce, crushing national debt, a TFR barely hovering above 1.10, and integration into the EU and NATO — all in the span of fifteen years. Now, Czechia is one of the better places to live in the continent, as described in a previous article; Slovakia, while still less economically successful than its former partner, is also perfectly pleasant.
When Czechoslovak President Václav Havel (a playwright) and the Slovak separatist Michal Kováč (an economist) came to lead the two nations that resulted from the divorce, they had different notions about the ‘Washington Consensus’, the ‘European Exchange Rate Mechanism’, and other such matters of importance. But the intricate, interconnected issues of capital markets, monetary policy, law and society were slowly figured out nonetheless. Czechia and Slovakia have thus ended in a relatively similar place, though separated. Dissolution does not have to mean an end to any kind of ties between peoples — and it’s often only after a divorce that a relationship can begin to heal.
Debt obligations in particular need not be an insurmountable hurdle. Most Spanish banks feed information to the European Banking Authority on their loans and financial instruments following the latest data package requirements (COREP 4.0, CRP3). Such information can easily be utilised to help manage the finanial side of the transition, though some seem to be willing to go the extra mile: during the writing of this piece, the Catalan government has given the green light to the creation of a new credit institution which would eventually serve their own independent objectives.
As for the degree of involvement with the EU, one should note that Spain follows the EU acquis communitaire, so the newly independent regions would see a quicker route to becoming a member as a new state — if, of course, that is the route they wished to pursue. Switzerland offers an interesting scenario of linguistic coexistence between four official languages (with only Romansh being endemic to the country, the language with the smallest number of speakers), as well as an intermediate position regarding the EU. It is a member of the Schengen area and a variety of other treaties, and retains close relations with the EU, but is not actually a member state.
Norway — not comparable economically, with vast oil reserves and the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, but similar in some respects as a smaller country on Europe’s periphery — presents another edge case example on the possibilities for future relations with the EU. It is a member of the Schengen area, the EEA, and adopts some EU legislation, but again is not formally part of the EU itself. Regardless of my personal preferences, each Spanish successor state will be able to design its ongoing relationship with the EU (and any other Spanish successor states) as it sees fit, without having to accommodate sixteen conflicting sets of demands.
These forecasts rest on the slowly growing realization by the as yet unengaged citizens of Spain, which comes closer with each passing day, that these irreconcilable differences cannot simply continue into a future of higher uncertainty. Though pro-independence movements have been consistently rejected thus far, and sovereignty at the level of the nation remains one of the pillars of most right-wing movements in the West, this is not — and cannot be — the case for Spain. Its fractured nature has been, throughout its history, its most prominent feature — one which has castrated every government for the past four hundred years, and which even today remains insurmountable. Dissolution offers the only alternative to this impotent state of Spain, and a better future for all her peoples.
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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It baffles me that Pimlico continues to give space to this insane Galician separatist.
Also, the overuse of long dashes and Oxford commas gives away that this is written by a chatbot.