SPAIN

The Trials and Triumphs of a

Modern European Country

MICHAEL REID

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
iii
 Spain

‘The best and most complete book I have read about Spain today and
the historical roots of the present.’
Antonio Muñoz Molina, prize-winning novelist

‘This is a thoroughly up-to-date, astute account of contemporary

Spain. Reid situates the country’s recent political turbulence in its
Western European context, yet also concisely explains the history
behind it … An engaging read for those new to and already familiar
with Spain alike.’
Caroline Gray, author of Territorial Politics and the Party System in
Spain

i
ii
Copyright © 2023 Michael Reid

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
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iv
 For Roxani
And to the Jardines del Buen Retiro
Storm-tossed survivor and source of solace

v
Hombre de España: ni el pasado ha muerto, ni esta el mañana – ni
el ayer-escrito. [Spaniard: neither has the past died, nor is
tomorrow – nor yesterday – yet written.]
Antonio Machado, ‘El Dios ibero’

I am firmly convinced that Spain is the strongest country of the world.

Century after century trying to destroy herself and still no success.
Attributed to Bismarck

Nothing causes more pain to Spaniards than to see volume after

volume written by foreigners about their country.
Richard Ford, A Handbook for Travellers in Spain

On analysing the state of dissolution that Spanish society has reached,

we find some symptoms and ingredients that are not exclusive to our
country but rather are general trends in European nations.
José Ortega y Gasset, España Invertebrada

vi
 CONTENTS

List of illustrations and maps viii

Glossary and abbreviations xi
Acknowledgements xv

Prologue: The Spanish mirror 1

1 The unravelling 12
2 A Catalan autumn 41
3 The invention of Catalonia 58
4 Why Spain is not France 91
5 Let’s talk about Franco 117
6 The Basque paradox and galeguismo 150
7 The fading of the Spanish dream 173
8 Scandinavia in the sun? 201
9 ‘The caste’ and its flawed challengers 228
10 The narcissism of small differences 260

Notes 275
Bibliography 288
Index 291

vii
 I L LU S T R AT I O N S A N D M A P S

Plates
1. Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656, Madrid, Museo Nacional
del Prado (P001174). © Photographic Archive Museo Nacional
del Prado.
2. Voting for the constitution in 1978. Reproduced with the permis-
sion of EFE.
3. Lieutenant-Colonel Tejero on a podium after leading the takeover
of Spain’s parliament, 1981. Bettmann / Getty Images.
4. Supporters of Catalan independence throng Barcelona at the
Diada demonstration in 2012. David Ramos / Getty Images.
5. Catalan and Spanish flags on balconies in Barcelona in 2017.
Reuters / Alamy Stock Photo.
6. The Benedictine monastery of Montserrat. Joe Sohm / Visions of
America / Getty Images.
7. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid,
or ‘The Executions’, 1814, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
(P000749). © Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado.
8. Antonio Gisbert Pérez, Execution of Torrijos and his Companions
on the Beach at Málaga, 1888, Madrid, Museo Nacional del
viii
 ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

Prado (P004348). © Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del

Prado.
9. Manuel Azaña, 1930. Alamy Stock Photo.
10. Anarchist militia in Barcelona during the Civil War. Hulton
Deutsch / Getty Images.
11. General Francisco Franco saluting nationalist troops, 1939.
Keystone-France / Getty Images.
12. Exhumation of a victim of the Civil War, 2021. Carlos Gil Andreu
/ Getty Images.
13. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. VW Pics / Getty
Images.
14. Empty apartments at Seseña near Madrid, 2012. Reuters / Alamy
Stock Photo.
15. Feminist protesters demand the abolition of prostitution, Madrid,
2022. Europa Press News / Getty Images.
16. Pampaneira, Andalucía. Education Images / Getty Images.
17. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Duel with Cudgels, or Fight to the
Death with Clubs, 1820–3, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
(P000758). © Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado.
18. Pedro Sánchez, 2022. Europa Press News / Getty Images.
19. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, 2022. Europa Press News / Getty Images.
20. Pablo Iglesias with Ada Colau, 2019. Europa Press News / Getty
Images.
21. Santiago Abascal at a Vox rally, 2022. Europa Press News / Getty
Images.
22. King Felipe and Queen Letizia with their daughters, 2019. Jaime
Reina / Getty Images.
23. AVE high-speed train. Jose Manuel Revuelta Luna / Alamy Stock
Photo.
24. Bar terraces of Gijón, 2019. Xurxo Lobato / Getty Images.

ix
 ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

Maps
1. Spain’s regions. xvii
2. Spain’s high-speed rail network. xviii

x
 G L O S S A RY A N D A B B R E V I AT I O N S

abertzale patriotic or nationalist in Basque

afrancesado an admirer of France and of the Enlightenment
ANC (Assemblea Catalan National Assembly, a separatist social
Nacional Catalana) movement
AP (Alianza Popular) Popular Alliance, conservative party formed
in 1977 and merged into the PP (Partido
Popular) in 1989
ayuntamiento municipal government, town hall
BNG (Bloco Galician Nationalist Bloc
Nacionalista Galego)
cacique political boss
cajas de ahorros savings banks
CEDA (Confederación Confederación Española de Derechas
Española de Derechas Autónomas, a Catholic right-wing party in the
Autónomas) 1930s
CIS (Centro de Centre for Sociological Research, the state
Investigacianes pollster
Sociológicas)

xi
 GLOSSARY AND ABBREVIATIONS

CiU (Convergència i Convergence and Union, a Catalan nation-

Unió) alist party
Ciudadanos Citizens, a party of the centre-right which
mixed liberalism with Spanish nationalism
Comunidades autonomous communities, or regions
Autónomas
concierto económico the arrangement under which the Basque
provinces and Navarre collect their own taxes
corrida bullfight
Cortes the Spanish parliament
crispación tension or confrontation
CUP (Canditatura Popular Unity Candidacy, a Catalan sepa-
d’Unitat Popular) ratist party
diputación (Catalan provincial council
diputació)
EEC European Economic Community
EH Bildu a Basque separatist coalition that included
former members and supporters of ETA
ERC (Esquerra Republican Left of Catalonia
Republicana de
Catalunya)
estado autonómico the autonomous state, the name for the quasi-
federal structure of regional governments of
the 1977 constitution
Estelada the unofficial flag of the Catalan indepen-
dence movement
ETA (Euskadi Ta Basque Homeland and Liberty, terrorist
Askatasuna) group formed in 1959 and dissolved in 2018
EU European Union
exaltados hotheads, radical liberals in the 1820s and
1830s

xii
 GLOSSARY AND ABBREVIATIONS

franquista supporter of General Franco and his

dictatorship
fueros legal privileges
GAL (Grupos a police death squad active in the Basque
Antiterroristas de Country between 1983 and 1987
Liberación)
GDP gross domestic product
Generalitat the regional government in Catalonia, and in
Valencia
guapo handsome
HB (Herri Batasuna) Popular Unity, a front party for ETA
ikurriña the red, green and white Basque flag
indignados mainly young protesters against corruption
and austerity who took to the streets in May
2011
INE (Instituto National Statistics Institute
Nacional de
Estadística)
Izquierda Unida United Left, an electoral coalition including
the former Spanish Communist Party, and
which itself formed a coalition with Podemos
Junts per Catalunya Together for Catalonia, the separatist party
founded by Carles Puigdemont
kale borroka ‘struggle in the streets’ in Basque, vandalism
and intimidation practised by supporters of
ETA
lehendakari president of the Basque regional government
masia farmhouse in Catalan
Moncloa the complex that houses the prime-ministerial
offices
Mossos d’Esquadra the Catalan regional police force

xiii
 GLOSSARY AND ABBREVIATIONS

Òmnium Cultural Catalan separatist social movement

PNV (Partido Basque Nationalist Party
Nacionalista Vasco)
Podemos We Can, a hard-left party founded in 2014
which later changed its name to Unidos
Podemos and then Unidas Podemos (‘Together
we can’, in the feminine)
PP (Partido Popular) Popular Party, a mainstream right-of-centre
party formed in 1989
procés process, the name given by Catalan nation-
alist leaders to their drive for independence
pronunciamiento rebellion, often bloodless, by military leaders
PSOE (Partido Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, referred to
Socialista Operário in the text as the Socialists
Espanhol)
Renaixença renaissance, a Catalan cultural movement in
the nineteenth century
Senyera the official flag of the Catalan autonomous
region
sobremesa conversation, sometimes over spirits and
cigars, at the end of a meal
tertulia a group political or literary discussion, origi-
nally in a café or nowadays on television
programmes
torero bullfighter
UCD (Unión de Union of the Democratic Centre, electoral
Centro Democrático) coalition formed by Adolfo Suárez, which
governed from 1977 to 1982

xiv
 AC K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

I would like to thank the following who have helped me in different

ways during my years of working on Spain: Jordi Alberich, Joaquín
Almunia, José María Areilza, Tobias Buck, Tom Burns Marañon,
Andrea Calvé, Carles Casajuana, William Chislett, Wolfgang Dold,
Rafael Domenech, Adrián García Aranyos, Luis Garicano, Daniel
Gascón, Ramón González Férriz, Victor Lapuente, Bernadino León,
Sandra León, Elvira Lindo, Kiko Llaneras, Marc López, Fiona Maharg
Bravo, Andreu Mas-Colell, David Matheson, Antonio Muñoz Molina,
Rodrigo Orihuela, Ana Palacio, Joan María Piqué, Charles Powell,
Luis Prados de la Escosura, Maite Rico, Manuel de la Rocha, Toni
Roldán, Eduardo Serra, José Enrique Serrano, Pablo Simón and José
Ignacio Torreblanca. None of the above are responsible in any way for
the arguments of the book. Several of them would not tolerate being in
the same room with others on the list. It is the writer’s privilege to
listen to a wide range of views. My apologies to anyone I have uninten-
tionally omitted.
I am grateful to Sir John (J.H.) Elliott both for illuminating
conversations about Spain over the past fifteen years or so and for his
enthusiastic welcome for the idea of this book. It is sad that he did not

xv
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

live to see it in print. Many thanks to Yale’s two anonymous readers of

the text for their penetrating comments, and to one of them in partic-
ular for correcting mistakes of historical fact. Thanks, too, to Jordi
Alberich, Daniel Gascón and Andy Reid for helpful suggestions, to
Emily Upton for information about language teaching in France, to
Adam Meara for the maps and to Silvie Koanda for help with the
photographs.
I thank Joanna Godfrey at Yale’s London office for her championing
of the book and close reading of the text, as well as Katie Urquhart and
the rest of the Yale team for turning it into a manufactured product.
The Economist is accommodating of the writing of books by its staff. I
am grateful to Zanny Minton-Beddoes, Robert Guest, Emma Hogan
and Christopher Lockwood for enabling me to take several months
away from my then day jobs to complete this book.
For many decades I have enjoyed sharing an interest in Spain with
Charlie Forman, with whom I made a memorable trip to the Basque
Country, Navarre and La Rioja in 1977. More recently I have also
profited from sharing that interest with David Camier-Wright. As
always, my chief debt is to my family. Having been sceptical about the
project, my wife, Emma Raffo, whose opinion I respect above all
others, thankfully became a convert, and by spotting weaknesses in the
draft text helped to improve it. This book is dedicated to my daughter,
Roxani Wilberg, who never misses an opportunity to come to Spain.

Madrid, June 2022

xvi
 Montpellier A
Toulouse
Gijón Beziers
Santander 2.2 2.2 Biarritz Marseille
Oviedo San Sebastián Tarbes F R A N C E
La Coruña 1.0 Cantabria Bilbao 30.4
Asturias 0.6 Basque
Santiago de Galicia 0.6 Perpignan
Compostela 1.0 Country Pamplona
22.1 ANDORRA
2.7 21.1 León Vitoria
Logroño
0.7
21.9 Navarre
0.7
Vigo Ourense
2.7 Burgos Logroño 29.3
2.4 Huesca Catalonia
La Rioja
0.3 7.8

N
Viana Do Castelo Braganca 0.3
27.8 Mataro
Braga Valladolid 25.7 Zaragoza 7.8

EA
Vila Real Aragón Barcelona
Porto Castile & León
1.3 Tarragona
2.4 1.3
26.5
Aveiro Viseu Salamanca23.2 Madrid Guadalajara
Guarda
Region

TIC OC
Coimbra Covilhã
Madrid 6.8
32.0 Castellón
ics
6.8 e ar
PORTUGAL
Leiria Castelo Branco Toledo al
B Palma
Valencia

ATLAN
Santarem Portalegre 1.2
Extremadura Castile - La Mancha 1.2
2.1 Valencia 22.0

xvii
2.1 5.1
1.11.1 5.1
Lisbon Mérida
Badajoz 18.3 19.4 Albacete 20.8
Setúbal Evora

Beja Linares
Alicante Mediterranean Sea
Murcia
Cordoba
8.5 Murcia
Lorca
Andalucía Jaén
1.5 Cartagena
Portimao Huelva 8.5 1.5
Seville Granada
19.8
Faro 17.7 Tizi-Ouzo
Almeria
Málaga Algiers
Blida
Regions Marbella Santa Cruz
Cadiz Árrecife
Capital 2.2 de Tenerife
Algeciras
Gibraltar (UK) ALGERIA
2020, National Mostaganem M
Ceuta
Population, m 47.4 Tangier Oran Las Palmas
GDP per person, €’000 23.7 2.2
Mascara 17.4Tiarat C a n a r i e s
Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadística 0.1 Melilla
Larache
0.1

Map 1. Spain’s regions.

 Montpellier A
Toulouse
Gijón Beziers
Bayonne Marseille
San Sebastián Tarbes F R A N C E
A Coruña Oviedo Santander
Santiago de Bilbao
Compostela
Perpignan

o
ANDORRA
Vitoria Pamplona

Miñ
Sil Logroño
León
Vigo Ourense
Burgos
Eb
ro Huesca
Girona

N
Viana Do Castelo Braganca
Soria Mataro
Braga Valladolid Zaragoza

EA
Duero
Vila Real Barcelona
Porto
Tarragona
Aveiro Viseu Salamanca
Guarda Guadalajara

TIC OC
Covilhã Madrid Teruel
Coimbra s
and
Castellón Isl
PORT UGAL
Castelo Branco
Talavera Toledo ic
Leiria r
Tag ea Palma
us
Valencia al

xviii
ATLAN
Portalegre
B
Santarem

Badajoz Ciudad
Guadiana Albacete
Lisbon Mérida Real
Setúbal Evora
Segura
Beja Linares Alicante Mediterranean Sea
Córdoba Guadalq Murcia
ui v i r Lorca
Jaén
Cartagena
Portimao Huelva
Seville
Faro Granada
Tizi-Ouzo
Almeria
Málaga Algiers
Blida
Marbella Santa Cruz
Cádiz Árrecife
de Tenerife
Algeciras
Gibraltar (UK) ALGERIA
Mostaganem M
Ceuta
High-speed rail network Tangier Oran Las Palmas
300 kph 200-250 kph Mascara Tiarat
Under construction Can ar y Is lan ds
MOROCCO
Larache
Melilla

Map 2. Spain’s high-speed rail network.

 PROLOGUE: THE SPANISH MIRROR

A t its midpoint, the extended gallery that runs much of the length
of the first floor of the Prado opens onto the spacious, hexagonal
Room 12. This spot is the fulcrum of Madrid’s great art museum, left
undisturbed even in the rehang of its collections during the pandemic.
On the western side of the long gallery at that point hangs Titian’s
majestic equestrian portrait of Emperor Charles V at the Battle of
Mühlberg. Some seventy paces away, the eastern wall of Room 12 is
occupied by Las Meninas, Diego Velázquez’s towering painting, which
has come to be seen as perhaps the greatest single work in the history
of European art. Ostensibly a conversation piece, a homely scene in
which a sumptuously dressed princess is attended by her ladies-in-
waiting, a dwarf, a dog and palace retainers, the more the viewer looks
at it the more it resembles a riddle.1
For a start, the most prominent figure in the painting, the one who
stares across at Charles V from afar, is the painter, Velázquez himself,
portrayed standing before a large easel, working on a canvas that is
hidden from us. But who is Velázquez looking at with his forensic gaze
as he stands poised, brush in one hand and palette of reds and browns
in the other? One answer is provided by a mirror on the back wall

1
 SPAIN

which reveals the figures of the king, Philip IV, and his second queen,
Mariana of Austria. It was once thought that the royal couple were
merely observing the scene, that they had dropped by to greet their
daughter. But the alignment of the ceiling lights shows that the reflec-
tion in the mirror is not that of the monarchs themselves but rather of
the canvas that Velázquez is working on, a dual portrait of the king and
queen. (Velázquez was fascinated by mirrors, and possessed no fewer
than twelve.) Las Meninas is thus a painting about painting. It has
multiple focal points. Velázquez’s gaze is mimicked by that of the
chamberlain, who stands in a lighted doorway beside the mirror. He is
perhaps the most enigmatic figure in the painting. Is he entering or
leaving the room? Things are much more complicated and uncertain
than they might seem.
Velázquez worked in the final years of Spain’s Golden Age, when its
monarchs, although embattled, still ruled much of Europe and an
empire stretching from the Andes to the Philippines. Temporarily
enriched by the gold and silver of the Americas, Spain enjoyed an even
greater cultural wealth, exemplified by Miguel de Cervantes and his
masterpiece, Don Quixote; the playwrights Lope de Vega and Calderón
de la Barca; Quevedo and Góngora, rival poets who detested each
other; as well as Velázquez’s fellow-artists, such as Zurburán, with his
haunting portraits of pious monks, and Murillo, the baroque painter
of the Counter-Reformation’s religious ecstasy.
Yet the glitter was misleading. Contrast Las Meninas, painted in
1656, with the Charles V portrait, painted a little over a century earlier,
and it seems clear that Velázquez, the official court painter to Philip IV,
is portraying decline, albeit obliquely. He had earlier painted his king
in a similar equestrian pose to Titian’s image of his great-grandfather.
But in his greatest work, the monarchs are off stage. They are seen
through a glass, darkly. They may – or may not – be standing exactly
where we, the viewers, are. So Las Meninas also seems to be a painting
about us. No wonder it fascinated both Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine

2
 PROLOGUE: THE SPANISH MIRROR

writer of metaphysical stories and riddles, and Michel Foucault, the

high priest of postmodernism.
Las Meninas plays with our sense of certainty about what we see
when we look. It asks whether we only see what we want to see. And so
it is with Spain. Like Velázquez’s painting, the country itself has been
extensively studied and dissected. Indeed, few nations in Western
Europe have been the subject of such a large literature by foreign
writers (especially Britons) and one that is so cliché-ridden. Spain has
served as a mirror, an often distorted one, onto which observers have
projected their own visions and fantasies.
Foreigners have seen, or projected, two seemingly opposed but in
fact intersecting visions in the Spanish mirror. José Varela Ortega, a
historian at the Complutense University in Madrid, sums these up in
a 1,100-page tome published in 2019 as being ‘the militant, passionate
Spaniard’ contrasted with ‘the indolent, decadent or degenerate
Spaniard’.2 The first view is commonly known in Spain as the ‘black
legend’, the propaganda that newly Protestant northern Europe
deployed against the Spain of Charles V and his son, Philip II, who
between them led the Catholic Counter-Reformation against what
they saw as heresy (this battle began, in military terms, at Mühlberg in
1547, though Charles’s victory there proved to be a pyrrhic one). Spain
was portrayed as cruel, dark and obscurantist, under the sway of priests
and the thumbscrews of the Inquisition. As in all successful propa-
ganda, there was truth in this, but exaggeration too.
Showing prickly insecurity which may reflect the difficulty the
country – indeed any country – has in coming to terms with the loss of
empire, Spanish conservative thinkers have tended to present all criti-
cism of Spain by outsiders as a product of the black legend. Far from
fading, such commentary has gathered force in the past decade. A book
defending Spain’s colonial record against the black legend by María
Elvira Roca Barea has become a surprise bestseller of over 100,000
copies since it was first published in 2016. For one of her critics Roca

3
 SPAIN

Barea’s argument is simply ‘national-Catholic populism’ (‘national

Catholicism’ was the ideology often attributed to the dictatorship of
Francisco Franco).2 More broadly, Spaniards are often portrayed as
uniquely intransigent and violent. ‘If one Deadly Sin were to define the
Spanish national character, it would be Pride,’ claims one recent account
by a British author, who goes on to forecast portentously that the
country is ‘destined to follow’ paths involving ‘bloodshed’.3
If the black legend was originally a response to Spanish power, a
second, romantic, vision was evoked by Spain’s subsequent decline.
From the eighteenth century onwards, foreign observers began to view
Spain as backward, a vision summed up in the sneering remark attrib-
uted to Alexandre Dumas that ‘Africa begins at the Pyrenees’. For
Voltaire, who unlike Dumas never visited Spain, Spaniards were an
‘indolent’ race. In the nineteenth century, other foreign travellers and
writers began to rejoice in this supposed backwardness. They portrayed
Spain as exotic as well as decadent. Their approach was ‘orientalist’, in
Edward Said’s term.4
Spain thus became the land of the ‘Carmen’ of Mérimée’s novel and
Bizet’s opera, of lascivious women, gypsies, bandits, and song and
dance. ‘The only serious thing for Spaniards is pleasure, and they give
themselves up to it with admirable abandon, commitment and ardour,’
wrote Théophile Gautier, a visiting French writer.5 The country’s
alleged lack of modernity began to be seen as a sign of the authenticity
of its culture. Its popular music inspired foreign composers, such as
Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy and Ravel. The English Romantics, such
as Richard Ford in his Handbook for Travellers in Spain of 1845, wrote
of the vitality and dignity of Spaniards, a noble people who were
held to be routinely betrayed by bad government and rulers (that,
too, contained considerable truth). This theme was continued by
two writers who indelibly fixed outsiders’ view of the Spanish Civil
War, Ernest Hemingway in his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls and
George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia, his memoir of fighting as

4
 PROLOGUE: THE SPANISH MIRROR

a volunteer militiaman against the nationalist army of General

Francisco Franco.
The romantic appeal of Spain was reiterated by Franz Borkenau, an
Austrian former Marxist who offered perhaps the most perceptive
contemporaneous foreign account of the Civil War. He noted that
almost every foreign observer, whether of the left or of the right, felt ‘an
almost magical attraction’ to the country. He went on:

The deep attraction of Spain consists, in my view, not so much in

its [political] importance but in its national character. There life is
not yet efficient; that means that it is not yet mechanised; that
beauty is still more important for the Spaniard than practical use;
sentiment more important than action; honour very often more
important than success; love and friendship more important than
one’s job.6

One might add to this list the more basic characteristics of sun, warmth,
wine and Mediterranean food – all things which for northern Europeans
contributed to the sense of contrast and otherness.
The Romantics, according to Tom Burns Marañon, an Anglo-
Spanish writer, ‘created a series of stereotypes and those clichés now
form part not just of the way others see [Spain], which matters little, but
of the very mirror in which Spaniards look at themselves’.7 Those clichés
and stereotypes have surfaced in recent years, especially in foreign
coverage of the Catalan conflict. And their internalisation by Spaniards
has contributed to an abiding pessimism. Like Velázquez, Spaniards
have for centuries had an acute sense of their country’s relative decline
from past greatness. Sometimes exaggerated, this declinism has coloured
the country’s political life. It still does.

‘Travellers often become enchanted with the first country that captures
their hearts and gives them licence to be free,’ notes Wade Davis, a

5
 SPAIN

Canadian writer and anthropologist.8 In my case that country was

Spain. I first entered it on a hot Saturday afternoon in July 1971, with
two university friends. We had driven from London in a battered blue
Volkswagen camper van. We crossed the border at Irún and drove into
San Sebastián. I have many snapshots of memory from that and later
trips. The first is of the slanting evening sun in the crowded streets of
the old quarter of San Sebastián, as we walked from bar to bar, sampling
squid and octopus, delicacies almost unknown in the still insular
Britain of that time. In the residual heat, there was a pungent aroma of
sewerage.
Spain then was a far poorer country than Britain. From Madrid, we
drove south, through Toledo and then Puertollano, a stiflingly hot
coal-mining town of tin-roofed shacks. After marvelling at the
mezquita, the vast mosque in Córdoba, we stopped to buy some food
at Fernán-Núñez, deep in the Andalucian countryside and surrounded
by olive groves. It was a whitewashed town of dirt streets and one-
storey houses with tiny windows, home to thousands of agricultural
day labourers, who spent much of the year unemployed, and prema-
turely aged women dressed in widow’s black. One was seated in her
doorway pounding tomatoes for gazpacho in a stone pestle. Fernán-
Núñez stuck in my mind as the poorest place I had ever seen. We drove
back almost the length of Spain’s Mediterranean coast, from Algeciras
to Barcelona, along the N340, a slow highway. Torremolinos and
Benidorm were starting to sprout forests of high rises, but much of the
coast was still largely undeveloped.
Franco was still in charge, as he had been since crushing the Republic
in the Civil War. The freedom I felt was purely internal, to be outside
my own culture and in a different, more extrovert but still accessible
one. I considered myself fortunate not to have to run the risks that
Spaniards of my age did in opposing dictatorship. We were merely
stopped sometimes and briefly questioned by stern civil guards in their
tricorn hats, suspicious of three long-haired foreign young men. The

6
 PROLOGUE: THE SPANISH MIRROR

next summer I hitch-hiked round a large segment of Spain, from

Barcelona to Madrid and on to León, Asturias and Galicia. In Santiago
de Compostela I fell in with a friendly group of students from the
town’s big university. As term was ending, one of them invited me to
stay at his family home in Vigo, Spain’s largest fishing port and an
important industrial city. He introduced me to the art of Spanish bar-
crawling on an almost non-existent budget: we would arrive in a bar
just when it was serving its free pincho – a cup of shellfish soup here, a
chunk of tortilla there, a plate of mussels somewhere else, all washed
down with beakers of rough local wine costing one peseta. While I was
in Vigo, in September 1972, the trade unions, which operated clandes-
tinely, called a general strike. It began with a demand by workers at the
big Citroën factory to limit the working week to forty-four hours, and
went on to last a fortnight. I remember seeing groups of workers facing
the police in otherwise deserted avenues. The national press, which
operated under censorship, failed to mention what was the biggest
news in Spain. The local paper had a small story about Communist
agitators.
To a young and inhibited Briton, Spanish women were alluring.
Arriving in a town I would join the paseo, the early evening stroll round
and round the main square that is still a mainstay of social life in
provincial Spain. Groups of young women would stare and giggle, at
once flirtatious and out of bounds, with a chaperone not far away and
life spent under the shadow of the priest and the confessional. In the
cities I met more independent young women, who whizzed around in
the sunshine on motor scooters.
Like the Romantic travellers of the nineteenth century, I was
hooked. I would make three more trips to Spain in the 1970s. Even to
an outsider with limited Spanish, as mine was back then, it was clear
that the country was in a ferment of change. Professional people in
their thirties, part of a rapidly growing middle class, would give me lifts
in their cramped Fiat 500s or boxy SEAT 124s. They were keen to talk

7
 SPAIN

to a foreigner about their frustration at the stasis of dictatorship, and

desperate to enjoy the same freedoms as their counterparts across
Western Europe. They were often very kind. The only coldness I
remember was on one occasion in Madrid: a young South African with
whom I had shared a lift from Zaragoza took me to an uncle’s flat on
Calle Bravo Murillo on a stifling Saturday afternoon, as what was then
a sleepy city of bureaucrats shutting down for the weekend. Perhaps
understandably, the uncle, a civil servant and a franquista, was not
overjoyed to see us, but did let us stay the night in the flat with its dark,
heavy furniture. Hitch-hiking could be difficult. After waiting hours at
the roadside, sometimes I gave up and took the train. The cheapest
were called ‘Rápido’ or ‘Exprés’. They stopped at almost every station
and took many hours to get anywhere. With few motorways and no
high-speed trains, Spain seemed like a much bigger country than it
feels now.
In 1972 Franco was almost a mummy. On his summer holiday in
Galicia, the newspapers dutifully published photos of the elderly
dictator fishing, his face hidden by dark glasses. In November 1975 he
died, in his bed. At last, a transition to democracy began. On regular
visits to Spain over the next three decades I saw a country swiftly trans-
forming. It became an outwardly prosperous European nation, ‘normal’
at last. Political scientists stopped lamenting Spanish ‘exceptionalism’,
the notion that ‘Spain is different’ in the words of an official tourist
slogan dreamed up under Manuel Fraga, Franco’s information minister
in the 1960s (a job title that revealed the nature of the regime).
In 2008, just as a property bubble was bursting amid the financial
crisis that shook the United States and Europe, I reported and wrote a
14-page Special Report on Spain for The Economist. I found a country
on the verge of a deep slump about which it was mostly in denial.
There were clear signs of the clash that would come in Catalonia.
I titled the report ‘The party’s over’. It touched a nerve in Spain.
That edition of The Economist sold more than 20,000 extra copies on

8
 PROLOGUE: THE SPANISH MIRROR

Spanish newsstands. In May 2016 I moved to Madrid, and have lived

there since.

Today Spain is a country where, superficially at least, progress has

largely halted. The past dozen years have been hard ones, starting with
the bursting of a property bubble and an economic slump between
2008 and 2012. Although a vigorous recovery followed, at times what
Spaniards call convivencia (getting along together) has been strained.
What seemed to be a robust democracy has suffered multiple jolts.
Many of its institutions, from the monarchy to the courts and the
political parties, have been called into question. The biggest shock
came in Catalonia, where nationalism turned to separatism. In the
autumn of 2017 Catalonia’s devolved government, in the hands of
separatists, organised an unconstitutional referendum and a unilateral
declaration of independence. In response the Spanish state placed a
dozen separatist leaders on trial and jailed them in a move that seemed
incomprehensible to many outsiders. And then came the Covid-19
pandemic, which hit Spain and its economy harder than many of its
neighbours and exposed failures of governance, as it did everywhere.
The Catalan events, in particular, prompted a revival of stereotypes,
especially among commentators in Britain and the United States. In
many portrayals, including their own, Catalan leaders were seen as
representing an oppressed nation. Since Orwell, Catalonia has occu-
pied a particular place in the romantic imagination. And many outsiders
are all too ready to detect Franco’s ghost at work in contemporary
Spain. They and some Spaniards argue that the country is paying the
price for what is held to have been ‘a pact of forgetting’ during the tran-
sition to democracy. ‘The ghost of Franco still haunts Catalonia’, opined
Foreign Policy magazine in October 2017. ‘Ghosts of Civil War haunt
Spain in its Catalonia madness’, echoed The Times in February 2019.
In the aftermath of the Catalan autumn of 2017 Antonio Caño,
then the editor of El País, the country’s leading newspaper, complained

9
 SPAIN

to me: ‘There is always some inglés who tells us that Spain is different.
Spain is not different.’ In important ways, that is true. This book will
argue that the country is not falling prey to atavistic authoritarianism
and that the ills of Spain over the past, turbulent decade are not prin-
cipally due to any original sin surrounding the birth of its democracy.
They are in many ways those of other democracies around the world in
the 2010s, in Europe, the United States and Latin America: hubris,
austerity, populism, polarisation, poor leadership and the struggle to
adapt to a rapidly changing world of globalisation and technological
change.
Partly in response to austerity but also to political strains, Spain has
suffered three successive versions of populism: two are new parties,
Podemos on the hard left and Vox on the radical right, and the third is
Catalan separatism (although it carries other meanings too). In many
respects, the drive for Catalan independence can be bracketed with
Brexit and Matteo Salvini’s Liga in Italy as among the most powerful
populist-nationalist revolutionary movements in Western Europe. But
the Catalan clash can also be seen as just the latest iteration of Spain’s
centuries-old, and still unresolved, battle to reconcile its regional diver-
sity with national unity.
The issues revealed by Spain’s recent travails are thus not just
profound but they are also of wider significance. What is a nation, and
does it automatically require its own state? Should nations or regions in
twenty-first-century European democracies have the right to self-deter-
mination? Can referendums ever resolve divisive questions? Spain
exemplifies other contemporary issues too. How can and should coun-
tries deal with a traumatic and divisive past? Is ‘historical memory’ a
democratic duty or a partisan political project? Why does Spain have
such persistently high unemployment, and how can it overcome the
legacy of two deep slumps? Does rapid social change necessarily prompt
a conservative backlash? How can democratic politicians work together
to provide coherent and reformist government in a fragmented and

10
 PROLOGUE: THE SPANISH MIRROR

polarised political system? And can parliamentary monarchies survive

misconduct by monarchs? The remainder of this book will address
these questions. In doing so it will sometimes look back, especially in
chapters 3, 4 and 5. History doesn’t determine – but it does influence
– how people think about the present. The book will also at times look
sideways, to assess how Spain is similar to other Western European
democracies and in what ways history, geography, customs and ideas
have made it different.
That these questions have arisen with such force is all the more
poignant because in the quarter-century or so after 1975 Spain had
been such a success story. Despite everything, it remains so in many
ways, as this book will also endeavour to show. In 2017 I went back to
Fernán-Núñez. The houses were of two or three storeys, with some
blocks of flats. The streets were lined with cars. There was a certain
bustle about the place. The shops included a Chinese supermarket.
Señora Juana, a 78-year-old who was sitting outside her home in the
autumn sunshine, said that much had changed. ‘More people have
land, and many have studied,’ she said. Some commute to Córdoba,
30 kilometres away but now quickly reachable by the motorway that
has replaced the old road. She has three children. The eldest, a daughter,
studied tourism and works in Mallorca, the second is a local policeman
and the youngest works as a plasterer. There are few better places in
which to live than Spain. Yet if the country cannot find a path of polit-
ical renewal, the permanence of its achievements will be in doubt.

11
 CHAPTER 1

THE UNRAVELLING

I n the summer of 2008 Sir John (J.H.) Elliott, a British historian

who was one of the foremost authorities on Spain’s imperial apogee
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, presented a sharp-eyed
paper at Menéndez Pelayo University in Santander in which he fore-
cast that ‘the period between 1975 and 2000 may come to be seen in
retrospect as a [second] golden age of Spanish history’. He went on
to say that the years since 2000 ‘have seen the falling of shadows
over what for a quarter of a century had seemed an increasingly sunny
landscape’. The shadows he mentioned included polarisation, the
re-emergence of dogmatism and ‘narrow-minded nationalism and
localism’. To them would soon be added economic slump.
Ten years later, when Spain’s political world marked the fortieth
anniversary of the constitution and the transition to democracy after
Franco, those shadows had all but obscured the sun. Since 2008 Spain
has been buffeted by setbacks and changes that have unfolded with
dizzying speed, leaving almost no institution untouched. The anniver-
sary celebrations, which included a special session of parliament in
December 2018, were thus bittersweet, imbued in some quarters with
wistful nostalgia. At the turn of the millennium Spain’s swift move

12
 THE UNRAVELLING

from Franco’s long dictatorship to parliamentary democracy, with little

violence and through negotiated agreements, was still widely hailed as
exemplary. Now, a significant minority of political opinion in Spain,
both on the left and on the right, rejects the constitutional settlement,
though for different reasons. Writing on the anniversary in El País, the
newspaper of the left-of-centre political establishment, Felipe González,
the Socialist prime minister from 1982 to 1996 and the country’s elder
statesman, urged politicians to recover the spirit of dialogue and under-
standing that had marked the process known in Spain simply as the
‘transition’. ‘Let’s not open new trenches after we filled in those that
caused so much suffering,’ he urged.1
Spain’s post-1975 transition broke almost two centuries of relative
decline, political instability and episodes of fratricidal conflict, punctu-
ated by periods of reform and revival. Between 1812 and 1975 Spain
saw six different constitutions, seven successful military pronuncia-
mientos (bloodless coups), four royal abdications, two dictatorships
and four civil wars. The last and worst of these – known to the world
simply as the Spanish Civil War – was the conflict of 1936–39, trig-
gered when Francisco Franco and several fellow generals staged an
initially unsuccessful military coup against a centre-left Popular Front
government representing an unstable parliamentary republic, and
Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin all intervened.
As Western Europe enjoyed peaceful, prosperous democracy in
the decades after the Second World War, while Spain suffered Franco’s
iron rule, outside observers worried about the country’s seeming
backward exceptionalism. So did many Spaniards. Two powerful
ideas guided the transition, both widely shared across much of the
political spectrum. The first was that it was imperative to avoid any
repeat of the Civil War of 1936–39 which cost some 300,000
to 350,000 lives (out of a population of around 25 million) in addition
to a further 20,000 or so executed in the repression that followed
the conflict.2 The second imperative was that Spain should become a

13
 SPAIN

normal Western European country. The transition was the result of

pacts between modernising moderates in the Franco regime, who knew
that social peace and integration into Europe required democracy,
and an opposition rendered pragmatic by decades of exile, prison or
clandestinity.
The process was pushed along from above by King Juan Carlos,
whom Franco had designated as his successor as head of state, and,
from mid-1976, by the new monarch’s chosen prime minister, Adolfo
Suárez, a previously obscure franquista functionary of shrewd political
instincts.3 Pressure for freedom came from below, too, in the form of
strikes and protests. Once Franco was dead, many prohibitions quietly
fell away before they were formally lifted, like flakes of dead, clotted
skin from a scab. Travelling in Spain in those years I found a self-
confident sense among many younger people that they would create
their own freedoms.
There was resistance, too. Suárez faced down pressure from the army
when he legalised the Communist Party, long the main internal oppo-
sition to Franco, ahead of a general election in June 1977 – the first
democratic election since 1936. Ahead of the vote I spent a week in the
Basque Country. I attended a big Socialist rally in a cavernous sports
hall in Bilbao in which González, a lawyer from Seville who was the
party’s young and attractive leader, stressed that ‘socialism is freedom’
against a backdrop of the party’s new social-democratic symbol, a hand
clutching a red rose. More atmospheric was a meeting with local
Socialist candidates in a tightly packed fishermen’s hall on the coast of
Vizcaya. After decades in the shadows, left-wing politics had emerged
into the open, in all its sectarian effervescence. In the rusting industrial
suburbs of Bilbao along the banks of the River Nervión, at rallies of
Euzkadiko Ezkerra, activists waved the ikurriña, the red, green and
white Basque flag, only legalised months before. The party represented
a minority within ETA, the Basque terrorist organisation, which
embraced the new democracy. The majority current in ETA senselessly

14
 THE UNRAVELLING

continued to bomb, murder and kidnap for decades, a source of tragedy

and tension.
Suárez’s newly formed Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD)
won a majority in the 1977 election, with the Socialists coming a
strong second. To general surprise Alianza Popular (AP), the conserva-
tive party formed by Manuel Fraga and other former Franco ministers,
fared poorly. Events then moved rapidly: in two intense and heady
years dictatorship was dismantled. The new Congress was tasked with
drawing up a democratic constitution. The work was done by a
committee of seven, on which the Communists, the AP and the
Catalan nationalists, as well as the two biggest parties, were all repre-
sented. All but one of Spain’s previous constitutions had been dictated
by the winning side in internal conflicts and rejected by the losers and
were thus rendered ephemeral. This time the constitutionalists were
determined to reach broad and durable agreements. Beyond its asser-
tion of civil and political freedoms and socio-economic rights within a
market economy, the new charter involved two historic compromises.
The left accepted a parliamentary monarchy instead of the republic it
had fought to defend in the Civil War, whereas the right accepted
devolution in place of Franco’s unitary, centralised regime.
This second compromise was expressed in Article 2 of the constitu-
tion which affirmed the ‘indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation’ while
going on to ‘recognise and guarantee the right to autonomy of the
nationalities and regions that comprise it’. This awkward formulation
was an attempt to satisfy the claim of Basques, Catalans and Gallegos to
be ‘nations’ without alienating conservatives. On paper there were two
other, clearer approaches that might have been adopted. One was feder-
alism, favoured by both Socialists and Communists and the most logical
solution to the Spanish conundrum of reconciling diversity and unity.
But a chaotic and short-lived federal republic in 1873 had given the
term an enduringly bad name, especially on the right (see chapter 4).
The other approach would have been to grant home rule solely to

15
 SPAIN

Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia, giving due recognition to

their sense of difference, of being cultural nations and not just Spanish
regions.
But the political leaders were not wholly in control of events during
the transition, and there was a widespread sense among Spaniards that
democracy should involve the devolution of power. Even before the
constitution was drawn up, Suárez had agreed to the provisional resto-
ration of home rule in Catalonia, through an accord with Josep
Tarradellas, the president of the Catalan government-in-exile. In
October 1977 Tarradellas made a triumphal return to Barcelona after
thirty-eight years in France. When he proclaimed to the welcoming
crowd ‘Ja sóc aquí’ (‘Now I am here’) it was far more than a statement
of the obvious. A preliminary agreement for Basque home rule
followed. Tarradellas recognised the unity of Spain and accepted the
right to autonomy (home rule) of other Spanish regions. In December
1977, amid a generalisation of regional sentiment, demonstrations for
autonomy in Andalucía mobilised up to 1.5 million people. Other
places, such as the Canary Islands, which had never before seen nation-
alist political movements, made similar demands.
Even as the constitutional committee of the Cortes (parliament)
was deliberating, Suárez’s government decreed ‘pre-autonomous’ enti-
ties in a dozen regions. That was ill-advised: it pre-judged the constitu-
tional debate and made restricting autonomy to the historic three
unviable.4 In the end the constitution’s Title VIII on the Territorial
Organisation of the State was muddled and contradictory. It guaran-
teed ‘the right to autonomy’ of ‘nationalities and regions’ in that
awkward fudge, but without defining or naming them. It attempted to
establish two different classes of territorial unit: those whose autonomy
derived from a statute approved by referendum (Article 151) and those
where the Cortes approved autonomy (Article 144). The former were
supposed to enjoy more powers, more quickly. In the end that distinc-
tion was abandoned. In a solution known as café para todos (coffee for

16
 THE UNRAVELLING

all) Spain was divided into seventeen ‘autonomous communities’, plus

the enclave cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan coast. Each
was to have its own elected parliament and government.
The estado autonómico (autonomous state), as it was called, was
in some ways a deft compromise, a kind of federalism that dare
not speak its name. It worked well at first, and in many ways it has
changed Spain for the good. The regions run education, health and
social services, and much cultural policy and economic regulation.
Catalonia and the Basque Country have their own police forces and
run their prisons. By 2017 the regions were responsible for 38%
of total public spending (and local governments a further 15%).5
Yet Title VIII stored up problems which have exploded in the past
decade. Decentralisation was open-ended. It was asymmetric, but in
the course of time it would prove to be not sufficiently so to satisfy
Catalan and Basque nationalists who wanted more than just adminis-
trative decentralisation.
The framers of the constitution tried hard to avoid the flaws that had
contributed to the demise of the 1931 Republic and the lurch to Civil
War. They wanted to create strong, stable governments. The electoral
system is based on proportional representation but, by awarding a
minimum of three seats to each of the fifty provinces, it gave a bonus to
the majority party as well as over-representing rural areas. Governments
can only be overthrown by censure if their opponents secure a majority
for an alternative candidate for prime minister. And the constitution is
hard to reform: to change its core provisions requires approval by a three-
fifths majority in both chambers of parliament, then an election, then
reiterated approval by three-fifths in the new parliament and finally a
referendum. This rigidity, too, would over time create new problems.
In December 1978 the constitution was approved in a referendum.
It was the third national vote in two years, but 67% of the electorate
turned out of whom 87% voted Yes. That figure was higher in Catalonia;
only in the Basque Country did the new charter receive the support of

17
 SPAIN

less than a majority of the electorate (only 45% turned out there, of
whom 69% voted in favour). The Basque Nationalist Party had
objected that the constitution talked of ‘updating’ their region’s fueros
(legal privileges), which they saw as primordial rights.
The transition had two further pillars. While the constitutional
deliberations were under way, a parallel negotiation quickly produced a
socio-economic agreement, called the ‘Moncloa pacts’ (after the prime-
ministerial offices). In return for the recognition of trade union rights and
a commitment to expand social spending, the left agreed to a mixed
economy and wage restraint (Spain, which imports nearly all its oil, had
been badly hit by the steep rise in oil price in 1973). The other pillar was
a sweeping amnesty law, approved in October 1977. This covered ‘all acts
of a political purpose, whatever their outcomes may have been’ committed
up to the election of June that year. It thus included ETA prisoners who
had been convicted of murder, who were released. It also guaranteed that
those who worked for the Franco regime would not be investigated or
prosecuted for the ‘crimes and misdemeanours that may have been
committed by state authorities against the rights of others’. This prevented
any purge of the armed forces, the police or the judiciary.
Over time the amnesty would become the single most controversial
feature of the transition. It would be dubbed ‘the Pact of Forgetting’.
That is a misnomer: Spanish society has remembered the Civil War and
franquista repression copiously in the years since, with an outpouring of
books, films and commemorations (see chapter 5). What the amnesty
did was to prevent the application of ‘transitional justice’ and the punish-
ment of franquista officials. But amnesty had been a demand of the
Communist Party and the left since 1956, and nobody in Spain, or
indeed the world, was talking about transitional justice in 1977. That
there was no purge also reflected the balance of forces in the late 1970s.

Under the aegis of the constitution and the transition settlement,

Spain seemed to have slain its historical demons and assuaged chronic

18
 THE UNRAVELLING

sources of unrest. Late but massive urbanisation from 1950 onwards

took the sting out of agrarian conflicts. The economy had begun decades
of rapid growth in the late 1950s, when Franco junked the autarky of
the Falange, Spain’s version of Mussolini’s Fascist Party, and handed
economic management to Catholic technocrats from Opus Dei. The
Socialists led by González won a landslide victory in 1982 and governed
for the next fourteen years. They updated the economy, shutting down
antiquated state-run smokestack industries. They strengthened Franco’s
rudimentary welfare state, providing free health care and education for
all, and reducing poverty. The Catholic Church, overmighty for centu-
ries, faded as younger generations stayed away from mass. After a failed
coup attempt in 1981, fronted by a preposterous lieutenant-colonel of
the Civil Guard, the army came to terms with democracy. Spain’s entry
into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1981, endorsed
by a subsequent referendum organised by González, was an important
step in the process by which the armed forces came to accept that their
role is to protect against external rather than internal threats.6 Spain’s
entry to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1986 (along
with Portugal) set the seal on its convergence with democratic Western
Europe. ‘Europe’ quickly became a pillar of the new Spain’s identity.
The country had also swiftly moved from Franco’s gerontocracy to
a young leadership: when Franco died, King Juan Carlos was 37, Suárez
43 and González just 33. The country swiftly shook off the dead hand
of franquista press censorship as well as the hypocritical, patriarchal
moralism of the Church. Democracy ushered in a creative cultural
frenzy, in which Spaniards embraced sexual openness, drugs and unbri-
dled individual freedoms. Though Barcelona had long been Spain’s
cultural vanguard, in the 1980s Madrid’s la movida, portrayed in the
early films of Pedro Almodóvar, led the new counter-culture.
By 1996, after four terms in office, the Socialists were politically
tired, their record marred by reported episodes of corruption and
abuses in the long struggle against ETA terrorism. The conservative

19
 SPAIN

opposition had regrouped as the Popular Party (PP), which brought

together AP and many from the defunct UCD. It had a new young
leader, José María Aznar, a former tax inspector who had briefly been
the regional president of Castile and León. He had narrowly escaped
an ETA assassination attempt in 1995. He moved the PP away from
its franquista origins towards something more akin to Christian
Democracy, a move rewarded with electoral victory in 1996.
Peaceful alternation in office is the hallmark of a consolidated democ-
racy, and so the transition was complete. In his two terms, Aznar concen-
trated on economic reforms, including privatisations. He was determined
that Spain should qualify to join the eurozone, as it did. While González
had been an important player in Europe, Aznar was an Atlanticist who
thought the way to expand Spain’s international influence was to seek
closer ties with the United States. Whether or not he was right, he failed
to persuade Spaniards of that. Spain joined the US-led coalition in the
invasion of Iraq in 2003, although it did not deploy combat troops. Polls
showed that 90% of respondents opposed the invasion. His personal
unpopularity may have prompted Aznar to say he would not seek a third
term (a meritorious decision in a country where leaders tend to cling on
indefinitely). Even so, Aznar’s chosen successor as leader of the PP,
Mariano Rajoy, seemed poised to win the election in 2004. But on the
morning of 11 March, three days before the vote, ten bombs exploded
simultaneously on several Madrid commuter trains, killing 191 people
and injuring more than 2,000 in the country’s worst-ever terrorist attack.
Aznar tried to pin the blame on ETA; officials pressed the media to do so
too. When it quickly became clear that the perpetrators were Islamist
extremists, many Spaniards were outraged at this deceit – and confirmed
in their view that the Iraq venture had made the country vulnerable. A
huge turn-out of voters gave the Socialists, under a new and inexperi-
enced leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a narrow and wholly unex-
pected victory.7 This episode injected lasting poison into the political
system, with both the main parties accusing the other of playing dirty.

20
 THE UNRAVELLING

Zapatero (when their first, patronymic surname is a common one,

such as Rodríguez, Spaniards tend to be known by their second,
maternal one) represented a new generation whose political lives had
not been shaped by dictatorship. Although he had studied law, his only
profession was politics; he had entered parliament aged 26 and unex-
pectedly won the Socialist leadership in a primary by campaigning
against the party’s old guard. With striking green eyes and a tactile
manner, he was certainly a political animal. He was dismissed by some
as a lightweight. Because of that, and his physical appearance, he was
cruelly dubbed ‘Bambi’ by Alfonso Guerra, González’s deputy.8
Zapatero was more cunning and ruthless than that description allowed.
But he would prove to be a disappointment. In hindsight, he seemed
in many ways as if he wanted to be the first prime minister from
Podemos, a hard-left party which did not exist until 2014, rather than
a moderate social democrat in the mould of González. His decision to
withdraw the 1,300 Spanish peacekeeping troops that Aznar had sent
to Iraq after the US invasion was popular at home and honoured a
campaign commitment. But the manner in which he carried it out –
abruptly and with no consultation – soured Spain’s relationship with
Washington for years to come.9 It also suggested a deep-streak of anti-
Americanism in Zapatero that would become more pronounced after
he left office.
In Aznar’s second term, when the PP had an absolute majority in
Congress, and then under Zapatero, the consensual approach that
underlay the transition began to break down (it had already weakened
in González’s last term). It was replaced by what Spaniards call crispación,
meaning tension. To some extent this was simply politics as usual, and
a sign of the growing self-confidence of Spanish democracy. But it had
a destructive side. Commentators began to compare the national polit-
ical debate to a painting by Goya in the Prado in which two men face
off against each other, swinging heavy clubs even as both sink into a
quicksand (see plate 17). Zapatero began a ‘culture war’, seeking wedge

21
 SPAIN

issues with which to provoke the PP. Some of his reforms represented
welcome modernisation of social norms. They included same-sex
marriage, a law against domestic violence and the promise of public
money for the care of elderly or disabled people. These measures
‘strengthen the idea of citizenship’ and made for a ‘more creative, more
tolerant society’, Zapatero told me when I sat down with him for an
hour at the Moncloa palace, the prime-ministerial offices, in September
2008. Most Spaniards agreed with him. But the measures provoked the
conservative bishops who headed the Catholic Church into organising
protests against the government. Rajoy, smarting from his election
defeats, was happy to support them. Zapatero thus manoeuvred the PP
into portraying itself as more reactionary than the average Spaniard –
and perhaps more than it really was.
Two other initiatives were even more controversial. One was a new
Catalan statute of autonomy (see chapter 3). The other was a Law of
Historical Memory. This offered government money and help for the
relatives of victims of the Franco regime, often dumped in unmarked
graves, to find and rebury their dead. That righted a clear wrong. The
law also called for all plaques on public buildings or street names
commemorating the old regime to be removed. More generally, the law
left many, and not just on the right, queasy, in that the government
appeared to be upholding a particular view of the Civil War rather than
leaving the matter to Spanish society. The opposition also attacked
Zapatero for holding talks with ETA (which were inconclusive),
though both Aznar and González had done the same.

Spain’s economy had continued to grow strongly, unemployment had

fallen steadily and living standards had converged towards the European
average. This was the culmination of an extraordinarily successful four
decades, from 1960 to 2000, in which Spain became one of only a
dozen countries in the world to make the leap from middle-income to
high-income (developed) status. Joining the EEC helped but the

22
 THE UNRAVELLING

cornerstones for growth had been laid during the later period of
Franco’s rule in which policymaking became technocratic, the economy
became increasingly open and market-oriented, and private invest-
ment boomed.10 In 1986 Spain’s income per person was only 68% of
the EEC average; by 2007 that figure had risen to 90% of the average
of the European Union’s (EU’s) then fifteen members. Spanish busi-
ness became increasingly self-confident and global. By 2008 the list of
the world’s 500 biggest firms by market value compiled by the Financial
Times included fourteen from Spain, up from eight in 2000.
Entry into the euro in 1999 meant that Spain suddenly enjoyed
Germany’s low interest rates – but without German competitiveness.
Cheap money fuelled a housing boom. On the outskirts of every
Spanish city and town, and even some villages, arose neat rows of
houses or blocks of flats. When the first signs of the credit crunch hit
the American and European economies in 2007, Spain was building
700,000 new housing units a year – more than France, Germany and
Italy combined. Only a small proportion of those homes were required
to meet the increased demand generated by a wave of immigration that
saw Spain’s population jump from 40 million to 45 million between
2000 and 2008. Many of the new arrivals found jobs on building sites.
The government subsidised home ownership. As Spaniards got richer,
they poured their savings into housing. Jesús Encinar, an entrepreneur
who founded idealista.com, an online estate agency, told me in 2008
that Spain had about 50% more homes than households. Many
middle-class families acquired second homes near the beach, or in their
grandparents’ village, or as an investment. There was no tax on empty
property.
There was another factor driving the housing boom: the powerful,
and allegedly sometimes corrupt, nexus between local politicians, prop-
erty developers and the cajas de ahorros (savings banks) that in 2008
accounted for half of the country’s financial system.11 Spanish towns
are typically quite dense, ending abruptly in open countryside. Building

23
 SPAIN

on vacant land required the ayuntamiento (the municipal government)

to extend the town limits by re-zoning rural land for development. The
ayuntamiento was entitled to 10% of the development land. Selling this
10% back to the developer became a main source of revenue for many
municipalities. Sometimes councillors took bribes to approve new
developments.12 The third side of this triangle was the cajas. Their orig-
inal remit was to act as non-profit savings and loans outfits and devote
the proceeds to local good causes. But deregulation allowed them to
operate beyond their home patch, and they were colonised by local
politicians.
The cajas, too, stumped up much of the money for the herd of
white elephants that trampled Spain’s landscape and finances during
the last years of the economic boom, the product of the puffed-up
ambitions of regional and municipal politicians and the voracity of
construction bosses. There were airports with no flights, as at Ciudad
Real and Castellón. There were toll motorways with few cars, as around
Madrid at a cost of billions to the taxpayer, or more modestly a €120
million tramway in Jaén that has never operated. There were cultural
centres with little culture, such as a museum of Iberian culture in Jaén
(again), which remained almost empty a decade after it opened, or the
City of Culture in Santiago de Compostela, an assemblage on a hillside
overlooking the town which resembles a ski-jump designed by a drunk.
And then there were the hundreds of thousands of flats with no inhab-
itants, many on the wrong side of motorways from the beach.
The construction sector came to account for 12% of Spain’s GDP
(gross domestic product), when in any other developed country 5% is
normal. Regulators failed to step in. It appeared that mid-level officials
at the Bank of Spain, the central bank, charged with monitoring the
financial system were too close to the banks; the Bank had warned that
house prices were overvalued back in 2003, but that prompted an outcry
and it became more timid. It had also insisted on counter-cyclical provi-
sioning by the banks, but only to a modest extent. To a degree, the

24
 THE UNRAVELLING

whole country was complicit in the bubble. ‘It was a national mistake,’
said Pablo Hernández de Cos, the governor of the Bank of Spain since
2018. ‘What we didn’t know was that the bursting of the property
bubble would coincide with an international financial crisis.’13
The party came to a sudden halt in 2007 when the European Central
Bank raised its interest rate. The economy sank into recession, and credit
flows dried up. Spain was caught naked: a current account deficit of 10%
of GDP could no longer be financed, and Spanish banks found no takers
in financial markets for their bundles of mortgage loans. In September
2008, when I interviewed scores of Spanish politicians, officials and busi-
ness leaders for an Economist Special Report, I found a few (including Pedro
Solbes, the long-serving finance minister) who were aware of the gravity of
the situation. Plenty of others, starting with Zapatero, were in denial. We
spoke days after Lehman Brothers, an American investment bank, had
gone out of business, triggering financial market chaos. ‘Once calm returns
to the international system, we will return to growth without the Spanish
economy having suffered structural damage,’ Zapatero told me. He mistook
what was a structural problem for a cyclical one, and tried to fight the
slump with demand-priming measures, such as a pension increase and a
short-lived grant of €2,500 for the parents of newborn babies. A decade
later, in a world of low interest rates, greater tolerance for fiscal deficits and
greater aversion to austerity, he might have got away with it. But those were
not the conditions in the eurozone during the great financial crisis.
Zapatero’s Spain was in part a victim of the European authorities’ zeal to
defend their still fledgling currency with austerity. Spain entered recession
in a strong fiscal position, with a surplus in 2007 and a public debt at a low
36% of GDP (compared with Italy’s 44% in that year or 44% in the United
Kingdom). But as the recession undermined tax revenues, the deficit soared
(it peaked at 11% of GDP in 2009). The European Commission and
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, pressed Zapatero into a humili-
ating retreat. With the support of the PP, in 2011 the Cortes approved an
amendment to the constitution mandating budget balance over the

25
 SPAIN

medium term and giving legal priority to debt payments over other public
spending commitments. Zapatero’s government also pushed through
modest reforms of the labour market and pensions.
A few months later Rajoy and the PP won an absolute majority in a
general election. Having begun his career as a property registrar in
Pontevedra in Galicia, Rajoy had steadily worked his way up the PP
hierarchy. His flaws were obvious: in public he seemed a plodding and
cautious bureaucrat. Nobody could accuse him of having anything as
daring as a vision. He had the caginess of a typical Gallego (Galician),
of whom it is jokingly said that if you meet them on the stairs you
never know if they are going up or going down (rather like the cham-
berlain in Las Meninas). His qualities, and he had them, were less
evident. In private he could be affable, witty and razor-sharp. He was
quietly ruthless, clinging on to his job as leader of the PP despite two
election defeats, and seeing off an attempt by Aznar to unseat him at a
party conference in 2008. He was dogged and determined, not easily
thrown off course. If Aznar had displayed touches of both libertari-
anism and Thatcherism, Rajoy was a genuine conservative in the mould
of Edmund Burke, a moderate rather than an ideologue who thought
change a regrettable inevitability, to be managed as best one could.
Rajoy took office in the depth of slump. The continuing problems of
Spanish banks weighed upon the country’s sovereign credit rating. Spain
was widely expected to be forced to seek a full-scale bail-out from the
European Commission (and with it the policing of the ‘men in black’, as
international financial officials came to be dubbed). Unemployment
peaked at 27% in 2013 when 6.3 million Spaniards were out of work.
Then a robust recovery began (see chapter 7). This was partly due to
favourable circumstance, such as the fall in international interest rates; the
determination of Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central
Bank, to do ‘whatever it takes’ to save the euro; and generally low oil
prices. But the revival also owed much to Rajoy’s reforms. Three measures
were particularly important.

26
 THE UNRAVELLING

First, the government at last cleaned up the financial system. Helped

by the promise of a €100 billion loan from the EU, of which only €40
billion was used, it merged or shut down scores of the broken cajas. It
nationalised four insolvent banks, including Bankia, a big one. Bankia
was the result of a forced merger in 2010; its main constituents were
Caja Madrid and Bancaja of Valencia. In 2011 it listed its shares on the
Madrid stock exchange. Its managers punted the shares to its customers
as a safe investment. Within months, Bankia had to be nationalised
again. Its shares were worthless, wiping out the savings of tens of thou-
sands of people. Bankia’s chairman, Rodrigo Rato, Aznar’s finance
minister who then went on to head the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), was eventually convicted, along with many other senior
managers, for embezzlement for having issued themselves with unde-
clared credit cards which they used for private purchases they never
repaid.14 Again, the Bank of Spain had failed in what was its main func-
tion after the creation of the euro: to ensure the stability of the financial
system. ‘One of my main missions’, admitted Hernández de Cos, ‘is to
restore the reputation of the bank.’ He was more outspoken than his
predecessors in warning of risks facing the economy.
Second, after a slow start Rajoy began to get the public finances
under control. Rejecting calls to accept a Greek-style general bail-out of
the economy, he was vindicated when this proved unnecessary. He thus
was able to cut the deficit gradually, keeping political control over the
process (he had irritated European Commission officials when he
unilaterally but realistically raised Spain’s deficit target for 2012 from
4% of GDP to 5.8%). The government paid off the arrears that regional
administrations had run up with their suppliers, which added up to 5%
of GDP. That saved many small businesses, according to a minister.
Rajoy also held the nominal value of pensions steady (since Spain
saw several years of price falls, that meant they increased slightly in
real terms) and extended the period for which unemployment benefit
was paid.

27
 SPAIN

Third, the government pushed through changes to the rigid labour

laws. After years in which Spanish labour costs had risen faster than the
European average, the reform allowed for the devolution of wage-
bargaining to firm level. Although rarely invoked, this forced restraint
on the unions. For fair dismissals, redundancy pay was cut from forty-
five days per year worked to a still generous thirty-three days, making
lay-offs more bearable for companies. The unions hated the reform.
But it meant that when the economy started growing again, jobs were
created much more swiftly than in the past.
‘Spain has passed from being a country on the brink of bankruptcy to
a model of recovery that provides an example to . . . the European
Union,’ Rajoy proclaimed in 2015.15 He was right, but many Spaniards,
still suffering the effects of the slump, did not see it that way. As well as
the notorious case of Bankia, the crash exposed other examples of malfea-
sance.16 Unlike Italy, Spain is not systemically corrupt. But an unfortu-
nate by-product of regional autonomy was to create one-party fiefs, in
which politicians came to enjoy a sense of impunity and entitlement,
and in some places corruption flourished at a local level (see chapter 9).
In November 2012, in the depth of the recession, I made a reporting
trip to Barcelona and Madrid. The Spanish capital, in particular,
seemed depressed, with many empty shops and boarded-up businesses.
Spaniards were in a furious mood. A one-day general strike saw many
health service workers of the Madrid regional government, who faced
cuts, and swindled savers parade down the Paseo de la Castellana on a
cold and gloomy day. Groups broke away to demonstrate outside
banks. Evictions of mortgagees who couldn’t keep up with their
payments were met with other protests. In a particular injustice, under
Spanish law those who handed back the keys of their property were
still liable for the balance of the mortgage debt.

The combination of recession, austerity and corruption is politically

toxic in any democracy. In Spain it spawned the indignados, the crowds

28
 THE UNRAVELLING

of mainly young people who occupied city squares across the country
in protests that began on 15 May 2011 and lasted for weeks. Organised
through social media, it was a new kind of protest movement, one that
would be swiftly copied elsewhere, notably by Occupy Wall Street later
that year. The movement died away, but it presaged a far-reaching
shift in public opinion, fuelling two new parties. On the left Podemos
(We Can) mixed Peronist populism with Leninism. It was scornful of
the quality of Spanish democracy. It claimed that the transition was a
capitulation to franquismo, which it saw as continuing to have a hold
over Spain’s ‘deep state’. On the centre-right Ciudadanos (Citizens), a
small party formed by a group in Barcelona disillusioned with what
they saw as the Catalan Socialists’ temporising with nationalism, blos-
somed into a national party. Mixing liberalism (in the British sense)
with an increasingly vocal Spanish nationalism, for a time it claimed
inspiration from France’s Emmanuel Macron. It was the beneficiary of
the anger of many former PP voters at corruption.
It was noteworthy that public anger did not prompt either violence
or social tension but rather found its outlet in these institutionalised
channels. But there was a cost. The political system fragmented. Since
2015, Spain has suffered weak minority governments, when it has been
able to form them at all. The Catalan nationalists had morphed into
separatists and were no longer so readily available for the horse-trading
in which they had propped up past governments in return for the
concession of further powers. An election in November 2015 saw the
PP lose sixty-four seats in the Congress of Deputies, though it still beat
the Socialists, who lost twenty seats. Podemos, with sixty-five seats,
and Ciudadanos, with forty, both entered the Congress for the first
time. Months of paralysis ensued. Pedro Sánchez, the new Socialist
leader, reached an agreement with Ciudadanos on a programme of
economic and political reforms. Between them the two parties had 130
of the 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies. They failed to get the
approval of the PP or Podemos to form a government. As Felipe

29
 SPAIN

González noted: ‘we’ve moved to an Italian-style parliament, but

without Italians to manage it’.17
A repeat election followed in June 2016. Opinion polls suggested
that Podemos would overhaul the Socialists, just as in Greece Syriza, an
initially far-left party, had replaced PASOK, the traditional social-
democratic party. At an ebullient Podemos rally in Seville a week before
the election, Iñigo Errejón, its deputy leader, exclaimed: ‘We are
rubbing up against it with our fingertips. Our moment is now.’ It
didn’t happen. Although Podemos forged a coalition with Izquierda
Unida (United Left), the former Communist Party, the two forces
combined won a million fewer votes than they had secured separately
in November and they failed to gain additional seats. The opinion polls
in this period tended to underestimate the support of the traditional
parties. And the surprise result of the Brexit referendum, held three
days before the election, may have discouraged some voters from
pursuing political experiments.
In the event, Rajoy gained fourteen seats and won the support of
Ciudadanos to govern. But he was still ten seats short of a majority.
Sánchez came under great pressure to agree that the Socialists would
abstain in the investiture vote to provide the country with a govern-
ment. He repeatedly refused, saying ‘No is No’ (a phrase that seemed to
sum up the political climate of negativity and that would come back
to haunt him). That prompted the Socialists’ powerful regional leaders
to band together and oust their general secretary at a tumultuous
meeting of the party’s executive. Rajoy got his government as sixty-
eight of the eighty-three Socialist deputies abstained.
With the economy on the mend, Rajoy’s minority administration
had to face another big challenge – that to the constitution and the
unity of Spain posed by Catalan separatism, culminating in the uncon-
stitutional referendum on independence organised on 1 October 2017
by Carles Puigdemont, the president of the Generalitat, as the Catalan
regional government is known. In response to his unilateral declaration

30
 THE UNRAVELLING

of independence later that month, the government temporarily imposed

direct rule from Madrid in Catalonia. Two conceptions of democracy
were in conflict. Puigdemont’s was plebiscitarian, majoritarian (although
he didn’t have one) and populist in that it was based on popular mobili-
sation and the invocation of ‘the people’ against an imagined enemy.
Spain’s constitutionalist politicians – the Socialists as well as the PP –
defended a representative democracy anchored by the rule of law and
respect for minority rights. At issue, too, was whether nationhood
should be an overriding identity and value in twenty-first-century
Europe, justifying any means to a national end (see chapters 2 and 3).
After his ousting from the Socialist party leadership, Sánchez
resigned his seat. His career seemed to be over almost before it had
begun. But his uncompromising stance was popular among the party
rank and file. Against all forecasts, and against the party establishment,
he got his old job back, storming to victory in a primary in May 2017
against Susana Díaz, the Socialist regional president of Andalucía, one
of the party’s few remaining leaders of working-class origin but an old-
fashioned tub-thumping machine politician. Sánchez was a smooth,
middle-class economist from Madrid, who had worked as a staffer for
Carlos Westendorp, a Spanish diplomat, when the latter was United
Nations (UN) representative in Kosovo. Tall and handsome, Sánchez
was said to be sensitive about being dubbed el guapo, his looks counting
for more than his intellectual calibre. He was the first Spanish prime
minister in the modern period to speak fluent English, and was at ease
among European leaders. He was bold as well as resilient. His moment
came in May 2018. Rajoy was celebrating having at last won approval
for his minority government’s budget. The next day came a bombshell:
the High Court convicted twenty-nine former PP officials in a long-
running case in which Rajoy himself had given evidence as a witness.
The court found that they had set up a ‘system of institutionalised
corruption’ involving kickbacks on public contracts. It sentenced Luis
Bárcenas, the party’s former treasurer, to thirty-three years in prison for

31
 SPAIN

his role in the scheme.18 The court also cast doubt on the credibility of
the prime minister’s evidence.19 Sánchez pounced, filing a censure
motion, while Albert Rivera, the young leader of Ciudadanos,
demanded an immediate general election.
Rajoy’s position was untenable. For years he had argued, in the
context of the separatist demand for an independence referendum in
Catalonia, that the rule of law was the foundation of democracy and
that court decisions must be upheld. For the first time in Spain’s
restored democracy, a censure motion against the prime minister
triumphed. After Rajoy had spoken against the motion the previous
day, he retired with a group of close allies to the private room of a
nearby restaurant where they spent the next eight hours, much of that
time in a titanic sobremesa of whisky and cigars. He emerged, the worse
for wear, into the flashes of the press pack.20 His critics saw that as
contempt for parliament. But it showed the common humanity of a
leader who had remained a modest, ordinary man. There was some-
thing very Spanish about that last lunch – food, drink and conversa-
tion as the unchanging priorities of life. Rajoy resigned his seat and
returned to his job of decades before, as a property registrar in a seaside
town near Alicante, before arranging his transfer to Madrid. He was
the ultimate civil servant. His party’s brushes with corruption were his
downfall (there was no serious evidence or finding that he was person-
ally corrupt) but in any event he had seemed weary, worn down by the
Catalan clash and out of touch with many Spaniards’ post-crisis
concerns over inequality.21

Sánchez refused to call an election, a decision that won him the lasting
personal animosity of Rivera, whose party was briefly ahead in the
opinion polls. With just eighty-three seats in the Congress, Sánchez
embarked on a government of symbols and gestures. He appointed a
cabinet with a majority of women. The government ordered the disin-
terment of Franco’s remains from the Valley of the Fallen, the dictator’s

32
 THE UNRAVELLING

grandiose memorial to his victory in the Civil War (though legal obsta-
cles meant this would not be carried out until October 2019). It
decreed a big increase in the minimum wage. And it held preliminary,
and inconsequential, talks with the Catalan regional government.
With no prospect of approving a budget, Sánchez called an election for
April 2019. The Socialists did well, winning 123 seats, but not quite as
well as they had hoped, perhaps because Sánchez was lacklustre in
back-to-back TV debates. The PP under Pablo Casado, its new leader,
had veered right, facing the threat of Vox, a new party of the hard right.
Hurt by its association with corruption the PP suffered its worst-ever
result in a national election, losing more than half it seats. Former PP
voters turned to both Vox and Ciudadanos.
Spain (and Portugal) had hitherto stood out in Europe for the
absence of a populist-nationalist party, though in some respects the
Catalan separatists qualified in their part of the country. Political
analysts argued that Franco had inoculated Spaniards against far-right
nationalism. Time and circumstances weakened that immunity. A
splinter from the PP, Vox was above all a reaction to the threat of
Catalan secession and what its leaders saw as Rajoy’s pusillanimous
handling of this. It burst on to the political scene in a regional election
in Andalucía in late 2018, taking 11% of the vote. It denounced illegal
immigration, and upheld conservative family values and what it saw as
traditional Spanish culture, such as bullfighting. It was anti-feminist
and represented the Spanish male id. It jumbled together a Catholic
conservative nationalism similar to that of Poland’s ruling Law and
Justice party and Trumpian anti-globalist populism. In its programme,
it called for an abolition of regional autonomy and a return to a
centralised state. In that sense it represented a repudiation of the
constitution. Vox did less well in the general election than some polls
had predicted, but still won 10% of the vote and twenty-four seats. For
the first time since the 1970s, the far right was represented in the
Spanish parliament.

33
 SPAIN

There was one clear route to forming a strong reformist government

that might have been able to tackle slowing economic growth, the
dysfunctional labour market and the Catalan conflict: a centre-left
coalition between the Socialists and Ciudadanos (which held 180 seats
between them). Unforgivably, Rivera had repeatedly vetoed this option
during the campaign, preferring to try to overhaul the PP as the domi-
nant party on the right, a mission in which he failed. This stance
prompted several prominent figures in Ciudadanos to leave the party.
Sánchez might have done more to try to persuade Rivera, but he
seemed reluctant to leave space to his party’s left by moving to the
centre. Instead, the Socialists engaged in hasty and amateurish negotia-
tions with Podemos. These failed. Set on the risky course of subjecting
jaded voters to yet another election, Sánchez explained that he ‘wouldn’t
be able to sleep at night’ had he agreed to a coalition with Podemos.
‘There can’t be two governments in one,’ he said.
His gambit backfired. In the repeat vote in November 2019 the
main winner was Vox, which, with fifty-two seats, became the third-
biggest force in the Congress. The Socialists lost three seats and
Podemos seven. The electorate put most of the blame for the impasse
on Rivera: Ciudadanos suffered a crushing rejection, hanging on to
only ten of its fifty-seven seats. Rivera swiftly resigned and left politics.
Swallowing his earlier words, Sánchez soon announced that he had
reached an agreement for a coalition government with Pablo Iglesias,
Podemos’s leader. Their combined forces were twenty-one seats short
of a majority. The government was invested in the parliament with 167
votes to 165 and 18 abstentions. It gained the support of the Basque
nationalists and four small regional outfits, and the abstention of
Esquerra (one of the Catalan separatist parties) and EH Bildu, the
successor party to ETA. Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, Sánchez’s predecessor
as Socialist leader, had earlier rejected this alliance with separatists as a
‘Frankenstein government’. Sánchez promised a ‘progressive’ coalition:
at Podemos’s insistence its joint programme included repeal of Rajoy’s

34
 THE UNRAVELLING

labour reform as well as steep rises in taxes. At least Sánchez had tried
to answer González’s point about Italian politicians: for the first time
in the modern democratic period, Spain had a coalition government (it
had been one of only two countries in the EU, in company with
Cyprus, not to have had one previously).
Within two months this fledgling administration was faced with
the Covid-19 pandemic. On 14 March 2020 it imposed a state of
emergency, centralising control over health care and policing, and a
national lockdown which would last until 20 June. Even so, Spain was
one of the European countries worst hit by the first wave of the virus.
Thousands of elderly people suffered harrowing deaths alone in care
homes which lacked medical staff. Shortcomings in the previously
prized health system were exposed: with its functions having been
decentralised, the health ministry was a shell of aged bureaucrats
awaiting retirement. It struggled to organise the procurement of vital
medical equipment, leaving this largely in the hands of the regions.
The economic impact of the pandemic was disproportionately severe
in Spain. GDP contracted by 10.8% in 2020, the worst performance in
Europe, and recovered less than half of the lost output in 2021. There
were two reasons for this. One was that tourism (13.5% of GDP) and
other face-to-face services made up such a large slice of the economy.
The second was that the failure of both Rajoy and Sánchez to cut the
deficit more aggressively meant that Spain had less fiscal space than
other European countries to take compensatory measures. Even so,
thanks to unlimited support from the European Central Bank, it was
able to do much more than in the 2008–13 slump: up to 4 million
workers, at the peak, were furloughed and received government
payments. The government guaranteed emergency credits worth €140
billion to businesses. It also introduced a permanent and genuinely
progressive measure: a targeted minimum income guarantee, aimed at
reducing Spain’s scandalously high child poverty rates and plugging
a hole in the welfare state. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising

35
 SPAIN

inflation brought further difficulties, forecasters eventually reckoned

that the economy would not surpass its pre-pandemic size until 2024.
Like many other governments, Sánchez’s team made mistakes in
handling the pandemic. In particular, they were a few days too slow in
imposing the lockdown. But the conservative opposition at first made
more errors: Casado veered erratically between offering critical support
at a time of national crisis to making life as difficult as possible for the
government at the cost of the national interest. He refused to support a
continuation of the state of emergency, the only legal instrument the
government had for a national response to the pandemic. Sánchez’s
response was to shrug, and hand responsibility for the design of restric-
tions on movement and gatherings to the regions. When a second wave
hit in the autumn of 2020, the government secured parliamentary
approval for a second, six-month state of emergency. But Sánchez left it
to regional governments to implement controls as they saw fit as further
waves of the virus hit. The country had discovered that it had decen-
tralised health care without arranging for effective means of crisis co-
ordination between centre and regions. The National Statistics Institute
(Instituto Nacional de Estadística – INE) reported that there were
75,000 more deaths in 2020 than in 2019 – one of the highest mortality
rates in Europe in relation to population.
In the short term, the government emerged strengthened from the
ordeal. But that effect quickly wore off. Having offered weekly televi-
sion broadcasts during the first wave, the prime minister all but disap-
peared. Rather than lead the fight against the pandemic, he preferred
to take credit for vaccinations (organised by the EU) and to talk of the
European recovery funds (of which €140 billion in grants and loans
were assigned to Spain). Sánchez did manage gradually to implement a
social-democratic programme, with further big rises in the minimum
wage, increased paternity leave and the legalisation of euthanasia.
His government partially repealed Rajoy’s labour and pension
reforms, and took steps to cool the Catalan conflict (see chapter 9). He

36
 THE UNRAVELLING

could claim to have brought a precarious stability to Spain. But his and
the country’s future seemed to hang mainly on the strength of economic
recovery, and there the signals were mixed (see chapter 7).

In 2012, when Spaniards were suffering the depth of the slump and
mass unemployment, they were surprised by the news that King Juan
Carlos had fallen and broken his hip while elephant-hunting in Botswana
in the company of Corinna Larsen, a Danish woman who, at the time,
went by her ex-husband’s aristocratic surname of Zu Wittgenstein.
Many were angered. The Spanish Bourbons had a chequered history,
having been ousted three times between 1808 and 1930. Juan Carlos
owed his job to Franco’s Law of Succession. He had made up for this lack
of legitimacy of origin by his actions in the transition, especially his
intervention to halt the 1981 coup attempt. His clubbable, down-to-
earth manner won him many friends. He was an active ambassador for
Spain and Spanish business abroad. Spaniards didn’t all turn into monar-
chists, but a large majority became ‘juancarlistas’.
Yet Juan Carlos evolved into a Shakespearian figure. ‘Instead of
maintaining the prudence that had guided him when he felt weak, he
lowered his guard, thinking himself strong, and made mistake after
mistake,’ according to José Álvarez Junco, a historian.22 The king’s
outward bonhomie hid deep insecurities. Born in Rome, at the age of
10 he was taken from his Swiss boarding school to be educated in
Spain, and to become a bargaining chip between his father, Don Juan,
and Franco. His elevation as the dictator’s successor prompted a breach
with his father. He later told a friend: ‘Since I was small I always heard
talk at home of economic problems. For us, money was a matter of
constant problems.’23 Historically, the Bourbons had been notorious
womanisers. Juan Carlos appeared to ‘collect lovers as if they were state
gifts’, as Lucía Méndez, the political commentator of El Mundo news-
paper put it.24 Queen Sofia, his long-suffering and widely respected
wife, was rarely seen with him in public.

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 SPAIN

Juan Carlos appeared a victim not just of his own weaknesses but of
changing circumstances and standards. A legacy of the transition and
its uncertainties was that the media covered him with a protective cloak
of secrecy – until the Botswana episode blew that away. At the start of
his reign he had shrewd mentors who guided him through the transi-
tion. Thereafter, there was nobody there to place limits on his behav-
iour. The royal household is small and staffed by cautious civil servants
and former diplomats. He appeared to believe that he was immune
from scrutiny. He never grasped that his role required his behaviour to
be exemplary and deprived him of the right to a private life.
His reputation never recovered from the elephant hunt. According
to the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS), the state pollster, trust
in the monarchy fell from a high of 75% in 1995 to a low of 37% in
2013. The monarchy’s standing was hurt, too, by the conviction of
Iñaki Urdangarin, a former Olympic handball player who married the
Infanta (princess) Cristina, the younger of Juan Carlos’s daughters.
Despite having a well-paid role in a private company, Urdangarin set
up a consultancy that extracted contracts from regional governments
for non-existent work. For that he was sentenced to six years and three
months in jail in 2017.25
Juan Carlos abdicated the throne in 2014 in favour of his son, Felipe,
taking the title of ‘emeritus king’. Felipe is a much more modern figure:
educated partly in the United States, he married a commoner, Letizia
Ortiz, a former television journalist. He comes over as level-headed and
intelligent, if slightly dull. Reigning as Felipe VI he restored some of the
monarchy’s shine. He cut ties with his sister, Cristina, and her husband.
But then controversy involving Juan Carlos erupted again. A Swiss
prosecutor opened an investigation into a $100 million gift to Juan
Carlos from the Saudi king in 2008, paid into one of two offshore
foundations linked to the former monarch. The foundation transferred
€65 million to Corinna Larsen in 2012.26 The Swiss investigation was
wound up in 2021 with the prosecutor saying he had been unable to

38
 THE UNRAVELLING

prove any link between the gift and the award, three years later, of a
€6.7 billion contract to a Spanish consortium for a high-speed rail line
between Mecca and Medina.27 In March 2022, the Spanish national
prosecutor’s office also dropped its investigation after failing to find
sufficient evidence of criminal activity. It said that the events under
investigation had either lapsed under the statute of limitations or had
occurred when Juan Carlos enjoyed immunity as the reigning monarch.
His lawyers insisted that the former king had not done anything
wrong.28 In the meantime, Juan Carlos had announced his withdrawal
from public life in 2019. Larsen’s lawyers claimed that King Felipe was
a beneficiary of the two offshore foundations. In a televised statement
in March 2020 Felipe announced that he was renouncing his inheri-
tance and cancelling his father’s annual salary of €194,232.29 In 2020
and 2021 Juan Carlos’s lawyers made payments totalling €5.1 million
to the tax authority in respect of donations their client had received.30
Podemos and the Catalan separatists tried to use the royal scandals
to force the cause of a republic on to the political agenda. The issue was
a difficult one for Sánchez. Part of the Socialist base is sympathetic to
republicanism, but the party is loyal to the constitution and thus the
monarchy. The government pressed Felipe to evict Juan Carlos from
the Zarzuela palace, where he had lived for fifty-eight years. In August
2020 that happened. Juan Carlos promptly flew on a private jet to Abu
Dhabi and was still living there two years later. According to someone
who visited him there, he was miserable and pining for home.
Remarkably, seven successive generations of the Spanish Bourbons
experienced exile, self-imposed or not, or banishment.31 Felipe soldiered
on. But polls showed that the monarchy had lost appeal among the
young, those on the left and in Catalonia and the Basque Country. Its
main strength is inertia.

The slump of 2008–13 and its aftermath placed severe strains on

Spanish society. Many younger Spaniards had to delay their plans for a

39
 SPAIN

career, a house of their own and children. The hubris of the boom
turned to depression and a sense of fragility. Seemingly solid institu-
tions had fallen into disrepute, from the banks to the courts. Political
polarisation and fragmentation replaced consensus and stability: a
two-party system splintered into five, not counting peripheral nation-
alist and regionalist groups. In all, sixteen separate political organisa-
tions were represented in the parliament, up from ten in 2004. No
government has had a majority since 2015; in his first two years in
office, Sánchez failed to gain approval for a budget, operating on
Rajoy’s 2016 accounts. In the process the transition – the founding
pact of Spanish democracy, with the monarchy at its centre – has come
into question.
Many of Spain’s problems – greater inequality, high public debt,
unsustainable pensions and political fragmentation, for example – were
those of other European democracies. What was unique to it was what
Spaniards called the ‘territorial problem’, its peripheral nationalisms.
For much of the democratic period the most acute tensions were in the
Basque Country. But ETA’s terrorism discredited its cause, and full
independence has never commanded much public support there. It is
Catalonia that is Spain’s most persistent headache.

40
 CHAPTER 2

A CATALAN AUTUMN

O n Friday 27 October 2017 a revolution failed in Barcelona. That

afternoon, at the urging of Carles Puigdemont, the president of
Catalonia’s devolved government, the region’s parliament approved a
resolution ‘constituting the Catalan republic as an independent and
sovereign state’. On the grand marble staircase of the parliament
building several hundred mayors from towns and villages across
Catalonia, banging their staves of office, mobbed Puigdemont. That
evening a euphoric crowd of several thousand chanted ‘Freedom!’ and
caroused in front of the Palace of the Generalitat, the part-medieval seat
of the Catalan government in the Plaça Sant Jaume in the heart of
Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. ‘It’s a dream, it’s marvellous,’ David Regalos,
an estate agent, told me as I threaded my way with difficulty through
the packed crowd. ‘It may hurt the business I work in,’ he admitted,
‘but I’m thinking of my children’s future.’ He had brought his teenage
daughter to witness what he thought was history in the making.
But as dusk fell with an autumnal chill, the dream was revealed to
be delirium. A stuttering counter-revolution was already under way.
Even as the crowd celebrated, in Madrid the Senate approved, for the
first time, the activation of Article 155 of Spain’s 1978 constitution in

41
 SPAIN

order to suspend Catalonia’s regional autonomy and impose direct rule

by the national government. In this, Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s conserva-
tive prime minister, had the support of Pedro Sánchez and the Socialist
opposition. Puigdemont and his councillors were nowhere to be seen.
They hadn’t even lowered the Spanish flag that fluttered above the
entrance to the palace alongside the scarlet and gold bars of the Senyera,
the official Catalan standard.
The declaration-of-independence-that-wasn’t marked the climax of
a campaign to break away from Spain launched by Catalonia’s nation-
alist leaders in 2012. In pursuing that campaign Puigdemont, who had
become president of the regional government in 2016, was less cautious
than his predecessors. An affable former journalist with a Beatle haircut,
Puigdemont had previously served as mayor of the historic town of
Girona, part of the nationalist heartland in the Catalan interior. He
pledged himself to hold a referendum, asserting a ‘right to decide’ on
independence. That was in contravention of Article 2 of the constitu-
tion and its proclamation of ‘the indissoluble unity of the Spanish
nation’. The constitution upheld the right to regional self-government
but not to secession. When I sat down with him in his office in the
Generalitat on a dank winter’s day in December 2016 he was insistent
that blocking the referendum would be ‘bad news for democracy’. He
was prepared to negotiate the timing, but not the principle. ‘We won’t
easily renounce it. I think we’ve earned the right to be heard.’ It sounded
reasonable enough. In fact, it was an existential challenge to Spanish
democracy.
With 7.5 million people and accounting for around 19% of Spain’s
economy, many Catalans have long felt their territory to be a country
apart, with its own language, history and culture. But since its emer-
gence in the nineteenth century, the mainstream of Catalan nation-
alism had always sought autonomía (home rule) within Spain. Granted
in full by the constitution, that has come to mean that the Generalitat
runs not just schools and health care, but its own police force and

42
 A CATALAN AUTUMN

prisons and a host of other services besides those. It even set up a dozen
‘embassies’ abroad. Only a small minority of Catalans ever yearned for
independence.
Then suddenly ‘minority became multitude’, as Enric Ucelay-Da
Cal, a historian of Catalonia, put it.1 That multitude first appeared on
11 September 2012 for the Diada – Catalonia’s national day, which
marks the fall of Barcelona to the new Bourbon king of Spain in 1714,
at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. The organisers claimed
1.5 million people took part; others, more realistically, put the figure at
a still huge 600,000. Emboldened by the vast crowd, Artur Mas,
Puigdemont’s predecessor, called a regional election two years early to
seek a mandate to turn Catalonia into ‘a state within Europe’ and for
‘the right to decide’ on its status. Many balconies in Barcelona, by tradi-
tion a socialist and anarchist city, began to be draped not just with the
Senyera but increasingly with the Estelada, which adds a blue triangle
with a white star and is the banner of the independence movement.
Mas, a rather grey and cautious economist, began to strike public poses
as Moses, arms outstretched, leading his people to the promised land.
Three things explained the swing in nationalist opinion towards
independence. The first was a bungled attempt to write a new autonomy
statute which engendered resentment towards Madrid (see next
chapter). Second, the turn to separatism by the nationalist leadership
coincided with Spain’s economic slump and years of austerity. Mas,
whose Convergència i Unió (CiU) party was broadly conservative and
Christian Democratic in inspiration, had been cutting public spending.
In June 2011, as part of the anti-austerity movement of the indignados,
demonstrators surrounded the Catalan parliament as it was set to
debate the regional budget. A humiliated Mas and his councillors
arrived by helicopter to avoid the angry crowd. Third, some members
of the CiU, which had been in power in the Generalitat from 1982 to
2002, were being investigated for financial irregularities.2 For its critics,
the launching of the procés, as the nationalists called their drive for

43
 SPAIN

independence, was a smokescreen to obscure these economic and

political problems. For some of the nationalist leaders it was merely a
tactic, aimed at extracting more money and powers from the national
government. But Rajoy, trying to stave off national bankruptcy, was in
no mood to entertain the Generalitat’s demands.
At the regional election in 2012 CiU lost votes and seats, though
mostly to Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), a previously
small left-wing nationalist party which in 1989 adopted the cause of
independence but had joined the Catalan Socialists in the regional
government from 2003 to 2010. Mas had failed to win his mandate for
a state. But Rajoy’s government in Madrid seemed to underestimate
the extent to which the independence movement had acquired
momentum. Towns in the Catalan interior began holding their own
unofficial referendums. These culminated in a regionwide vote in
November 2014, called by Mas but organised at arm’s length from his
administration by separatist social movements. This was ignored by
Rajoy. Next Mas called another snap election, claiming it would
have the character of a plebiscite on independence. CiU and ERC ran
on a joint slate, but again the nationalist camp fell short of a majority
of the popular vote. Its junior member, a far-left organisation called
the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), demanded Mas’s head as its
price for supporting a new government, leading to Puigdemont’s
anointment.
Puigdemont promised to press ahead with the independence procés.
Officials in Madrid were confident that he would back down. They
trusted in a backchannel to Oriol Junqueras, the slippery leader of
Esquerra who was Puigdemont’s vice-president. But in September 2017
Puigdemont and Junqueras used their narrow majority of seats in the
Catalan parliament to ram through laws calling a ‘binding’ referendum
on independence on 1 October and ‘disconnecting’ the region from
Spain. The referendum law stated that the ballot was to be followed by
an automatic declaration of independence if a majority voted Yes,

44
 A CATALAN AUTUMN

whatever the turn-out. The second law gave Puigdemont the power to
organise a new republican state and to appoint its judges. These laws
violated not just the constitution but also Catalonia’s autonomy statute
(any change to this required a two-thirds majority in the parliament)
and their approval forty-eight hours after their introduction contra-
vened the Catalan parliament’s rules, prompting the opposition to walk
out before the vote. ‘In one day, they are trying to liquidate the
Constitution and national sovereignty,’ said Rajoy. ‘Nobody will liqui-
date Spanish democracy.’ The most eloquent speech in the Catalan
parliament that day was by Joan Coscubiela, a former Communist and
trade union leader who represented the Catalan affiliate of Podemos. ‘I
don’t want my son to live in a country where the majority can block off
the rights of those who don’t think as they do,’ he declared.
The Constitutional Tribunal immediately struck the laws down, but
Puigdemont went ahead with the referendum regardless. At a press
conference with foreign journalists in mid-September he hid any
nervousness behind cocky defiance. He insisted that, whatever the
turn-out, the vote would be binding: ‘this time it’s organised by the
institutions, not civil society’. Rajoy trusted in the courts and police to
prevent the ballot. One of his officials said of Puigdemont, quoting a
song by Sting: ‘every step you take, I’ll be watching you’. But
Puigdemont was a step ahead: over the weekend of 1 October, activists
occupied schools for use as polling stations. Undetected by the security
services, the independence movement had procured 10,000 plastic
ballot boxes in China. They were imported through Marseilles and
stored on the French side of the border before being distributed under
the nose of the police.

Not for the first time, on the morning of 1 October 2017 I woke up in
the wrong place. I had travelled to Barcelona ahead of the referendum
weekend. But I assumed that the panoply of measures taken by the
Spanish government would ensure that there was no voting. ‘The

45
 SPAIN

referendum won’t happen,’ Rajoy had categorically declared in August.

So on the afternoon of Saturday 30 September I took a train to Vic,
halfway between the Pyrenees and the French border. The journey of
70 kilometres took about eighty minutes. The poor state of their
suburban trains is a matter of justified grievance for Catalans. A pros-
perous town of 45,000 people, with the remains of a Roman temple,
an ancient cathedral and a thriving meat-processing industry, Vic is
sometimes called ‘the capital of Catalan Catalonia’, the separatist heart-
land. Every building on the medieval town square was adorned with
flags, banners or posters in favour of the referendum. A gigantic banner
saying simply ‘Yes’ was strung across the centre of the square. It was
hard to find a sign in shop windows or on the street that was not solely
in Catalan, although the law states that Castilian Spanish is also an
official language in Catalonia. The young waitress in the restaurant
where I had dinner had difficulty translating some words on the menu
from Catalan to Spanish.
I woke up the following morning to find, not far from my hotel, a
couple of hundred people quietly queueing up to vote at a polling
station housed in a school. Two Mossos officers (police from the
Generalitat’s own force) were looking on impassively. The polling
station was staffed by a mixture of citizens picked by lot, as in a normal
election, and volunteers. There were voting slips on tables next to the
plastic ballot boxes stamped with the logo of the Generalitat. ‘Catalonia
is already different. It’s a new European state,’ enthused Dolors Solà, a
representative of Puigdemont’s Junts per Catalunya (Together for
Catalonia) party. At another polling station across town, where several
hundred were waiting to vote, I tracked down Ana Erra, the mayoress
of Vic, a teacher and long-standing supporter of independence. Voting
was slow because of IT problems, she said, but she expected 90% to
vote. ‘This is a city with a great sense of history. We’ve maintained our
traditions and desire to be what we are. After six years asking for talks
[the referendum] is the only thing we have left.’

46
 A CATALAN AUTUMN

While the morning was proceeding quietly in Vic, in Barcelona

the riot police were trying to evict activists from schools to prevent
voting. I rushed back to the Catalan capital in a taxi, but by the time
I got there at lunchtime the police had withdrawn and people were
peacefully queueing to vote. Rajoy had failed to stop the referendum
happening. The scenes of police wielding truncheons against
defenceless resisters were a propaganda disaster for Spanish democracy.
In fact, many of the news pictures that day were fake, some of them
distributed by Russian servers.3 Only a handful of people were injured
by the police, not hundreds as the Catalan government claimed. A
much-reproduced picture of a grey-haired woman with a bleeding
skull turned out to be from a previous occasion and involved the
Mossos. According to the unverifiable count of the Catalan authorities,
43% of the electorate voted, 92% of them (or 2 million people) in
favour of independence.
But, although they seemed to be the winners of the day, Puigdemont
and his supporters had touched a void. They had nowhere further
to go. Their strategy had been to force a confrontation. This was explic-
itly stated in a document called Enfocats that the police found at
the home of Josep Maria Jové, one of Junqueras’s aides. The plan
was ‘to generate a democratic conflict with broad citizen support,
aimed at creating political and economic instability, that forces the
State to agree to negotiate separation . . . or a forced referendum.’ A
unilateral declaration of independence ‘will generate a conflict that,
well managed, can take us to our own state’.4 This document said much
about the nature of the separatist project: it was driven from the top
by the authorities of the Generalitat, who had no sense of constitu-
tional loyalty although they were legally the local representatives of the
Spanish government.
They were convinced that ‘Europe’ would force Rajoy into that
negotiation. They expressed certainty that ‘Europe’ would welcome an
independent Catalonia because they were pro-European and because it

47
 SPAIN

would be a net contributor to the budget, as if that was all those in

Brussels were worried about. In that, their intelligence was as faulty
as Rajoy’s. Angela Merkel, among many others, had no time for
them. ‘The principle of territorial integrity shouldn’t be touched,’ she
said in the presence of Rajoy at a European summit in Malta in
March 2017. ‘We should say loud and clear that nationalisms and
separatisms that seek to weaken the EU are contrary to modern patrio-
tism.’5 That seemed to be a reference to ‘constitutional patriotism’,
the concept championed by Jurgen Habermas, a German social-
democratic philosopher. He meant that the norms and values of
liberal democracy are a healthier basis for political attachments than
nationalism.
The most they got from ‘Europe’ were cautious statements shortly
after 1 October from Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the
European Commission, and Donald Tusk, his counterpart at the
European Council, condemning violence and calling generically for
dialogue. At the European Council meeting later that month the
leaders lined up behind Rajoy.6 No outsiders recognised the ‘right to
self-determination’ of less than half of Catalonia. It soon became clear
that the whole thrust of the procés had been to get to the referendum
and the declaration of independence, with no thought or plans as to
what would come next.
Puigdemont came under heavy pressure to pull back from declaring
independence. He was in close contact with Iñigo Urkullu, the nation-
alist president of the Basque regional government, who had been
trying to mediate between Puigdemont and Rajoy since July. In the
early hours of 26 October Puigdemont decided to call yet another
regional election. That would have stalled both the declaration of
independence and the approval of Article 155. According to Lola
García, the political editor of La Vanguardia, Barcelona’s main news-
paper, Puigdemont told a lengthy meeting of his parliamentary group:
‘I don’t want to be the president of a virtual country. . . . I refuse to

48
 A CATALAN AUTUMN

go around the world handing out business cards of a non-existent

republic.’7
That would indeed be his fate. His words were greeted by cries of
‘traitor’ from some in the meeting. Those cries were echoed on social
media and by students demonstrating in the Plaça Sant Jaume the
following morning. Puigdemont backed down. He texted Urkullu to tell
him of ‘difficulties in sticking to the decision’.8 He would later claim that
he had desisted from the election because Rajoy had failed to offer guar-
antees that Article 155 would not be implemented. But at no point in
his communications with Urkullu had he raised this issue. Having called
into being a mass movement for independence, the separatist leaders
had become its prisoners. Their own division, into three rival parties and
two social movements (one was called the Catalan National Assembly, or
ANC, and the other Òmnium Cultural), created a logic of competitive
radicalisation that had driven the procés forward since 2011. Esquerra
and Junqueras sometimes presented themselves as a moderating force.
But on 26 October it was Esquerra that threatened to accuse Puigdemont
of betrayal, apparently calculating that this would benefit it if there was
a regional election. It was one of many recent examples in Catalan and
Spanish politics of tactical considerations trumping longer-term strategy.
In that frenzied autumn of 2017 in which the world’s media
descended on Barcelona, the counter-revolution quickly gathered
force. In a short televised message on 3 October, King Felipe had
stressed that it was ‘the responsibility of the legitimate powers of state
to assure constitutional order and the normal functioning of institu-
tions’. His intervention was criticised by some for lacking a paragraph
in Catalan empathising with the frustrations of the nationalist half of
Catalonia. But it was widely seen as rallying a demoralised government
and reassuring the non-nationalist half that, as he said, ‘they are not
alone, nor will they be: that they have the full support and solidarity of
the rest of Spaniards and the absolute guarantee of our rule of law in
the defence of their freedom and their rights’.9

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 SPAIN

The independence drive, and the king’s encouragement, roused the

previously passive half of Catalonia that wants to stay in Spain. They
took to the streets in demonstrations almost as big as the separatist
ones. More than 4,000 businesses moved their domicile out of
Catalonia in search of legal certainty. Across Spain the national flag
suddenly appeared on balconies. That was new: since Franco’s death
Spaniards had been circumspect about public displays of nationalism,
a creed discredited by its abuse by the dictator. The generation that
made the democratic transition (who are now mostly in their 70s and
80s) put far more stress on achieving a democratic state than on the
Spanish nation. Their children lost that inhibition.
Humiliated on 1 October, the Spanish state hit back, in the form of
prosecutors and courts. Puigdemont and twenty-four other separatist
leaders were charged with crimes ranging from rebellion to misuse of
public funds, potentially attracting prison sentences of up to twenty-five
years. But Puigdemont had quietly vanished the day after his unilateral
declaration of independence, turning up in Belgium. Five other sepa-
ratist leaders fled variously to Belgium, Scotland and Switzerland.
The nationalists threatened to respond to direct rule from Madrid
with mass civil disobedience. In the event, this didn’t amount to much
beyond a one-day strike which was not backed by the main union
confederations. To reduce tensions, Rajoy had used his powers under
Article 155 to call a fresh regional election in Catalonia for December.
This changed little: Puigdemont’s coalition again fell just short of a
majority of the popular vote while winning a majority of seats
(Catalonia’s electoral law grants a disproportionate number of seats to
the interior at the expense of Barcelona). One novelty was that
Ciudadanos was the single most-voted party (with 25%). Its leader,
Inés Arrimadas, a young Catalan-speaking migrant from Andalucía,
rallied the anti-independence electorate. ‘Their illusion is to stop being
Spaniards. Ours is to cut hospital waiting lists,’ she told a few hundred
people who had turned out on a cold December evening, days before

50
 A CATALAN AUTUMN

the vote, for a rally next to the Espanyol football stadium in Cornellà
de Llobregat, a Barcelona suburb.

A dozen of Puigdemont’s former colleagues, including Junqueras, went

on trial in February 2019 before seven justices in the plenary hall of
Spain’s Supreme Court in Madrid. Decked out with black marble, its
belle époque décor is oppressive rather than exuberant. Most of the
defendants had been in jail since November 2017. Puigdemont himself
had been arrested when travelling through Germany in 2018 only for
the High Court of Schleswig-Holstein to refuse to extradite him for
rebellion on the grounds that the evidence would not have warranted
the charge there. He was safe in Belgium, which has a long and dishon-
ourable record of refusing to comply with European extradition
warrants against Spaniards, including ETA terrorists.
In fifty-two sessions, stretching into June, 422 witnesses gave
evidence, as the country relived the events of the Catalan autumn of
2017. Many lawyers were sceptical that the prosecution could prove
rebellion, a charge designed to deal with military coups and which
implies the use of large-scale violence. In fact, the procés had been
remarkably peaceful. More appropriate, and less inflammatory, would
have been the lesser charge of disobedience, which lawyers for most of
the defendants admitted in their closing speeches, and which would
have involved merely disqualification from office and a fine, rather
than jail. One line pursued by the defence was that the declaration of
independence had never happened, since it was not published in the
official bulletins of either the Generalitat or the Catalan parliament.
Clara Ponsatí, Puigdemont’s education councillor who, to avoid arrest,
fled to Scotland where she held a university post, claimed that the
whole thing had been a ‘bluff’ which had got out of hand.
In the event, the court dismissed the charge of rebellion but found
nine of the leaders guilty of sedition (and four of misuse of public
funds). In a unanimous verdict it stated that they had ‘led the citizenry

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 SPAIN

in a public and tumultuous rising’ which prevented the application of

law and decisions of the courts. Junqueras got thirteen years in prison
and six other former officials terms of ten to twelve years. Jordi Sánchez
and Jordi Cuixart, the leaders of ANC and Òmnium respectively, each
got nine years. They were accused chiefly of organising a large demon-
stration for many hours outside one of the Generalitat’s offices to
intimidate a team of prosecutors who were searching it. Since neither
of the two Jordis (as they became known) held public office, their
sentences seemed especially disproportionate. But the court took the
view that the social movements had operated in close concert with the
Generalitat, which indeed seemed to be the case.
The sentences prompted a week of rioting in Barcelona, with nightly
fires and barricades, which to some on both sides of the political divide
conjured up the rosa de foc (rose of fire), the name given to a wave of
church burnings by anarchists in the Catalan capital in 1909.10 The
jailed leaders were not political prisoners, as the separatists claimed. As
the prosecutors repeated, they were tried and sentenced for their
unconstitutional and illegal actions, not their ideas. But they were
politician prisoners, sentenced to long prison terms for political acts,
and that was highly unusual in a European democracy.
For many outsiders Spain’s failure to allow a referendum and its
persecution of the Catalan leaders were incomprehensible, undemo-
cratic and repressive. That view was, of course, promoted by the
Generalitat, which devoted effort, staff and public money to propa-
ganda abroad. It was much better at it than the plodding Spanish
government. ‘It’s possible that we are losing the propaganda war,’
Alfonso Dastis, the foreign minister, conceded in a briefing for foreign
journalists in September 2017. ‘We don’t want to do propaganda. We
want to tell the truth. It’s difficult to counteract such nonsense.’
The harshness of the state’s reaction was provoked by the enormity
of the actions of Puigdemont and Junqueras. The achievement of
constitutional democracy had cost Spaniards decades of suffering.

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 A CATALAN AUTUMN

Despite the long-standing unhappinesses of some Catalans and

Basques, Spain has been a nation with more or less the same borders
since the sixteenth century. Were Catalonia to vote for independence,
the Basques would almost certainly follow (and the Balearics might
well seek to join Catalonia). For many Spaniards the break-up of their
country, and the departure of some of its richer regions, is unthinkable.
They complained of the naivety of David Cameron, the British prime
minister, who trusted that he would win the Brexit referendum of
2016 but who ended up allowing the narrowest of ephemeral majori-
ties in a binary vote on a complex issue to wreak irrevocable change
(and many would say damage) to his country’s economic condition
and place in the world.
Some Spaniards saw the Catalan parliament’s laws of 6 and 7
September as amounting to a ‘postmodern coup’, in the title of a book
by Daniel Gascón.11 Officials in Madrid insisted that no other Western
European democracy would have acted differently if faced with such a
challenge. Far from being unique, Spain’s constitutional protection of
the nation’s territorial unity is the norm in continental Europe, as the
Supreme Court noted. ‘No European constitution exists that recog-
nises “the right to decide”,’ it stated. Indeed, constitutional tribunals in
Germany and Italy had recently barred referendums on separation, in
Bavaria and Alto Adige. Nor does the United States allow secession.
Czechoslovakia, with its ‘velvet divorce’ of 1993, and Canada and
Britain, where national governments have allowed independence refer-
endums (but may be less willing to do so in the future) are exceptions.
As for Article 155, it is a close copy of Article 37 of Germany’s Basic
Law, its constitution.
But many in Spain also blamed Rajoy for the lack of a more imagi-
native political response to the separatists and for allowing events to get
so far. When Artur Mas allowed the unofficial referendum of 2014, ‘I
would have warned of Article 155 while offering talks,’ Felipe González
told me. Rajoy’s approach was simply to apply the law. Polls

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consistently showed that a majority of Catalans wanted a referendum

on their region’s status, agreed by the national government. They also
showed that a majority in Spain believed Rajoy should negotiate, and
that his intransigence was helping the separatist cause. The opposition
complained of the outsourcing of politics to judges and prosecutors.
Officials disagreed. Given the binary nature of the demand for a
referendum, negotiation was hard. ‘We are convinced that time will
deflate this issue,’ a senior official handling the Catalan conflict said in
March 2017, seven months before the referendum. ‘Junqueras wants
to be [regional] president. We are convinced he won’t go to the end.
We think they will call a referendum, the Constitutional Tribunal will
annul it and they will call an election.’ That showed how much the
government misread its adversaries. Conservative commentators
repeatedly compared the procés to a soufflé that would soon subside. It
didn’t. ‘The soufflé is of granite,’ Joan B. Culla, a Catalan historian,
remarked to me in Barcelona ahead of the referendum. He was right.
The jailing of their leaders was felt in separatist Catalonia to be a
humiliation.
Because of this sense of humiliation, the separatist defeat of 2017
did not immediately translate into a change in the balance of power in
Catalonia. The separatist parties again won a majority of seats in a
regional election in February 2021. For the first time they also won a
majority of votes (51%, divided among four parties) but the import of
this was blunted by a record low turn-out of under 54%, compared
with 79% in 2017. The pandemic was partly to blame for that, but so
was a generalised feeling of political disillusionment. Ciudadanos
suffered a similarly crushing defeat as it had nationally in 2019. The
Catalan affiliate of Sánchez’s Socialists, led by Salvador Illa who had
switched shortly before from being the health minister in the national
government, became the largest single party (with 23% of the vote).
The election saw a change within the nationalist camp: Esquerra, with
21% of the vote and thirty-three parliamentary seats edged ahead of

54
 A CATALAN AUTUMN

Junts, Puigdemont’s party. Pere Aragonès, Junqueras’s deputy, became

the first Esquerra president of the Generalitat since the 1930s.
Four months after the election Sánchez decreed pardons for the nine
prisoners, freeing them from jail. That was a bold move: the conserva-
tive opposition accused him of betraying the rule of law, and of
rewarding Esquerra for propping up the government in votes in the
Spanish parliament. Many of the prisoners showed no remorse. Only
Junqueras admitted that the referendum was not seen as ‘fully legiti-
mate’ by part of Catalan society and that a unilateral road to indepen-
dence was ‘neither viable nor desirable’. The pardons stopped short of
the full amnesty demanded by the Generalitat; they were conditional
on not breaking the law again and did not revoke a ban on holding
public office that ran for the same period as the original jail sentences.
Puigdemont, who had been elected to the European Parliament,
remained in legal limbo, along with Ponsatí and two of the other fugi-
tives. After the refusal of courts in Germany and Italy to extradite them,
the instructing magistrate of Spain’s Supreme Court sought a ruling
from the European Court of Justice as to the validity of the European
arrest warrants against them. Whichever way it rules, Puigdemont was
likely to remain an irritant for the Spanish government.
While the pardons divided Spaniards as a whole they were widely
welcomed in Catalonia. Sánchez was soon vindicated. The pardons
swiftly ceased to be a national issue and they drained much of the
emotional poison from the conflict. In July 2021 I returned to
Barcelona for my first visit since the start of the pandemic and found
the atmosphere more relaxed than at any time since the independence
procés began. There were far fewer Esteladas on balconies. While not
renouncing the goal of an agreed referendum Aragonès and Esquerra
agreed to open talks with the national government. These began with
bread-and-butter issues such as infrastructure. Nobody expected them
to be quick or easy. But they offered a way back to a degree of political
normality. By mid-2022 the Generalitat’s official pollster found that

55
 SPAIN

support for an independent Catalan state had fallen to 41%, the lowest
level since the start of the procés, while 52% were against. Given other
options, such as the possibility of a state within a federal country, only
34% favoured independence.12 ‘Since 2017 Catalonia has been
digesting a political failure,’ Illa told me. ‘The problem now is to find
ways of living together again, both among Catalans and between
Catalans and other Spaniards.’

In 2018, eight months after the referendum, I returned to Vic. Now

almost every building on the town square had a banner calling for the
release of the separatist prisoners and for ‘democracy’. I went to see the
mayor at the town hall, a small palace of honeyed stone dating from the
fourteenth century on a corner of the square. Alongside the Senyera and
the stars of the EU, a Spanish flag fluttered from a pole on the roof. An
apologetic banner almost covered it, explaining that the presence of the
offending flag was by judicial order. Erra was both defiant and rueful.
‘They think that with prison and repression they will make us disap-
pear. With this they make the breach bigger,’ she said. Independence
will take longer than people thought, she admitted, it wasn’t simply a
matter of declaring it, as people had hoped. ‘The unilateral route will be
very difficult, it hasn’t worked as we thought.’ But, she added: ‘I think
eventually we will get at least a referendum. We are a people who have
a language, a history, a culture.’
At the other end of the railway line, the trains from Puigcerdà and
Vic terminate at L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. Wedged between Barcelona
and its airport, with 260,000 people L’Hospitalet is the second most
populous municipality in Catalonia. It was long a dormitory for factory
workers who had migrated from elsewhere in Spain, its treeless streets
among the densest in Europe, intersected by a tangle of railway lines.
Around a quarter of its present residents were born outside the EU,
many in Latin America. L’Hospitalet boasts a twenty-first-century
district of gleaming offices and hotels and Barcelona’s new trade fair,

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 A CATALAN AUTUMN

host to the Mobile World Congress. In the municipal library and

cultural centre, housed in a former textile factory, there was an exhibi-
tion of Andalucian mantillas when I visited. After Barça, the football
team with the largest fan base in L’Hospitalet is Real Betis, the pride of
Seville. This is the Catalonia that looks to the rest of Spain, the world
and the future. Its children are taught in Catalan at school, but here
they speak Spanish in the playground and at home. Although some
balconies in L’Hospitalet were draped with the Estelada, its dominant
political traditions are those of socialism and anarchism. ‘We won’t
forget the contempt that was shown’ by the separatists for those who
disagree with them, L’Hospitalet’s Socialist mayor, Núria Marín, told
me. Her father was Basque, her mother from Navarre. ‘The problem
isn’t just between Catalonia and Spain, but within Catalonia. There
can’t be winners and losers here.’

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 CHAPTER 3

THE INVENTION OF CATALONIA

F or the outsider, that Catalonia should be the site of a bitter polit-

ical conflict might seem surprising. Few corners of the globe feel
more privileged. Wedged between the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean
and the rivers Ebro and Noguera, Catalonia has it all in terms of phys-
ical beauty and cultural creativity: the rugged coast of the Costa Brava,
the wooded hills and fertile plains and valleys of the interior, a remark-
able architectural history from medieval to modernist, a strong busi-
ness tradition, a great European city in Barcelona, a generally prosperous
standard of living, exquisite wines from Priorat, Montsant and
Ampurdan, and a rich and innovative gastronomy manifested in two
restaurants (El Bulli and Cellar de Can Roca) that have topped the
world rankings. Its people like to pride themselves on their seny, a
Catalan word meaning their wisdom or common sense. Yet when it
comes to politics, as Jaume Vicens Vives, a distinguished historian and
Catalan nationalist of the mid-twentieth century noted, they have
more often acted with its opposite: rauxa or emotional impulsiveness.
And time and again Catalans have been internally divided at crucial
moments. These are not manifestations of a presumed essential national
character – they are simply a historical pattern. They sometimes give

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 THE INVENTION OF CATALONIA

rise to an uncanny sense of déjà vu when studying the history of

Catalonia. But there are other patterns, too. While conflict, violence
and mistrust have formed one strand in the relationship between
Catalonia and the rest of Spain, the two are bound together by many
other threads. Different in some ways, Catalans are far more like other
Spaniards than they are like anyone else. Despite everything, opinion
polls in 2020 showed that around two-thirds of respondents in
Catalonia feel Spanish to a greater or lesser degree and only a quarter
purely Catalan.1 If there was evidence that the settled view of the
overwhelming majority of Catalans was to break away, it would be
hard to deny the case for a referendum. But that has never been
the case.
The fears that some Catalans expressed to me in 2017 – that their
land was moving towards a sectarian conflict in the manner of Northern
Ireland – have fortunately ebbed. But there are still two Catalonias,
often within the same town or city, that don’t talk or listen to each
other much. Puigdemont’s claim to represent un sol poble (a single
people) is false.2 It is a basic reason why the independence drive has
failed, so far. But that is not how the separatist movement sees it. The
referendum, Puigdemont stated when he called it, was the ‘exercise of
the legitimate right to self-determination that a millenarian nation like
Catalonia enjoys’.3 That claim to nation-statehood is based on history,
language and culture, as Vic’s mayor Ana Erra said.
Some supporters of independence try to distance themselves from
nationalism, because of its right-wing and racist connotations. They
claim to stand for an open-minded internationalism and argued that
the drive for independence was all about participatory democracy. This
position is expressed by Francesc-Marc Álvaro, a Catalan journalist
sympathetic to independence, in a recent, well-informed book:

Academics and students of national questions know that Catalan

nationalism is a nationalism of a civic kind, not ethnic or essentialist.

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 SPAIN

. . . The civic character of Catalanism passed automatically to sepa-

ratism and that has underlined the framework of the demand for
independence, which is ‘more democracy’ not ‘more identity’ nor a
supposedly pure identity.4

This assertion goes hand in hand with the argument that opponents of
Catalan independence were guilty of Spanish nationalism, which is
held to be inherently nasty. The implication was that Francoism hadn’t
really died and that Catalonia had been uniquely its victim, and
continued to be so. Puigdemont, in an op-ed in November 2017,
claimed that what was at stake was ‘democracy itself ’.5 These claims
provided a ‘progressive’, left-wing veneer to what was at bottom a
right-wing movement. Independence is not, on the whole, the cause of
the working class in Catalonia: polls show that its support is greater
among the better-off. Symptomatically, almost half of Franco’s desig-
nated mayors at the end of the dictatorship became candidates for
CiU, the main nationalist party, in the first democratic elections (most
of the rest stood as independents).6 Nevertheless, the nationalists’
contentions were lapped up with little questioning in much foreign
commentary.
In fact, Catalan nationalism and separatism are very much about
identity. Álvaro acknowledges this, contradicting his own argument,
when he writes later about the demand for recognition of ‘identity,
sense of belonging and collective memory’.7 Talking to those who
attended separatist rallies, what came over was a generalised sense of
victimhood which jumbled together history, practical matters of money
and infrastructure and identitarian questions. ‘The way they are trying
to hang on to Catalonia is like they did with the colonies,’ Sergi Cercos,
a manager from Vilafranca del Penedès, a town in cava country west of
Barcelona, told me during the Diada demonstration of 2017. Many
younger supporters of independence felt an emotional disconnection
with the rest of Spain. ‘We don’t feel Spanish,’ Cercos’s friend, Sergi

60
 THE INVENTION OF CATALONIA

Rubió, said. ‘They don’t like us at all,’ Joana Reñe, a young nurse, said
as she stood in the crowd outside the Catalan parliament as it was
poised to declare independence. ‘They say Catalan is a dialect and that
Catalans are tight-fisted.’ Ana Erra echoed this: ‘at bottom they don’t
like us,’ she told me in 2018.
So is there a solid basis to Catalonia’s claims to nationhood and
statehood? ‘The right to decide’ is a simple and seductive slogan. But
international law recognises a right to self-determination only in cases
of colonisation, invasion or gross denial of human rights. None of
those things applied in Catalonia, much though the separatists tried to
claim otherwise. One of the more bizarre things about covering the
Catalan events was to be in the prosperous, sophisticated surroundings
of Barcelona and to hear officials from the Generalitat solemnly
compare Catalonia with war-ravaged Kosovo or Lithuania as it emerged
from Soviet totalitarianism. It was hard to keep a straight face.
Nevertheless, since the Generalitat gained control over education
many Catalans have been taught to believe not just that Catalonia is an
ancient nation – and by implication, a former sovereign state – but also
that governments in Madrid have repeatedly oppressed it, treating it as
a colony, and that Spain has been ruled in the exclusive interests of
Castile. The historical record is more blurred. Certainly, in the past
four centuries governments have sometimes acted in heavy-handed
and oppressive ways that were contemptuous of Catalonia. (Many on
the right in the rest of Spain see Catalonia as chronically disloyal, mate-
rialistic and selfish.) But the nationalist claims are at most half-true.
The Catalan nation, as conceived by the separatists, is a prime example
of what Eric Hobsbawm, a British historian, called ‘the invention of
tradition’. This practice involves ‘the use of ancient materials to
construct invented traditions of a novel type for quite novel purposes’
and often involves ‘semi-fiction’ or even forgery.8 This applied widely
in Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century under the
inspiration of the Romantic movement and the emergence

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 SPAIN

of nationalism in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Spanish

nationalism is not free of such invention: for example, histories written
in the nineteenth century ascribed the start of the ‘reconquest’ of
Muslim Spain by Christian rulers to the Battle of Covadonga in
Asturias in the early eighth century. Modern historians doubt that it
took place. And the ‘reconquest’ was in fact a conquest since there was
no meaningful continuity between those Christian rulers from the far
north and the Visigothic kingdom in Spain of the fifth to seventh
centuries whose capital was in Toledo. In the case of Catalonia, the
official nationalist narrative has a particularly flimsy relationship to
historical fact.

The origins of Catalonia lie in the County of Barcelona, a lordship in

the Hispanic march, a buffer established by the Franks to protect the
Carolingian empire against the Arabs and Berbers who had invaded
Iberia in the eighth century. The counts of Barcelona eventually freed
themselves from obeisance to the kings of France, and by the mid-
twelfth century had established dominion over the other lordships in
the territory that is today Catalonia. But medieval Catalonia was a
dynastic, patrimonial entity; unlike say Scotland, it was never clearly an
independent nation, recognised as such by others, and less still a state.
Through dynastic marriages the counts of Barcelona came to possess,
temporarily, a large chunk of southern France. To their west emerged
the Kingdom of Aragon, based on Christian lordships in the valleys of
the central section of the Pyrenees, which grew in importance with its
capture of Zaragoza from the Arabs. In 1137 the County of Barcelona
merged, by marriage, with its neighbour. The king-counts of Aragon
would come to rule over a remarkable Mediterranean empire including
Valencia, the Balearic Islands, southern Italy and trading posts as far
afield as Greece. Certainly, Catalonia was the most dynamic part of the
kingdom until around 1350 when Valencia overtook it. But the king-
counts were normally crowned in Zaragoza, not Barcelona.9

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 THE INVENTION OF CATALONIA

The raw material of (re)invented Catalan tradition lies in this period,

in the Middle Ages. The Arab invasion drove many Christian peasants to
the refuge of the tight Pyrenean valleys. There they built Romanesque
churches decorated with frescoes of simple, powerful beauty, many of
which have been transferred to the splendid National Museum of
Catalan Art in Barcelona. The Frankish nobility established a more
developed feudal system there than elsewhere in Spain, where the ‘recon-
quest’ of Muslim territory took several centuries. The Catalan country-
side became home to fiercely independent yeoman farmers; their solid
farmhouses, the masias, were the basis of a conservative, Catholic, patri-
archal society. Barcelona developed a powerful merchant class. The city’s
magnificent Barrí Gòtic, with one of the most extensive collections of
medieval public and religious buildings in Europe, is testament, in stone
and in the soaring, slender arches of churches such as Santa María del
Mar, to their wealth. At this juncture, Madrid was no more than a forti-
fied former Arab-Berber village lost in the Castilian meseta.
The Kingdom of Aragon was marked by a greater respect for local
laws and by less centralised rule than Castile. Feudal institutions of
government and social contract developed in Catalonia, as they did in
Aragon proper and Valencia. The Useages of Barcelona, a document
drawn up in 1068, expressed the legal foundations of the Catalan feudal
order. The corts, an assembly representing the nobles, high clergy and
the more prosperous merchants, met every three years, to approve the
king’s requests for taxes and laws. In Catalonia, the corts had a perma-
nent standing committee of twelve members, known as the diputació del
general or Generalitat, a name that would be revived in the twentieth
century. Barcelona was run by the Consell de Cent (council of a hundred),
which mainly represented the big merchants. In the nationalist narra-
tive, these institutions were proto-democratic. Thus, to buttress his
claim to lead a millenarian nation, Puigdemont styles himself the 130th
president of the Generalitat, claiming continuity with this medieval
institution, although there is no similarity beyond the name between it

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 SPAIN

and the contemporary regional government. The reality is displayed in

large paintings of the Valencian corts, which still hang in the stone-
floored hall where they used to meet in the fifteenth-century Palace of
the Generalitat in Valencia. They depict the bishops, the military
nobility and the merchants of the towns. Missing are the peasant masses
and the urban artisans. Today, textbooks in Catalonia refer to the ‘medi-
eval Catalan state’ or ‘the Catalan empire’, while nationalist historians
talk of the ‘Catalan-Aragonese Federation’. These terms were not
employed at the time to designate a political entity that contemporaries
knew as the Kingdom of Aragon. Indeed, it was only around the time
of the union with Aragon that the terms ‘Catalan’ and ‘Catalonia’ were
first recorded, according to Jordi Canal, a Catalan historian who teaches
at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris.10 In El
Cantar de Mio Cid, an epic poem first published around 1200, the
Catalans were still referred to as ‘Franks’.
After 1300 Catalonia fell into decline. When the king-count of
Aragon died without an heir in 1410, three representatives from each
part of the mainland kingdom chose as his successor Fernando de
Antequera, of the Castilian royal house of Trastamara. This would give
rise, in 1479, to the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon in the
persons of Isabella and Ferdinand, the Catholic monarchs. They ruled
a ‘composite monarchy’, not a unified nation state, as some conserva-
tive Spanish historians argue.11 The two territories remained separate
entities. Aragon retained its own system of government.
Catalonia was subjected to centralising demands from the Habsburg
monarchy in the seventeenth century, when the Count Duke of
Olivares, Philip IV’s chief minister, attempted to extract money and
men for campaigning in the Thirty Years’ War. As part of that conflict,
France declared war on Spain in 1635, invading Catalonia. The army
of Philip IV expelled the invaders but was then faced by an uprising
against the billeting of troops and other exactions. Several hundred
segadors (reapers) rioted in Barcelona; Pau Claris, the canon of Urgell

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 THE INVENTION OF CATALONIA

and president of the Diputació, declared a republic, which lasted a

week, and invited France to protect it, proclaiming Louis XIII as Count
of Barcelona. The French stayed for twelve years, during which part of
the Catalan nobility fled to Castile. Under the Treaty of the Pyrenees
of 1659 France kept the counties of Cerdanya and Roussillon, the part
of the original Hispanic march to the north of the Pyrenees. According
to J.H. Elliott, ‘the revolt of 1640 left a permanent legacy of bitter
memories in the Court [in Madrid], just as it did in Catalonia itself – a
legacy that would have a lasting influence on the Crown’s policies
towards the Catalans.’12
Conflict returned when Charles II, the last Spanish Habsburg, died
childless in 1700, triggering the War of the Spanish Succession. His will
named Philip, the Duke of Anjou and grandson of Louis XIV, as his
heir. Fearful of the expansion of French Bourbon power, a coalition of
England, Austria, Holland and later Portugal backed the rival claim of
Archduke Charles of Austria. After his proclamation Philip V visited
Barcelona where he was well received and swore to respect traditional
privileges. But anti-French feeling in Catalonia was strong, especially in
the interior, following past invasions, and the Church, too, sided with
the Austrian camp. The Vigatans, the gentry of Vic and surrounding
areas, rebelled against Philip and signed a pact with England. After mili-
tary defeat in La Mancha, the Austrian and English forces withdrew,
recognising Philip. Barcelona (but not the rest of Catalonia) fought on
to the bitter end against a monarch who never forgave it for having
switched sides. Some 40,000 Spanish and French troops besieged the
city, defended by around 5,000, mainly militias, under Rafael Casanova,
the head of the Consell de Cent. Part of the Catalan nobility and bour-
geoisie deserted to Philip’s forces. After fourteen months of siege, and
with some 7,000 dead, on 11 September 1714 the city surrendered.

It was a crushing defeat that became a powerful national myth which

still resonates. It is commemorated at the El Born Centre of Culture and

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 SPAIN

Memory in the barrio of La Ribera in the heart of old Barcelona. This

occupies a former fruit and vegetable market, a splendour of wrought
iron and glass. Beneath what was the market floor, archaeologists recently
exposed half a dozen cobbled streets and the foundations of the houses
that lined them, demolished by the conquering Bourbon army in order
to build the fortress that would dominate rebellious Barcelona for almost
two centuries, and whose remnant now houses the Catalan parliament.
Defeat marked ‘the true end of the Catalan nation’, a didactic panel in
the museum explains. ‘The freedom of Catalonia and its rights and
constitutions would soon be entirely eliminated.’ Again, this is to impose
modern democratic language on a very different historical reality.
Catalonia’s national day is celebrated on 11 September. The tercen-
tenary of the defeat provided an emotional spur to the independence
procés: Artur Mas talked of winning at the ballot box in 2014 what was
lost in 1714. In historical fact, the war was both international and
intra-hispanic, in which most of the crown of Aragon fought most of
Castile. But large minorities in both backed the other side. Catalan
supporters of Philip, who held several towns in the interior, were
known at the time as botiflers, a word that is now used as an insult by
separatists to designate Catalans who disagree with them.
The defeat of 1714 brought medieval Catalonia to a belated end,
and ushered in what would become its modern replacement. In victory,
Philip imposed an absolute, centralised monarchy in the mould of his
grandfather, Louis XIV. In Catalonia this took the form of the Nueva
Planta (new plan) of 1716, which abolished the corts (which had only
met twice since 1640), the Consell de Cent, the charters of privileges
and the University of Barcelona, and made Castilian Spanish the
language of public administration and the law courts. The new plan
preserved Catalan civil law and granted an amnesty. But Philip
stationed an occupying army in Catalonia and turned Barcelona into a
garrison city with the building of the fortress of the Citadel, as the
museum of the Born so poignantly reveals.

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 THE INVENTION OF CATALONIA

Nevertheless, Bourbon rule would give greater impetus to an incip-

ient revival of Catalonia after centuries of decline, as it became an inte-
gral part of a united Spain. Catalans were granted equal access to trade
and administrative posts in Spanish America. The Catalan industries of
wine, brandy and textiles profited from access to the Spanish and
American markets. By the end of the eighteenth century the Catalan
cotton textile industry had become the biggest outside Lancashire, the
‘first true industrial complex in modern Spain’.13 It depended on
protectionism: under pressure from Catalonia, the Spanish govern-
ment imposed a tariff on cotton goods.
Industrialisation brought far-reaching social and political changes. It
increased the gulf between rural Catalonia and Barcelona, and brought
new class conflicts in the city. Above all, it gave birth to a national
consciousness in Catalonia that had not existed in the Middle Ages or
in 1714. This began in the 1830s with a cultural movement, known as
the Renaixença (Renaissance), which promoted the Catalan language
and ‘national’ history and traditions. Catalan had remained the spoken
vernacular. It now underwent a literary revival, featuring poetry compe-
titions (known as ‘floral games’), publishing and, in 1879, the first daily
paper in Catalan. Pompeu Fabra, an engineer and amateur linguist,
published the first Catalan dictionary and grammar, always choosing
the vocabulary and usage that was most distant from Castilian Spanish.
The Diada began to be celebrated by the end of the nineteenth century.
The Renaixença involved, too, the recovery, or invention, of traditional
folklore, such as the sardana dance (akin to a more somnolent version
of Scottish country dancing) or the extraordinary human towers known
as castells. ‘Els Segadors’, a song about the rebellious reapers of 1640,
was adopted as the Catalan national anthem. Urban professionals spent
their weekends in organised exploration of the Romanesque villages of
the Pyrenean valleys looking for the essence of Catalonia. To twenty-
first-century eyes, much of it looks very twee, but not so different from
the practices of the English and Scottish Romantics.

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 SPAIN

Catalanism, as this cultural movement became known, was closely

linked to Catholicism, and priests were among its prime movers. But it
was also heavily influenced by Romanticism, especially in its German
and British variants. The Scottish romances of Sir Walter Scott were an
inspiration; so was Wagner, the subject of a craze in Barcelona’s opera
house, the Liceu, in the 1880s and 1890s.14 (In Madrid Verdi was
always more popular.) The Catalanists also imbibed the ideas of Johann
Gottfried Herder, a German philosopher who believed that a nation
was an organic essence defined by language, rather than a cultural and
political construction as theorists think today. Artur Mas once described
Catalans as ‘more German and less Roman’ than other Spaniards,
despite their land’s abundance of Roman ruins.15 It was certainly true,
in architectural terms, that in Catalonia the Gothic was more promi-
nent than the Baroque. Even Catalan modernisme – the artistic and
architectural movement with which Anton Gaudí, Barcelona’s greatest
architect, was associated – was partly backward-looking.
Much of the peasantry felt its way of life threatened by capitalism and
embraced Carlism, a traditionalist and above all anti-liberal Catholic
movement (see chapter 4). Rural Catalonia saw heavy fighting in the first
(1833–40), second (1846–49) and especially third (1872–76) Carlist
wars. In Barcelona and other towns, the mass of the population had other
concerns: the growing working class suffered harsh labour conditions in
the new factories and worse housing conditions than Dickensian London.
The Catalan capital’s population density in the mid-nineteenth century
was twice that of Paris, according to a study by Ildefons Cerdà, the
forward-looking civil engineer and utopian socialist who planned
Barcelona’s Eixample (Expansion), its new city.16 Desperate, many of the
workers turned to insurrection and anarchism. Barcelona became the
most insurrectionary city in Europe: strikes, barricades and bombs, along
with police torture and military repression, became a way of life. An
often violent struggle between anarchist and Catholic trade unions and
their respective gangster gunmen peaked between 1917 and 1923.

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 THE INVENTION OF CATALONIA

In this context, Catalanism evolved from a purely cultural move-

ment into a political one: Catalan nationalism. This was a project of
the expanding bourgeoisie and professional middle classes, who felt
their interests threatened both by anarchism and by the relative weak-
ness of the Spanish state in distant Madrid. That weakness was high-
lighted by what became known as the ‘disaster’ of 1898, when Spain
suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the rising United States in the
Spanish-American War, losing its remaining American and Asian colo-
nies – Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines (see chapter 4).
Catalan nationalism had several currents. One, which briefly
became dominant in the 1930s and again in the 1960s and 1970s, is
republican, socialist and federalist; there are echoes of this today in
some leaders of Esquerra and in the Catalanism of the regional affiliate
of the Socialist party. Another, conservative, current draws on the
Carlist inheritance of traditionalism and localism. Carlism was a
profoundly reactionary movement in the purest sense of the word. It
was not coincidental that the areas of Carlist influence in the nine-
teenth century – the Pyrenees, the central plain of Catalonia and the
Ebro valley among them – are the areas of greatest separatist strength
today. Berga, a town not far from Vic that was Carlism’s headquarters
in its third war, has a mayor from the CUP. In the Second Carlist War
the headquarters of Carlism’s commander, General Ramón Cabrera,
was at Amer, Puigdemont’s birthplace near Girona.
The dominant current in Catalan nationalism from the 1880s until
1930, and again in the 1980s and 1990s, was conservative and Catholic
but pro-business and more modern. This was the stance of the first
nationalist party, the Lliga de Catalunya, whose founders included
Enric Prat de la Riba, a lawyer and writer, and Francesc Cambó, a busi-
nessman, politician and patron of the arts. It represented the industrial-
ists, bankers and professional classes. It approved a programme, drawn
up by Prat, of home rule for Catalonia as an autonomous region within
Spain, with Catalan as its official language. All public jobs were to be

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reserved for Catalans, either by birth or naturalisation – a sign of the

insecurities engendered by the arrival of immigrants from elsewhere in
Spain to work in the factories. The Lliga was pledged to economic
protectionism. Its cause was strengthened by the ‘disaster’ of 1898;
Cuba had been a big export market for Catalonia and had a significant
Catalan expatriate community. The Catalan bourgeoisie had backed
Spain’s unyielding military repression of Cuban rebellions; it then
blamed the Spanish government for its failure. The events of 1898
‘turned Catalanism from a minority creed into the vehicle for a gener-
alised protest’, as Raymond Carr put it.17 By 1914 the Lliga had
achieved a limited degree of home rule; Prat de la Riba became the
president of a Mancomunitat, or Commonwealth, which amalgamated
the powers and authorities of the four Catalan provinces. Prat was not
a separatist; he believed a federal Spain was the most Catalonia could
aspire to. ‘Age-old living together has created bonds with the larger unit
of Spain which could not be broken,’ he wrote.18 But in a tension that
became familiar more recently, he wanted to use the Mancomunitat to
build a nation. His plans were cut short by his early death. Cambó, a
minister in several national governments, would attempt to deploy
Catalan nationalism as a force to reform Spain. He failed.
The Catalan bourgeoisie were in despair at continuing anarchist
agitation. They applauded when, in 1923, General Miguel Primo de
Rivera, the captain general of Barcelona, staged a pronunciamiento which
replaced parliamentary government with dictatorship. Some 4,000 well-
dressed Catalans went to the station to see Primo off on his journey to
Madrid. They would be disappointed. In a milder foretaste of the Franco
regime, Primo shut down the Mancomunitat and banned the use of
Catalan in schools. That doomed the Lliga’s brand of moderation.
When the failure of Primo’s dictatorship brought down the
monarchy, it was Francesc Macià, an elderly former army colonel and
farmer who had broken with the Lliga, who proclaimed a Catalan state
within what he hoped would be an Iberian federal republic from the

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balcony of the Barcelona town hall in the Plaça Sant Jaume on 14 April
1931. Together with Llúis Companys and others he had founded
ERC weeks before. They swept to victory in Catalonia in the munic-
ipal elections that had taken place on 12 April, in which Companys
was elected as mayor of Barcelona. The provisional government of
the newly proclaimed Spanish Republic swiftly offered a statute
of home rule. The Cortes approved this the following year; it made
both Catalan and Spanish official languages in Catalonia and brought
the Generalitat back into being for the first time since 1714. ‘I was a
separatist from the Spanish monarchical state,’ Macià said. ‘We don’t
want the Statute in order to distance ourselves from the other peoples
of Spain.’19
Less than four years later Companys, a labour lawyer and journalist
who had become president of the Generalitat on Macià’s death,
appeared on its balcony to proclaim a ‘Catalan state within the Spanish
federal republic’. This coincided with an armed rising in Asturias
against an elected right-wing government in Madrid. The ‘Catalan
state’ lasted ten hours before Companys and its other leaders were
arrested. ‘Even if we lose, Catalonia will win because we need martyrs
who will tomorrow assure definitive victory,’ Companys said.20
Puigdemont might have said the same.
Companys represented the federalist republican wing of Esquerra,
but he felt pressure to prove his nationalist credentials. The party also
contained an ultra-nationalist wing, led by Josep Dencàs and Miquel
Badia, who had founded a youth movement and a militia, clad in
olive-green uniforms. Companys had made Dencàs, a doctor from Vic,
his councillor for the interior and Badia the chief of police. They pros-
ecuted a murderous feud with the anarchists. Dencàs’s movement
‘represented Catalan nationalism in its most intransigent form: in fact,
it was Catalan fascism’, according to Gerald Brenan in The Spanish
Labyrinth, his classic account of the background to the Spanish Civil
War, published in 1943.21 Dencàs told the Italian consul that he was

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‘militarising’ Catalan youth and that his militia were ‘action squads of
pure fascist essence’.22 He had promised armed support for Companys’s
proclamation. In the event he fled, to Mussolini’s Italy. Later historians
have qualified Brenan’s statement. In the judgement of Ucelay-Da Cal,
there was not an organised Catalan fascism, but there were plenty of
Catalan fascists.23
Companys was sentenced to thirty years in prison but was quickly
pardoned when the left-wing Popular Front won the election of 1936.
His triumphant return was watched by Manuel Chaves Nogales, an
outstanding Spanish journalist of the 1930s, whose reports from
Barcelona in March 1936 have an uncannily contemporary ring to
them. He wrote: ‘One million people in the streets. Not a single
policeman. The spectacle is beautiful.’ The same could be said of the
Diada demonstrations. Chaves saw Catalan nationalism as a senti-
mental movement: ‘Let us recognise that Catalonia has this incalcu-
lable value: that of turning its revolutionaries into pure symbols, since
it can’t make them perfect statesmen.’ Like others, he reckoned that the
most capable Catalans went into business and that the region had poor
political leaders: ‘Perhaps someone [in Catalonia] should trouble them-
selves to fill their time with a task that is perhaps not completely super-
fluous: to govern, to administer, to do something for the people,
something more than offering them the occasion and pretext for these
dazzling spectacles.’ That could have been written of Catalonia any
time in the past decade or so. Chaves concluded that: ‘separatism is a
rare substance that is used in the political laboratories of Madrid as a
reagent of patriotism, and in those of Catalonia as glue for the conser-
vative classes.’24

The illusions of Catalan nationalism would be brutally shattered by the

attempted coup of 18 July 1936 against the Republic led by Franco
and other generals which triggered the Spanish Civil War. As with so
many previous events, the Civil War exposed divisions in Catalonia.

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Barcelona saw a proletarian revolution led by the anarchists and other

left-wing groups, so vividly described by Orwell. The Generalitat of
Companys was largely a bystander, tolerated by a Central Committee
of Anti-Fascist Militias, which held the real power until this was prised
from it, the following year, by the Comintern and the Republican
government in Madrid, in the interest of prosecuting the war against
Franco. Some 400 members of the Lliga were among the 6,000 people
murdered by the anti-fascist militias in Catalonia between July and
December 1936. Carlists, Catalan members of the Spanish Falange
(the fascist party) and monarchists either crossed to Franco’s side or
went into exile, in fear for their lives.25 Cambó fled to Mussolini’s Italy.
The Popular Front government in Madrid had little time for Catalan
nationalism. ‘I am not making war on Franco to allow a stupid and
provincial separatism to sprout in Barcelona,’ declared Juan Negrín,
the Republic’s prime minister. ‘There is only one nation: Spain!’
When Franco’s forces invaded Catalonia at the end of the war in
January 1939, some 400,000 refugees, gaunt, hungry and cold, crossed
the French border into exile. Others cheered the victorious army on
the streets of Barcelona. Many hoped that Franco would liquidate the
left but recognise in Catalan nationalism a conservative ally. Instead,
Franco’s victory closed, for decades, a circle that had begun with the
Renaixença. Joan Estelrich, a writer close to Cambó, confided to his
diary: ‘a year ago, liberation day, all of Catalonia was unanimously for
Franco and the Movement; it was the moment to undertake a policy
of moral conciliation, of Spanish integration. Then have come the
disappointments; all of Catalonia feels, rightly or wrongly, harassed.’26
There was doubtless exaggeration in this, but it explodes the myth that
Catalonia and Catalan nationalism was uniformly anti-Franco and
anti-fascist. Far from it.
In the event, Franco and his Spanish nationalist generals would
prove to have a particular animus against Catalan nationalism, which
they saw as traitorously divisive. Companys, captured by the Gestapo

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in German-occupied France, was returned to Spain and summarily

executed by firing squad in the grounds of the fortress of Montjuic
overlooking Barcelona. To the repression that Franco’s dictatorship
imposed across Spain (see chapter 5), in Catalonia it added the disman-
tling of the cultural machinery of Catalanism. It was 1714 all over
again, only more so. The use of the Catalan language in all public
contexts was banned. Even Christian names were Castilianised: Jorge
for Jordi, Dolores for Dolors and so on.
Rebuilding Catalan nationalism took decades and, as in the nine-
teenth century, began with culture before moving on to politics. In
1962, a Catalan publishing house, Edicions 62, opened in Barcelona; a
Catalan-language bookshop followed and in the coming years Catalan
began to be taught (as if it were a foreign language) at the University of
Barcelona and then in secondary schools. The Catholic Church, and in
particular the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat and its abbot, Aureli
Maria Escarré, played an important role in an incipient civic revival of
Catalanism. Escarré sheltered and promoted an organisation of Catholic
Catalanists.27 One of its members was Jordi Pujol, who would be the
central figure in Catalonia in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
The son of a businessman who made money partly by evading exchange
controls, Pujol studied medicine and worked as a salesman for a pharma-
ceutical firm in which his father owned shares. That job meant he
made many journeys by car around Catalonia, which gave him detailed
knowledge of the region and a network of contacts. Pujol, a man as
big in ambition as he was short in physical stature, first achieved promi-
nence thanks in part to Franco’s police. In 1960, at a concert in the
Palau de la Música in Barcelona – a temple of the Renaixença associated
with the revival of popular song – attended by several of Franco’s minis-
ters, a group of activists began to sing ‘El Cant de la Senyera’, a banned
Catalan anthem. The police beat them up, confiscating pamphlets
written by Pujol. Alerted, he opted not to flee. After being arrested,
tortured and tried, he served two years of an eight-year prison sentence.

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 THE INVENTION OF CATALONIA

Free again, with other nationalists he bought a small bank, moving it to

Barcelona and renaming it Banca Catalana. He used the bank’s patronage
to try to gain hegemony over cultural activities.28
As many of Franco’s prohibitions fell away in the 1960s, Pujol’s
Catholic conservative nationalism was seemingly sidelined by other polit-
ical currents. A Communist-led front became the main anti-franquista
organisation in Catalonia. Barcelona became the cultural capital of Spain,
the centre of publishing (in Spanish), art and dissent, a development
which owed little to Catalanism. In the 1977 general election the Socialists
won in Catalonia. It was Josep Tarradellas, a Republican and former
member of Companys’s administration, who extracted the restoration
of the Generalitat from Adolfo Suárez. But Pujol moved astutely, negoti-
ating with the government on the new statute of autonomy, approved
in 1979. Compared to the 1931 version, this granted wider powers to the
Generalitat over education, culture, language policy and health, but less
on public order and justice. It established Catalan and Spanish as joint
official languages and followed the constitution in defining Catalonia as a
‘nationality’, rather than a nation.
Pujol had founded a party, the Democratic Convergence of
Catalonia (CDC), in 1974 which soon entered a coalition with Unió,
a Christian Democratic party. CiU, as the coalition was known, won a
surprise victory in the first regional election in 1980. Pujol became
president of the Generalitat, a job he would keep for the next twenty-
three years. His political project was fer país: to make a country. He had
absorbed two lessons from the past. The first was a horror of political
adventurism. He was resolutely pragmatic. Rather than rock the boat,
he would seek advantage in Madrid where he could. This approach
became known as peix al cove (netting the fish, or a bird in the hand).
When first Felipe González and then José María Aznar needed the
CiU’s parliamentary votes in Madrid, Pujol was happy to provide
them. His price was additional powers for the Generalitat. In a deal
negotiated between Mariano Rajoy and Pujol and known as the Pact of

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the Majestic, after the Barcelona hotel where it was sealed, in 1996
Aznar agreed to transfer policing power to the Generalitat. That led to
the formation of the Mossos. Pujol turned down requests to provide
ministers in Spanish governments. Rather than Cambó’s efforts to
reform Spain, Pujol’s model was that of Prat de la Riba. For similar
reasons, Pujol was palpably unenthusiastic about the Barcelona
Olympic Games of 1992, which were widely seen as a transformative
success for the city and for Spain.
The second lesson Pujol had absorbed concerned the importance of
trying to win over the working class, and especially its large immigrant
segment, to Catalan nationalism. He saw this not just in terms of social
policy, but also in terms of identity. In the 1960s Catalonia saw a fresh
wave of rapid industrial growth. Franco’s regime chose to site a big
SEAT car factory at Martorell, in the Llobregat valley. Immigrants
flocked in, from Andalucía, Murcia, Extremadura and Galicia. Pujol
had written in 1968 that they were ‘men who come from lands that are
nationally and socially dislocated. . . . These immigrants need, and also
have the right to enjoy, a national community. And in Catalonia that
national community is Catalan.’ The task was, he went on, ‘the defence,
strengthening and perfection of Catalonia’s national personality’.29

The Catalan language is at the heart of the nationalist project. Linguists

tell us that language has two basic functions: as a means of communi-
cation and as a tool to forge a common identity. Pujol was well aware
of that. ‘A people is a fact of mentality, of language, of feelings,’ he
wrote. ‘It is a historic fact, and it is a fact of spiritual ethnicity. Finally
it is a fact of will. In our case, however, it is in an important sense an
achievement of language.’30 Catalan is not a dialect, as Franco’s officials
claimed. Like Castilian, it descends from Latin, but independently so,
and from a later and more demotic version than the more formal,
upper-class language which, with Arabic accretions, would eventually
emerge as Spanish.31 Catalan has a literature, although this was meagre

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 THE INVENTION OF CATALONIA

until the nineteenth-century Renaixença. Before then its outstanding

figure was Ramon Llull (1235–1316), a remarkable monk and philos-
opher from Mallorca, who wrote an encyclopaedia and novels in
Catalan and engaged in a scholarly dialogue with Islamic thinkers.
The cornerstone of Pujol’s language policy was total immersion in
Catalan, which is the sole language of teaching in all public schools in
Catalonia under a regional law of ‘linguistic normalisation’ of 1983,
which was also supported by the Catalan Socialists. In a mirror image of
Franco’s policy, it is Castilian Spanish that is now taught as a foreign
language. Initially, this approach commanded a broad consensus, since it
was seen as repairing the linguistic damage inflicted by Franco and aimed
at achieving a bilingual society. In its own terms, the law has worked: the
Generalitat reported in 2019 that 81.2% of residents can speak Catalan
and 65.3% can write it (up from 31.5% in 1981). That is despite a wave
of immigration between 2003 and 2008, which means that more than a
third of the population was born outside Catalonia. According to the
Generalitat, Catalan is the mother tongue of 31.5% while Spanish is for
52.7% (down from 55.1% in 2013). Reflecting the education policy,
Catalan is the ‘language of identification’ of 36.3% while Spanish is for
46.6%.32 So while Catalan is in no danger, the continued prevalence of
Spanish means that for Catalan nationalists the language policy is a non-
negotiable totem, despite the controversy it now attracts.
A small minority of parents publicly chafe against not being able to
educate their children in Spanish. Article 3 of the constitution says that
Castilian is the official language of state: ‘all Spaniards have a duty to
know it and the right to use it’ while ‘other Spanish languages will also
be official in the respective autonomous communities in accordance
with their statutes’. The Constitutional Tribunal has ruled that ‘nothing
permits that Castilian not be a language of teaching’.33 The Supreme
Court and the High Court of Catalonia have interpreted this, some-
what arbitrarily, to mean that at least 25% of all teaching, including at
least one other subject in the curriculum, should be in Castilian

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Spanish. This has not been applied in practice, according to the

Asamblea por una Escuela Bilingüe, a pressure group. It analysed the
language practices of 2,500 schools in Catalonia and found that there
was no teaching in Spanish in preschool, an average of two hours a
week in primary schools and three in secondary.34 Over the past ten
years or so around eighty parents have won court orders requiring their
children to be taught at least 25% in Spanish. In some cases they have
suffered ostracism and abuse; in others, schools have quietly imple-
mented the rulings. In November 2021 the Supreme Court said that
the 25% quota should be applied in all schools in Catalonia, a ruling
that the Generalitat initially said it would ignore. Yet it turns out that
it is the courts, rather than the Generalitat, that are in line with the
preferences of most voters. A research project that interviewed 1,500
Catalans in October 2021 found that on average they wanted around
half of teaching time to be in Catalan, a quarter in Spanish and a fifth
in English. Even those who voted for pro-independence parties wanted
a fifth of teaching to be in Spanish.35
The Generalitat subsidises publishing in Catalan. But more books
in Spanish than in Catalan are sold in Catalonia: only 26% of sales in
2017 were in Catalan, though that figure rises to 48% if school text-
books are included.36 Many of the best-known Catalan writers, such as
Eduardo Mendoza and Juan Marsé, have chosen to write in Castilian.
The Generalitat, in turn, complains that Spanish democracy continues
to belittle Catalan. Speeches in the lower house of parliament (though
not in the Senate) have to be in Spanish, and not in Catalan, Euskara
(Basque) or Galego (Galician). Few other Spaniards learn Catalan.
Until recently, the Cervantes Institute, Spain’s equivalent of the British
Council, ignored writers in the language. The PP has challenged
Catalonia’s language policy in the courts. The conservative opposition
was outraged when, in 2020, Sánchez’s coalition government removed
from a new education law any reference to the teaching of Spanish in
regions with a second official language. It was done at the insistence of

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 THE INVENTION OF CATALONIA

Esquerra, whose votes in parliament Sánchez sought and gained to

approve his budget. The Catalan Socialists are in favour of imple-
menting the court rulings.
Catalan nationalists are surely right when they point to their
language as a source of cultural wealth for Spain. On the other hand,
the policy of favouring Catalan has been taken to rigid and intolerant
extremes. Businesses have been persecuted for signs in Spanish. Some
Catalan officials childishly refuse to answer journalists’ questions posed
in Spanish. Catalonia risks turning its back on the opportunities offered
by Spanish, which is spoken as a native language by 489 million people
around the world and by 585 million in all, according to the Cervantes
Institute.37 ‘If Barcelona wants to continue to be the capital of publishing
in Spanish, it has to do something,’ said Ricardo Cayuela, the director
of Penguin Random House in Mexico, in 2018. Cayuela, who happens
to be a great-grandson of Companys, added: ‘It’s cultural suicide not to
feel Borges, Vallejo or Neruda as your own just because of an artificial
conflict with Madrid.’38
What makes the language issue so political is that both sides in
Catalonia are aware that support for independence is higher among
those with Catalan-speaking parents. The promotion, or imposition,
of the language is linked to a cultural policy aimed at building the
Catalan nation. School history classes, to the critics, are exercises in
indoctrination. The Madrid government has never proved that, but
in practice the national school inspection system doesn’t operate in
Catalonia. The public media in Catalonia – a television channel (TV3)
and a radio station – broadcast purely in Catalan and promote the
nationalist worldview. For many people in rural Catalonia, these media
provide the only news they get (apart from the similarly confirmatory
biases of social media). On TV3 ‘you can’t talk in Castilian unless
you’re Lionel Messi,’ Francisco Moreno, a publisher in Barcelona,
complained to me.39 When it was founded in the early 1980s TV3
aspired to be a quality public service broadcaster. But it was quickly

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captured for the nationalist cause. Its annual budget from the taxpayer
is €245 million and it has more than 2,100 staff. But the radicalisation
of its coverage during the procés led it lose audience share, to 14% in
2021 compared with 20%–30% in the past. Even the Audiovisual
Council of Catalonia, a regulatory body set up by the Generalitat, has
criticised its lack of impartiality. The council found that between
March and August 2020 TV3 interviewed seventy-seven politicians
who favoured independence and only twenty-five who were against. It
similarly conducted 130 interviews with members of the Generalitat
and only four with representatives of the Spanish government.40
For nationalists, the ultimate goal is to create a new nation state that
encompasses the països catalans – the places where the Catalan language
still survives to a lesser or greater extent. They include Roussillon and
Cerdanya across the border in France, as well as the Balearic Islands
and Valencia (although they have their own versions of Catalan). The
weather map on TV3 is of the països catalans. The forecast informs
viewers whether it will rain or shine in Perpignan but is silent about the
weather in Madrid or Zaragoza.41
Spaniards would be wise to look at Quebec, where the measures
taken over the past half century to safeguard the place of the French
language, in the province and in Canada, have played an important
role in defusing Quebecois separatism. Recognising Catalan as the
dominant language of education is a small price to pay for keeping
Catalonia in Spain. In turn, the Generalitat could be more flexible in
allowing teaching and the public use of Castilian without compro-
mising the principle of immersion. Protecting a language and a cultural
heritage doesn’t have to be a weapon of identity politics – unless, of
course, that is the aim.

What turned ‘minority into multitude’, autonomism to separatism,

was partly the success of Pujol’s nation-building efforts and the advent
of new generations that had no adult memory of the dictatorship and

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the transition. It was partly, too, the general distemper generated by

austerity. But it was also a chapter of political accidents, and of insensi-
tive fumblings by governments in both Barcelona and Madrid. One of
the first of these stemmed from the rivalry between Pujol and Pasqual
Maragall, the successful Socialist mayor of Barcelona between 1982
and 1997 who had organised the Olympic Games. Catalonia had
settled into a pattern where the Socialists were the largest party in
national elections but Pujol’s CiU dominated regional ones. In the
regional election of 2003 at which Pujol stepped down Maragall was
determined to unseat the CiU from the Palau de la Generalitat. To do
so he attempted to compete on the terrain of Catalan nationalism,
promising a new, enhanced statute of autonomy. There was little public
demand in Catalonia for this. It was something that Pujol, ever averse
to adventurism, had resisted. ‘It would open a process of uncertain
consequences,’ he said in 1996.42 How right he turned out to be.
The Socialists duly beat Artur Mas and the CiU by just 7,000 votes
(or 0.3% of the total). To gain a majority, Maragall formed a coalition
with Esquerra (and a small left-wing group). It was the first time that
an openly separatist party had entered government in Catalonia. By
making a new statute the priority Maragall missed a historic opportu-
nity to offer a coherent rival project to Pujol’s for Catalonia. Instead, he
embarked on what Jordi Amat, a Catalan writer, has called ‘a conspiracy
of the irresponsibles’.43 The draft new statute was drawn up by a team
headed by Carles Viver Pi-Sunyer, a former justice of the Constitutional
Tribunal who, in 2017, would write the notorious law of ‘disconnec-
tion’. It was a voluminous document, with 223 articles where 57 had
sufficed in the 1979 statute.44 It sought to achieve by the back door a
constitutional reform that would establish in Spain something close to
a confederation (an association of sovereign states). It asserted the
notion that Catalonia had historic rights that legitimised an increase
in its sovereignty and powers and a bilateral relationship with the
Spanish state.

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 SPAIN

At Maragall’s final campaign rally in 2003 Zapatero, the Socialist

leader, had promised to support a new statute approved by the Catalan
parliament. Nobody expected him to win the next national election; as
with David Cameron and the Brexit referendum, it was a promise
made primarily for internal political purposes and not one intended to
be kept. Yet, thanks to the Madrid bombings, the Socialists won the
2004 general election (see chapter 1) and, like Cameron, Zapatero was
required to keep his word. The PP organised a public campaign against
the new statute. In response Catalan nationalists organised a demon-
stration in which, for the first time, they embraced the idea of a sover-
eign ‘right to decide’. Under pressure, Zapatero negotiated amendments
with Artur Mas to the text of the statute, which merely served to
alienate Esquerra. Following approval in the Spanish parliament, the
statute was submitted to a referendum in Catalonia in a climate of
public indifference. The turn-out was 48%, of whom 74% voted Yes.
Shortly afterwards Maragall retired from politics, suffering from early-
onset Alzheimer’s disease.
What turned the saga of the statute into a turbocharger of growing
separatist sentiment was a flaw in the constitution: the Constitutional
Tribunal was not required to rule on the constitutionality of the
document before it was put to the voters. Instead, it ruled four years
later. The tribunal declared fourteen articles unconstitutional, mainly
those that proposed to create an autonomous judiciary in Catalonia.
It modified other clauses. In an article that declared Catalan ‘the
normal and preferred language’ it deleted ‘preferred’. It upheld the
preamble which declared Catalonia to be a nation; but it said that
this was a historical and cultural term which lacked legal value.45
The separatists claimed that the tribunal had rendered itself illegitimate
and used its ruling as justification for independence. When the
Baltic states won their independence in the early 1990s Pujol had
observed that ‘Catalonia is like Lithuania but Spain is not like the
Soviet Union.’ But now he threw in the autonomist towel. Nationalism

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 THE INVENTION OF CATALONIA

had had arguments to reject independence, he wrote. ‘Now it

doesn’t.’46

In 2007 the Platform for the Right to Decide, a sovereigntist organisa-

tion set up during the row over the statute, organised a large demon-
stration in protest at the problems of Barcelona’s suburban train service.
It was a characteristic of the procés that existential issues were jumbled
up with the humdrum. The financial crisis of 2008 turned fiscal issues
into a matter of much grievance in Catalonia, at least after Artur Mas
had switched from champion of austerity to Moses leading his people
to the promised land. Under Spain’s quasi-federal financing system
Catalonia transferred more revenue to the rest of the country than it
got back. That was because the system embodied the principle of soli-
darity, of transfers from richer regions to poorer ones. But many
Catalans saw the transfers as disproportionate. The Generalitat also
argued that Catalonia got less than its fair share of public investment.
Andreu Mas-Colell, one of Spain’s most brilliant economists who
was Mas’s economic councillor, wanted Rajoy to agree to change the
rules governing regional financing. He proposed that Catalonia should
have a similar fiscal deal to the Basque Country and Navarre, which
collect their own taxes and hand over an agreed amount to Madrid,
keeping the rest. Since they are among the richest regions in Spain this
arrangement goes against the principle of solidarity. But it has existed
since the 1830s and no democratic government dare overturn it. ‘For
us, the essential thing was the capacity to levy our own taxes and to
have decision-making powers over all resources spent in Catalonia,’
Mas-Colell told me. But Rajoy, immersed in avoiding a fiscal bail-out
from the EU, rejected this out of hand. The problem for Spain was that
Catalonia’s economy is far bigger than those of the Basque Country and
Navarre.
Behind these demands was a nagging anguish that Catalonia was no
longer ahead of the Spanish pack. Under the aegis of the constitution

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of 1978 and the estado autonómico, the rest of the country had started
to catch up. Maragall had lamented that Catalonia was ‘losing its
specific weight in Spain and very probably also in the world’.47 A few
months before the Constitutional Tribunal’s verdict on the new statute
all of the region’s main newspapers had published a joint editorial enti-
tled ‘The dignity of Catalonia’ in which they complained of a new
centralism afoot in Spain, led by the PP. Many moderate Catalanists
expressed the view that the initial impetus for decentralisation set by
the transition had been lost, and that Spain was increasingly being
organised for the benefit of Madrid.
The backbone of Catalonia’s economy is manufacturing and medium-
sized family businesses. Spain’s entry to the EU opened new export
markets. But only a few of these firms have grown to be multinationals.
Barcelona has an important research base. But globalisation has tended
to favour Madrid, with its air bridge to the Americas. Spanish multina-
tionals, some of them privatised such as Telefónica, tended to cluster in
the capital. While Barcelona is hemmed in between mountains and sea,
Madrid has plenty of space to expand, sprawling out across the Castilian
meseta. Since Aznar, Spanish governments have favoured Madrid, at
least as seen from Barcelona. The AVE high-speed train lines were a
particular bugbear: they form a hub and spoke network, linking much
of Spain to Madrid. Seen from the capital, this is about integrating a
large country. Seen from Catalonia it is discriminatory at best, and at
worst a conspiracy to downgrade Barcelona, which only gained a high-
speed line to the French border in 2013. Barcelona and Valencia, Spain’s
second and third cities, still lack a high-speed link, though it is now
under construction. Barcelona had good claims to be treated as Spain’s
co-capital. ‘I want [it] to be Munich, not Marseilles or Lyon,’ a politi-
cally influential businessman in the city told me. Yet government agen-
cies were nearly all placed in Madrid, with the exception of the judicial
academy (the government also sited a supercomputer in Barcelona).
Zapatero moved the telecoms regulator to the Catalan capital but its

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presence was short-lived; Rajoy merged it into a broader regulatory

agency based in Madrid.
When Franco died in 1975 Catalonia’s economy was 25% bigger
than that of the Madrid region. By 2018 the GDP of Madrid, with 6.6
million people, had overtaken that of Catalonia, which has 7.6 million.
The PP, which has governed the Madrid region since 1995, attributes
this economic growth to its business-friendly policies, which include
cuts in regional taxes totalling €53 billion since 2004. ‘We think there
is a direct correlation between the lowering of the tax burden and
economic growth,’ Javier Fernández-Lasquetty, Madrid’s economic
councillor told me. Certainly, Catalonia in part had itself to blame for
its relative decline. The prolonged uncertainty generated by the inde-
pendence process, and the possibility that Catalonia would find itself
out of the EU, dampened business confidence. But Catalans were not
alone in reckoning that Madrid extracted undue benefit from the pres-
ence of central government agencies and national institutions, and that
its tax cuts constituted unfair fiscal ‘dumping’ as Ximo Puig, the Socialist
president of Valencia put it.

In 2014 Pujol dropped a bombshell: the patriarch of modern Catalonia

admitted that his family had bank accounts in Andorra from which they
had regularly drawn undeclared income. His statement was a response
to a police investigation of the Pujol family finances, going back decades.
A judge of the National Court in Madrid would eventually charge Pujol,
his wife and their seven children with racketeering, money laundering
and tax evasion.48 He stated that they had abused their privileged polit-
ical position to accumulate a fortune, which the police financial crimes
unit estimated at €290 million. Pujol claimed that the money in Andorra
was a bequest from his father (even if that was the case, he should still
have declared it for tax purposes). At least part of the funds, the judge
concluded, came from illegal commissions paid by firms in return for
help in obtaining public contracts, land re-zoning and other favours

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from the Generalitat.49 One of the sons, Oriol Pujol, who had entered
politics and became the general secretary of Convergència, was convicted
in 2019 of influence trafficking, taking bribes and forging documents in
a case involving the award of concessions to run official vehicle testing
centres in Catalonia.50 In a parallel case, Fèlix Millet, who for thirty
years had run the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, confessed to acting
as another channel for the charging of commissions on the Generalitat’s
public contracts. At his trial in 2017 he admitted that the standard
commission was 4%, that he pocketed 1.5% and the rest (totalling €6.6
million on the ones involved in the case) went to finance Convergència.51
That doomed politically both Artur Mas and Convergència, although it
changed its name to the Democratic and Europeanist Party of Catalonia
(PdeCat). Puigdemont had no time for it, setting up his own political
vehicle, Junts per Catalunya. So much for the notion that Catalonia
could morally ‘regenerate’ Spain.
Far from provoking self-criticism, these revelations coincided with an
increasingly populist turn in Catalan nationalism as it evolved into sepa-
ratism. Populism, properly described, involves a political method that
centres on the definition of a people, a leader and an enemy. In the sepa-
ratist narrative, Catalans were defined as un sol poble, as we have seen;
those who disagreed with independence were ‘bad Catalans’ or botiflers,
their views to be ignored. Quim Torra, a publisher and former insurance
manager who was Puigdemont’s nominee as his successor as president of
the Generalitat, once wrote that: ‘It’s not natural to speak Spanish in
Catalonia. And when someone decides not to speak Catalan they are
turning their back on Catalonia.’ In other words, only part of the popu-
lation of Catalonia constituted the Catalan people, and only that part
counted. After the referendum, banners appeared saying el poble mana,
el govern obeeix (‘the people command, the [Catalan] government obeys’).
As for the leader, there was Artur Mas transformed into Moses; or Carles
Puigdemont who successfully turned himself into the personification of
resistance. There was always a strong cult of the leader in Catalan

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nationalism, from Macià to Puigdemont. Pujol may have founded a

party, but he was never a party man. The enemy, of course, was Madrid
or Castile, just as it was ‘Brussels’ for the Brexiteers or ‘the swamp’ or the
‘globalists’ for the supporters of Donald Trump.52 ‘Spain robs us’ became
a popular slogan. In 2013 a historical institute attached to the Generalitat
organised a symposium entitled ‘Spain against Catalonia’.
The referendum, a device often favoured by populists, became a
solipsistic obsession for an independence movement that seemed to
lack a handbrake. Both Mas and Puigdemont had presented Rajoy
with lists including many other demands, mainly concerning money
and infrastructure. The government offered to negotiate on these. But
there was only one demand that mattered, and that was for the vote. It
was pursued without regard for the lack of sufficient popular support,
and without serious assessment of the political constraints in Madrid
or the priorities in Brussels or Berlin, or the likely reaction in all those
places to unconstitutional action. As Álvaro points out, this reflected a
lack of experience and knowledge of Madrid politics among the
new generation of nationalist leaders which was fully reciprocated
in the Spanish capital’s ignorance of the changed political realities
of Catalonia.53 It seemed symbolic that on Rajoy’s fleeting visits to
Barcelona, he tended to stage events at a hotel in the port area as if, like
Francisco Pizarro during the conquest of Peru, he needed to be near his
escape ships. ‘The problem is that in Catalonia they [i.e. the Generalitat]
want to do politics without governing and in Madrid they want to
govern without doing politics,’ noted Joaquim Gay de Montellà, the
head of the main Catalan business association.54 The PP reckoned that
a hard line against separatism gained it votes in the rest of Spain.
This populist tendency in the independence movement shaded into a
racist suprematism in the disdain of some separatists for Spain and other
Spaniards. Unlike Basque nationalism, its Catalan equivalent was not
ethnically based. Nevertheless, among some there was a subliminal narra-
tive of racism, that Catalans were Europeans, the ‘south of the north’,

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while Spaniards were, it was insinuated, Africans or gitanos (Roma). Mas’s

comment about Catalans being ‘more German and less Roman’ was
typical. Prat de la Riba had written that ‘the Catalan race’ was ‘European’
while Spaniards were ‘African’ or ‘Berber’.55 Junqueras once tried to claim,
misquoting a study by the University of Rotterdam, that Catalans were
genetically different from other Spaniards, more similar to the French.56
Andalucians, one heard often in Catalonia, were lazy scroungers. ‘They’ve
spent so much money on Andalucía and it hasn’t reduced unemploy-
ment,’ an official of the Generalitat complained to me. ‘Here we work to
get ahead, in other parts they take benefits and don’t work,’ Jaume, the
retired owner of a family machinery business, told me as he queued to
vote in the referendum in Vic. Racism was explicit in writing by Torra,
who had been the director of the Born Cultural Centre and was an
enthusiast for Dencàs, the quasi-fascist separatist of the 1930s. In a series
of xenophobic articles, he described Spaniards as ‘carrion-eaters, snakes,
hyenas’ and ‘wild beasts in human form’.57 On being sworn in as presi-
dent he apologised for these articles, though without suggesting he had
changed his views. Josep Sort, a candidate for Junts in the February 2021
Catalan election, tweeted of Ada Colau, the Podemos mayor of Barcelona
since 2015, that ‘She is no more than a hysterical Spanish whore: we will
cleanse [Catalonia of ] Spaniards, I promise it.’ He was forced to resign.58
It would be unfair to infer that the sentiments expressed in these
comments were shared by the majority of the 2 million or so who
favoured independence. They always stressed their anti-racism. Like the
rest of Spain, in the twenty-first century Catalonia had absorbed large
numbers of immigrants from outside the EU with little friction. And
other Spaniards were often guilty of anti-Catalan stereotyping. The
underlying point is that while some of those 2 million may have thought
the conflict was about democracy, as did Brexiteers, the identitarian
character of Catalan nationalism is impossible to deny. And since
Catalonia is not, and has never been, a colony, its nationalism commands
no automatic moral superiority over the Spanish variety.

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Amartya Sen has pointed out that as human beings we all have
multiple identities (related to our gender, work, hobbies, preferences
and so on). ‘The imposition of an allegedly unique identity is often a
crucial component of the “martial art” of fomenting sectarian confron-
tation,’ he went on.59 This is the basis of what is now called identity
politics. It is this divisive highlighting of a one-dimensional Catalan
identity based on language that is at the heart of the drive for indepen-
dence. Torra was open about this: ‘Catalanism has to base itself on a
fierce defence of our identity and culture, our pride in being Catalans.’
If Catalonia is indeed a nation, it is a cultural one, and not ‘mille-
narian’. In other words, the Catalan nation was invented in the nine-
teenth century through the Renaixença and the Catalanist cultural
movement. That effort was successful because it had plausible raw
materials on which to draw, above all in the Catalan language. But
more than many nations it is a plural one. In places like Vic, the
Spanish state is barely present, limited to a small office of the national
police that issues passports and the social security office that pays
pensions. But that gave the separatist movement a false sense that inde-
pendence would be swift and painless. Prat de la Riba’s comment about
the ties that bind from ‘age-old living together’ with the rest of Spain
remains true. When Catalan officials insisted to me, as they often did,
that it was ‘too late’ for a reformist solution to the conflict they were
placing populist sentiment above political rationality.
There is no inherent reason that a cultural nation requires a state.
The world has only around 200 nation states but some 6,000 languages.
Almost all nation states, except those that have practised ethnic
cleansing, include cultural minorities. As José Álvarez Junco, a Spanish
historian of nationalism, has written:

The big question . . . is why from the existence of some differenti-

ated cultural characteristics we should deduce that the human
group that bears those characteristics should command the

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governance of the territory which it inhabits. It would seem that

from an approach based on the defence of ethnic or cultural pecu-
liarities only a conclusion of a cultural kind should be deduced: the
demand that the fundamental expressions of that culture should be
respected, or promoted or subsidised.

Once political control of the territory is achieved by the nationalist

group that insists on its cultural specificity ‘it will tend to eliminate the
cultural heterogeneity it finds in the area it controls’, Álvarez Junco
goes on.60
On the other hand, in rejecting the notion that Catalonia is a cultural
nation with its own specificities, Spanish nationalists are refusing to
acknowledge the everyday reality lived, like it or not, by several million
people in Catalonia. The rest of Spain needs to accept that Catalanism is
a valid sentiment, and not inherently subversive. Much the same goes,
on a smaller scale, for Basques. And if it is to retain democratic legiti-
macy in the long term, the existing nation state of Spain has to work
better for all its citizens, including those millions of Catalans and
Basques. That, in turn, means accepting that Spain lacks the cultural and
political uniformity of, say, France, which has long been a desired, but
frustratingly unattainable, model for some Spanish political elites. This
Spanish diversity is a result of history and geography.

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 CHAPTER 4

WHY SPAIN IS NOT FRANCE

T he small town of Frómista, lost in the monotonous tawny plain

of northern Castile, owes its clutch of ancient churches to its
position on the medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela.
But it also bestrides another communications artery. Just outside the
town is an impressive run of locks on the canal of Castile, a grandiose
project conceived in the mid-eighteenth century. Its aim was to connect
the wheat lands of Castile with the port of Santander. Building began
in 1753, but was often interrupted by lack of funds. In 1831 a cash-
strapped monarchy privatised the project. By the 1850s scores of barges
plied along its roughly 200 kilometres, split between three branches.
But it never reached Santander, which required boring tunnels through
the Cantabrian mountains. The opening of a railway line running
parallel to its main branch through Frómista killed the economic
viability of the canal before it was finished.
During Spain’s Golden Age wheat and sheep assured Castile’s
economic – and demographic – predominance within the Iberian
Peninsula. From the eighteenth century onwards it lost ground
economically to Catalonia, the Basque Country and the coastal regions
generally. Catalan textiles and Basque iron were the pioneers of Spain’s

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industrial revolution. Valencian oranges and the wines of Jerez flour-

ished as export industries. All benefited from easy access to ports and
maritime transport. Castile faced geographical obstacles, of distance
and of the mountain chains which stand between it and the sea in all
directions. After Switzerland, Spain is the most mountainous country
in Western Europe as well as being large in area by European standards.
All this delayed the emergence of a national market. The canal was a
quixotic attempt to overcome those obstacles and achieve more
geographically balanced economic growth. This continuing imbalance
would have a fundamental impact on Spain’s development, as this
chapter on the relationship between state, people and territory during
the crucial formative period of the modern Spanish nation from 1808
to 1936 will explain.
In addition to its transport difficulties, Castile’s cereal farming was
inefficient, its land unproductive, its villages depopulating. Antonio
Machado, the great Spanish poet of the early twentieth century, memo-
rably captured a melancholy decline that had begun two centuries earlier:

Castilla miserable, ayer dominadora,

envuelta en sus andrajos desprecia cuanto ignora.
¿Espera, duerme o sueña?
. . . sobre sus campos aun el fantasma yerra
de un pueblo que ponía a Dios sobre la guerra

[Poverty-stricken Castile, yesterday dominating,

Wrapped in its rags scorns that of which it is ignorant.
Is it waiting, sleeping or dreaming?
. . . over its fields lies the ghost
of a people that set God to wage war]1

Castile retained political power. While other urban centres began to

grow, Madrid remained the capital of a multinational empire. Solo

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Madrid es corte (‘only Madrid is the court’) went the phrase, after a failed
attempt by the Duke of Lerma, a corrupt seventeenth-century courtier,
to move the capital to his home town of Valladolid. But there was a corol-
lary: Madrid was only the court, and little more. Its population in 1750
was around 140,000, compared with some 600,000 in both London and
Paris. As Richard Ford, an English travel writer, put it a century later ‘the
capital has a hold on the ambition rather than on the affections of the
nation at large’.2 Under Felipe V (1700–46), and especially Fernando VI
(1746–59) and his half-brother Carlos III (1759–88), the Bourbons
made a determined effort to modernise Spain, to arrest its slide into
penury and to turn it into a centralised absolute monarchy. Free of the
dynastic commitments of the Habsburgs, they fought fewer expensive
foreign wars. They reorganised the administration of their American
colonies, clawing back more revenue from local elites. To run Spain and
its empire they turned to career bureaucrats, many of whom were inspired
by the ideas of the French Enlightenment. These civil servants promoted
industry, setting up royal factories (such as for porcelain, glass and cloth),
mostly around Madrid. Francesco Sabatini, Carlos III’s favourite archi-
tect, left his mark on the capital, creating a new Royal Palace, elegant
boulevards adorned with classical sculptures, a Botanical Garden, orna-
mental gateways such as the Puerta de Alcalá and a large hospital that is
today the Reina Sofía art museum. José Moñino, who was the chief
minister from 1777 to 1792 and was ennobled as the Count of
Floridablanca, planned a network of roads radiating from Madrid, of
which 1,100 kilometres and 322 bridges were built by 1788. The sunny
official mood of these years is rendered in Francisco de Goya’s tapestry
designs of aristocratic life and his portraits of the court and of officials
and thinkers, several of whom he counted as friends and patrons.3
Had this state-building and reform continued uninterrupted for
another two or three generations, Spain might well have become a very
different country. But it didn’t. First the quality of government declined
under Charles IV (1788–1808). And then Spain was dragged into war

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again. Manuel Godoy, a young guards officer and royal favourite, had
replaced Floridablanca. He allied with the Directory governing post-
revolutionary France and declared war on Britain, leading to the loss of
the Spanish fleet – the guardian of its trade with its American colonies
– at the Battle of Trafalgar. In 1807 Napoleon Bonaparte dispatched a
French army through Spain to attack Portugal, a British ally; he soon
mounted a full-scale invasion of Spain itself. He locked up Charles IV
(who had abdicated) and his son Fernando VII in Bayonne and installed
his own brother, Joseph, as king of Spain. That triggered a popular
rebellion and seven years of war in which Spanish, British and
Portuguese forces fought the French empire. Known to Britons as
the Peninsular War, Spaniards call it the War of Independence. For
Napoleon, it was his ‘Spanish ulcer’; its bleeding of his armies, with
some 200,000 dead, contributed greatly to his eventual defeat.
For Spain, the war and its ramifications constituted a disaster
unmitigated by eventual victory. There are no precise estimates of casu-
alties but more than 300,000 Spaniards were killed. The slaughter,
cruelty, rape, destruction and misery were all reported by Goya, in a
series of harrowing etchings called Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta
guerra en España con Buonaparte – ‘Fatal consequences of the bloody
war in Spain against Bonaparte’ – or simply ‘The Disasters of War’.4
In the power vacuum the war entailed, mainland Spanish America,
smarting under the Bourbon reforms, broke away, though it would
take years of fighting for its constituent parts to obtain independence.
But in Spain itself the war quickly came to be seen as marking the birth
of the modern nation, expressed in the very term ‘war of indepen-
dence’, which was coined in the 1820s. Spain is an old country: the
Catholic monarchs in the early sixteenth century ruled a territory with
almost exactly the same borders as the present-day ones, a rare case of
geographical continuity in Europe. But in those days ‘España’ was
identified primarily with the monarchy, though the term also harked
back to Roman Hispania and the Visigothic kingdom which preceded

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the Arab-Berber invasions. It gradually acquired political, linguistic

and cultural connotations in the subsequent centuries. The Bourbons
founded the Spanish Royal Academy (of the Spanish language) in
1714, the Royal Academy of History in 1738 and another of fine art.
‘From long before 1808 a Spanish identity had been being formed, the
embryo of that nation which was going to take flight from then on,’ as
José Álvarez Junco has explained.5
Spanish national identity and nationalism are thus not inventions of
Franco. They go back about as far as their French equivalents, for
example. If modern nationalism dates from the Battle of Valmy of 1792,
when a French citizen army fought for the then-revolutionary idea of
popular sovereignty rather than a monarch, the Spanish experience of
the war against Napoleon bore some similarities. Antonio de Capmany,
a Catalan economic historian who died in 1813, described it as a cause
of a new kind: ‘it’s a home-made war, it’s a war of the nation . . . more
than of soldiers’.6 Some of the most stubborn resistance to Napoleon
came in Catalonia, which played a full part in this national cause. This
national epic and its high human price were fixed in the imagination of
later generations of Spaniards by Goya in a pair of paintings in the
Prado. The Second of May 1808 portrays the rising of the Madrid popu-
lace against Napoleon’s troops. Cuirassiers and Mamluk mercenaries in
the emperor’s service hack at the crowd who through sheer weight of
numbers are unhorsing them. The terrible reprisal comes in The Third of
May, otherwise known as Los Fusilamientos (‘The Executions’). It shows
prisoners lined up in the dark of the small hours against a cemetery wall
as a French firing squad does its brutal work. Several have already fallen
in a bloody mess. The focus is a man in a white shirt, kneeling, with
terrified eyes and arms spread wide in vulnerability and defiance.
Ordinary people have become the protagonists of Spanish history.

Spain’s experience of the war gave the world two new words. One was
‘guerrilla’, to describe the irregular bands that took on the French. The

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insurgent warrior had entered Spanish political life, where they would
stay. But the other was ‘liberal’. The war and its dislocations and ruptures
unleashed a long and tangled struggle over the political definition of the
country’s newly reinforced national identity, in difficult circumstances.
The ‘fatal consequences’ of which Goya spoke were indeed severe. The
war and the loss of much of its empire knocked Spain back by decades.
In 1829 its foreign trade was still only a third of its volume of 1785.7
Spanish America had provided a third of public revenues in the eigh-
teenth century. Most of that had gone. What remained was a financially
weak state ill-equipped for nation-building – far less so than the state
bequeathed to France by Napoleon. It would be rebuilt, but that initial
weakness would have far-reaching consequences.
Much writing about Spain tends to assume that its post-1815 history
was darkly ‘exceptional’ in Western Europe, that Spain was indeed
different. This, of course, begs the question as to what countries were
‘normal’. Yes, Spain lagged behind Britain in economic growth and the
achievement of democratic stability. But look beyond the surface
turmoil of government instability, and it is striking in other respects
how closely developments in Spain paralleled those of its neighbours.
Many of the themes of Spanish history in this period are common to
Western Europe: they include the contest between absolutism and
liberalism, battles over the suppression of the privileges of the Catholic
Church and the sale of its lands, the rise of nationalism, urbanisation
and industrialisation, and growing social and class tensions. When
compared with other European countries the balance of these develop-
ments stood out in three closely related ways: the survival of peripheral
cultural identities and languages; repeated civil wars; and the intensity
of the conflict between the Catholic Church and secularism and
anti-clericalism.8 All stemmed from the relative weakness of the state
and what Juan Linz, a Spanish political scientist, called its lack of ‘pene-
tration’ of the society through education and national values and
symbols.9 Nevertheless, recent historiography holds that beneath the

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politics of confrontation in nineteenth-century Spain, chaos and corrup-

tion there was more underlying progress than was commonly accepted.
‘The old view of a failed and backward country has been swapped for
another, which sees an authentic liberal revolution that entailed a deep
and significant rupture with the old regime,’ as Adrian Shubert, a
Canadian historian of Spain, puts it.10 Perhaps that was one reason why
Franco said ‘the nineteenth century, which we would have liked to erase
from our history, is the denial of the Spanish spirit’.11
During the War of Independence the junta of officials and notables
which opposed Napoleon, nominally on behalf of the imprisoned
Fernando, called a Cortes for the first time since the seventeenth
century. With 350 representatives from peninsular Spain and from
Spanish America it met in Cádiz from 1810 to 1814. A narrow majority
of its members were reformers and became known as ‘liberals’ – the first
time the word was used as a political term. They approved a radical
constitution in 1812. It was inspired both by the Bourbon enlighten-
ment (the junta was initially headed by the elderly Floridablanca) and,
ironically, some of the principles of the French Revolution. Its second
article declared: ‘The Spanish nation is free and independent, and
cannot be the patrimony of any family or person.’ And the third:
‘Sovereignty resides essentially in the nation, and therefore it has the
exclusive right to establish its fundamental laws.’ The charter went on
to say that Spain is a ‘moderate [i.e. constitutional] monarchy’ and that
the power to make laws lay with ‘the Cortes and the king’. It declared
Spaniards to be Catholics and barred the practice of other faiths, but
abolished the Inquisition, decreed freedom of the press, abolished many
noble privileges and declared the liberalisation of farming, industry and
trade. It defined the nation as ‘the union of all Spaniards in both hemi-
spheres’, though that came too late to satisfy Spanish Americans. The
constitution included provisions for the separation of powers and the
election of a single-chamber parliament by indirect male suffrage (with
some restrictions based on race, education and financial status).12

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This document amounted to a determined assault on absolute

monarchy and a ringing declaration of popular sovereignty, the most
radical constitution of its day in Europe. But it was a charter of urban
liberalism dictated by a small, enlightened minority for a largely rural,
impoverished and conservative country. Most Spaniards were illiterate
and eked out their existence either as small-scale farmers on often arid
land or as seasonal farm labourers. The constitution’s principles quickly
became a battleground. Restored to his throne, Fernando VII decreed
its abolition. He dispatched an army in a futile bid to prevent Spanish
American independence. When another was being assembled in Cádiz
in 1820, one of its commanders, Colonel Rafael de Riego, mutinied.
He declared his adherence to the constitution and his opposition to the
unpopular expedition. The army supported him, forcing Fernando to
yield. It was the first of many pronunciamientos, as they were called –
the normally bloodless officers’ revolts that became a prime instrument
of political change in Spain over the next century and more.13 And it
underlined the dependence of the liberal cause on the soldiers.
This first liberal triumph would prove short-lived: in what became
another pattern of the Spanish nineteenth century the liberals fell out
among themselves, dividing between moderates who favoured top-down
reform, and radicals known as exaltados (hotheads) who favoured
sweeping change from below by means of local juntas and militias. The
restored Bourbon monarchy in France sent an army to support Fernando
in his absolutist claims. This time there was no popular uprising.

A dozen captives stand on a beach, their arms or hands tied together.

Some are being blindfolded by cowled monks. Several of the prisoners
are dressed in the frock coats that mark them as gentry. Before their
downcast, solemn faces lie four of their comrades, already executed by
the squad of soldiers standing behind them. This vast, naturalistic
canvas by Antonio Gisbert was commissioned for the Prado by a
Liberal government in 1888. It has become a ‘powerful liberal icon’,

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according to Miguel Falomir, the museum’s director. Though much

less known abroad, it deserves to be bracketed with Goya’s Second
of May and Third of May and Picasso’s Guernica in ‘the gallery of
great paintings dedicated to the history of Spain’, argued Falomir.14 It
portrays the execution of General José María Torrijos and his comrades
at Malaga where they had landed in 1831 in a vain attempt to over-
throw Fernando’s absolutist regime. Torrijos, aged 40, had fought with
Wellington. Joining other Spanish liberals in exile in Britain, he and
his cause were adopted by British Whigs, notably by a young Alfred
Tennyson, the English post-Romantic poet, and the Apostles, a club of
undergraduates at Cambridge University to which he belonged. The
tall, red-haired figure standing next but two to Torrijos, eyes half
closed, is Robert Boyd, a former British army officer who donated his
fortune to Torrijos’s expedition. A century before the Spanish Civil
War, Spain’s political conflicts inspired active solidarity abroad, espe-
cially in Britain.
After an ‘ominous decade’ (as it was called) of reactionary abso-
lutism, the liberals returned to power in 1833 on Fernando’s death,
when his widow, María Cristina, turned to them to secure the right to
the throne of her young daughter, Isabel, against the rival claim of her
brother-in-law, Don Carlos. Supporters of Don Carlos soon took up
arms in what became known as the First Carlist War (1833–40). It was
a civil war on a similar scale to the far better-known conflict of 1936–
39, with which it shared many characteristics but differed in outcome.15
It left some 150,000 dead from a population of 13 million, proportion-
ately not much less than the 300,000 from around 24.5 million a
century later.16 It pitted the liberal cities against the conservative,
Catholic countryside. Carlism’s social and military base was not only in
the Basque Country and Navarre, but also in rural Catalonia and the
remote Maestrazgo mountains between Aragon and Valencia. Its
supporters were peasants, artisans, the clergy and the minor nobility. It
stood for the defence of hierarchy, tradition, social order and a pre-liberal

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economy, for traditional local fueros (legal privileges) against a

centralising state.17
The war lasted so long partly because of the effective guerrilla tactics
of the Carlists, especially in the Basque mountains, and partly because
María Cristina’s governments lacked the resources to organise and
equip an effective army. The correspondence of Baldomero Espartero,
who became her army commander, is a litany of complaint at his lack
of money and troops, which led him to adopt a cautious military
strategy. He prevailed, but only after seven years. Espartero, the ninth
son of a carter in a small town in La Mancha, became a national popular
hero and would remain one for the rest of his long life, except to some
in Barcelona, which he bombarded to crush a revolt against taxes and
free trade.18 Large numbers of troops were eventually mobilised by
both sides. By 1835 the government had a force of 250,000, including
some 22,000 foreign (mainly British) auxiliaries. A British naval
blockade in the north prevented arms reaching the Carlists, whose
armies by 1839 totalled 70,000.19 Thanks partly to foreign support, the
liberals prevailed. Under the Peace of Vergara of 1839 the bulk of the
Carlist forces disarmed in return for a promise to keep a modified
version of the Basque fueros. Espartero was magnanimous. He had
earlier proclaimed:

In civil wars there’s no glory for the victors nor diminishment for
the vanquished. Take note that when peace is reborn everything
becomes muddled up; and that the register of sufferings and disas-
ters, of triumphs and conquests are seen as the common patrimony
of those who before fought on opposing sides.

Espartero’s magnanimity suggests there was nothing inherently Spanish

in Franco’s reprisals against the defeated Republic in 1939.20
Carlism was one of several ‘legitimist’ movements in Europe after
the Napoleonic Wars, which stood for absolute monarchy and the

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divine right of kings against creeping liberal advance and held that
royal succession must always be by the male line and always by the
eldest son. In France and Portugal legitimism ceased to pose a military
threat after the 1830s, but retained a political presence. As late as 1873,
100 legitimists were elected to the French National Assembly, though
out of a total of 650 deputies.21 Yet in Spain Carlism became a deeply
rooted military and insurrectional tradition in some parts of the
country. During the Civil War of 1936–39 a Carlist militia raised
mainly in Navarre fought for Franco on the Basque front. Carlism’s
durability owed much to the fact that Spain remained a largely rural
society well into the twentieth century and to the ideological role of
the Catholic Church. Its attachment to violent insurrection was
perhaps a function of the relative weakness of the liberal state in a
country where geography conspired against its monopoly of force.22
Yet the liberal state was making progress, albeit amid political insta-
bility. A sergeant’s revolt at the palace of La Granja in 1836 obliged
María Cristina to accept the 1812 constitution: although this would
soon be modified, Spain would never again suffer absolute monarchy.23
Two parties emerged from liberalism: the Moderates and the
Progressives (the heirs to the exaltados). Their rivalry was one reason
why Spain had thirty-two governments between 1843, when Isabel II
was declared of age at just 13, and 1868. Five constitutions were
enacted between 1834 and 1876. None until that of 1876 were consen-
sual documents; rather, each one purported to erase its predecessor.
There were missed opportunities in this tangled tale. In 1836 Juan
Álvarez Mendizábal, a Progressive prime minister and financier, tackled
the Church’s corporate power and wealth. He abolished the tithe,
suppressed all small religious houses and in effect put most Church
property up for sale. This was what the enlightenment reformers had
hoped to do. Mendizábal was able to do so because of the crown’s
urgent need for money to pay for the Carlist War, and because public
opinion had become increasingly anti-clerical since many priests and

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monks supported the Carlist cause. Historians disagree as to the extent

to which Church lands, and the common lands of municipalities which
were later also put up for sale, ended up in the hands of large secular
landowners.24
The governments of the 1830s and 1840s laid many of the founda-
tions of a modern state, picking up where the eighteenth-century
reformers had laid off.25 In 1833 Spain’s territory was divided into
forty-nine more or less equal provinces, inspired by the French depart-
ments. This new territorial organisation slowly eroded, as it was
designed to do, attachment to the regions descended from the medi-
eval kingdoms. The message was that Spain was a unified nation state
in which all citizens and territories would be subject to the same laws.
Even after the recreation of regions by the 1978 constitution, the prov-
inces survive and are referents in everyday life. Conversely, some
Catalan nationalists abhor the provinces. In 1844 a Moderate govern-
ment created a professional police force, the Civil Guard. This had an
impact, especially in tackling the brigandage and highway robbery that
travellers had long complained of. But it was created as a military
constabulary, initially reporting to the army. The rule that civil guards
could not be stationed in their home region, intended to remove them
from political influence, had the effect of making them seem like an
occupying force. A professional civil service developed. Juan Bravo
Murillo, the prime minister in 1850–52 whose motto was ‘more
administration and less politics’, drew up civil service categories and
career paths.26 Recruitment was increasingly based on competitive
exams (known as oposiciones) and merit. But some historians think the
prime purpose of the civil service was to provide jobs for a growing
middle class rather than public services for the masses.
A bigger missed opportunity came with a military-civilian uprising-
cum-pronunciamiento (called the ‘Glorious Revolution’) in 1868,
which overthrew Isabel II. The queen, who was still only 38 when
ousted, had become reactionary, more interested in religion than

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politics; her reputation had suffered from financial and alleged sexual
scandals; she intervened high-handedly even against her most loyal
ministers, helping to undermine the parliamentary system that
sustained her. She was ‘always too young to take charge of the leader-
ship’ of such a conflicted country, as her biographer, Isabel Burdiel, has
noted.27 With revolutionary juntas, or committees, springing up in
provincial cities, the army and much of the political elite turned against
Isabel, who went into exile in Paris.
The principal leader of the Glorious Revolution was Juan Prim, a
Catalan general who was a popular hero because of his success in an
episode of colonial war in Morocco. He wanted a constitutional
monarchy, just not a Bourbon one. So did a majority of the Constituent
Cortes of 1869, the first to be elected under universal manhood
suffrage. The 1869 constitution was a blueprint for a modern, demo-
cratic Spain, which included universal male suffrage, freedom of
organisation and thus the right to form labour unions, and freedom of
religion.28 It ushered in important reforms, including civil marriage
and a civil registry of births and deaths. Prim eventually offered the
throne to Amadeo of Savoy, a son of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy.
To modern eyes, this rent-a-monarchy looks bizarre, but it was not
uncommon in that period. Thus, Otto Wittelsbach, a Bavarian prince,
was king of Greece from 1832 to 1862, for example. In any event,
Prim’s gambit failed. The night before Amadeo arrived in Spain, Prim
was shot in a Madrid street, by unknown enemies, and died three days
later. Prim alone could hold together the diverse coalition of liberals
and radicals that had made the revolution; conservatives did not accept
the new regime or the foreign monarch. Amadeo lasted only two years
before abdicating.
The Cortes voted to declare Spain a republic. But of what
sort? Some wanted a unitary state like France. More favoured a decen-
tralised federal republic. They included Francesc Pi y Margall, a Catalan
who was the preeminent Republican leader and briefly president.

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He quickly lost control of events amid sometimes violent disorder, as

juntas declared local republics in the towns of the Levante and
Andalucía in what became known as the Cantonalist revolution. The
government also faced a new Carlist war and a rebellion in Cuba
against slavery and for autonomy. Army discipline was collapsing, since
the republic was pledged to abolish conscription. The republic lasted
less than a year, in which it got through three presidents, all intellec-
tuals, before a pronunciamiento installed a brief military government
and then another restored the Bourbons in the person of Alfonso XII,
Isabel’s 17-year-old son, who was a cadet at Sandhurst.
Once again the idealised liberal country and the real one had
diverged. The 1930s would repeat this story. The chaos of the First
Republic gave federalism an indelibly bad name in Spain. That had
serious consequences: it was why the framers of the 1978 constitution
eschewed the formal federalism that might have avoided some contem-
porary tensions.

The Glorious Revolution set the battle lines between free-thinking

democracy and conservativism in more or less authoritarian forms, a
contest that embroiled the country for the next century. Both would
soon come under pressure for more radical change from socialism and
anarchism. The political system installed under the restored monarchy
gave priority to stability over democratic representation. That would
have diminishing returns. The underlying challenge the country faced
was whether the system could evolve into a full democracy, capable of
adapting to a fast-changing society and of incorporating new political
forces. Ultimately it failed, despite the efforts of many well-meaning
political leaders.
The architect of the new system was Antonio Cánovas del Castillo,
a shrewd conservative politician from the former Moderate party. The
new constitution of 1876, which would last until 1931, was pragmatic:
it recognised Catholicism as the religion of state but allowed the

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practice of others. The system’s political method was known as the

turno pacífico – peaceful alternation in power, without pronuncia-
mientos – between two broad-based parties, Cánovas’s Conservatives
and the Liberals, led initially by Praxedes Sagasta. Governments used
electoral manipulation, arranged by the interior ministry, to provide
themselves with a majority in the Cortes. For its critics the system
entrenched an oligarchy and the power of local potentates in rural
Spain, dubbed caciques (political bosses, a word of Caribbean origin).
But it was more flexible than this suggests. Sagasta implemented many
of the conquests of the ‘Glorious Revolution’, including universal
manhood suffrage, freedom of association and worker organisation,
and trial by jury. The state gradually took over functions previously
carried out mainly by the Church or poverty-stricken local councils,
such as health care and education. Restoration governments intro-
duced social reforms, including factory acts on safety. In 1919,
following a long strike in Barcelona, Spain became the first country in
the world to legislate for the eight-hour day for all workers.
Caciquismo was really clientelism: the cacique was the intermediary
between the state and a largely illiterate electorate, offering services and
protection in return for votes, a system that was common to many
European democracies at the time and still is in parts of Latin America.
A bigger problem was that Restoration governments too often resorted
to the security forces and repression in the face of agitation by organ-
ised workers or the desperation of the landless labourers of Andalucía
who embraced a utopian anarchism. Anarchists wreaked their revenge,
and helped to close off reformist paths. Inspired by Mikhail Bakunin,
the Russian anarchist philosopher who preached ‘propaganda of the
deed’, anarchist assassins would murder three Spanish prime ministers
between 1897 and 1921. One was Cánovas himself, shot while taking
the waters at a spa in the Basque Country. The other two were reforming
prime ministers, José Canalejas, a Liberal, and Eduardo Dato, a
Conservative. Canalejas, a potential Spanish version of David Lloyd

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George, the British Liberal reformer, according to Raymond Carr, had

tried in vain to tame a strike wave with a mixture of concessions and
repression.29
Much of this was not particularly exceptional in Europe at that
time. Italy after unification suffered from caciquismo and rigged elec-
tions, and from political violence in the form of half a century or so of
undeclared civil war in the south. Spain’s intellectual and political elites
tended to compare their country obsessively with England, Bismarckian
Germany or France, and there it often came up short. But not in every
respect. Spain enjoyed more years of constitutional government in the
nineteenth century than France, or indeed any other continental
European country, for example.30 France suffered political instability,
too: it has had fifteen constitutions since 1789 to Spain’s nine since
1812. The Spanish parliamentary caciques were not so different from
the notables of the French Third Republic. In Italy, where suffrage was
much more restricted until 1912, the period from the 1880s to the
First World War saw ‘transformism’, in which governments became
shapeless amalgams of nominal ideological opponents. In Portugal
from the 1850s, as in Restoration Spain, elections tended to follow
rather than precede a change of government, with the interior ministry
organising the requisite parliamentary majority.
Contemporaries and later historians, especially Marxist ones,
lamented the supposed lack of an industrial revolution in Spain. But
the partial liberalisation of the economy, the replacement of corporate
(Church and nobility) relations with capitalist ones, along with an
opening to imports and foreign investment, especially in mining and
railways, did prompt economic growth. Leandro Prados de la Escosura,
an economic historian, has reconstructed a consistent set of national
accounts dating back to 1850. They show that between 1850 and 1883
income per person in Spain grew at an annual average rate of 1.3%,
faster than in France (1.1%) or Germany (1.2%), and almost as fast as
in Victorian Britain (1.4%).31 Growth slowed between the early 1880s

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and 1913. Prados de la Escosura hypothesises that this was because the
Restoration governments were more protectionist, especially after the
loss of the Cuban market in 1898. Growth picked up again during
the First World War (in which Spain benefited from remaining neutral)
and the 1920s before declining with the Great Depression, the Spanish
Civil War and Franco’s subsequent economic autarky. To sum up, in
the words of Diego Palacios, a Spanish historian at the University of
Stirling: ‘slow growth, slow change and slow institutional development
may depict Spain in the nineteenth century, but growth, change and
institutional development did indeed happen’.32 Nevertheless, in some
crucial respects change and institutional development were too slow.
By the 1930s the state was not quite developed enough, or the society
quite democratic enough, to prevent the Civil War that irresponsible
leaders and elites created (see chapter 5).

Cross the River Bidasoa from the border town of Irun in the Spanish
Basque Country and you arrive immediately in Hendaye, a straggling
town notorious as the site of a meeting in a railway carriage between
Franco and Hitler in October 1940. Hendaye and the villages around
it were long used as a refuge by ETA members and their sympathisers.
Around a quarter of the town’s population are Spanish Basques. Yet
Euskara, the Basque tongue, is not an official language in Hendaye or
anywhere in the department of Basses Pyrénées which comprises the
French Basque Country, nor until recently was it taught in schools.
That is the consequence of a determined and largely successful exercise
in nation-building by the French state.
In 1863 about a quarter of the population of France did not speak
the French language at all, according to an official statistical report.
More than a tenth of the 4 million schoolchildren spoke no French,
and 1.5 million of them couldn’t write it.33 These official figures are
almost certainly underestimates. Even more than Spain in the same
period, France was a patchwork of languages (such as Breton, Flemish,

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Basque, Gascon, Catalan and various versions of its linguistic cousin,

Occitan). Most of the non-French speakers were in rural areas in the
west, south and centre of the country. Whereas Spain had enjoyed
more or less stable borders since the sixteenth century, France was an
agglomeration formed by conquest or annexation, right up to the
incorporation of western Savoy in 1858 (leaving aside the battles over
Alsace and Lorraine between France and Germany). In Peasants into
Frenchmen, a classic text of modernisation theory, Eugen Weber argued
that all this changed between 1870 and the First World War as a result
of deliberate public policies by a state that had the resources to imple-
ment them. ‘Undeveloped France was integrated into the modern
world and the official culture – of Paris, of the cities,’ in that period,
wrote Weber, a Romanian-born historian. ‘Traditions died and they
were no longer replaced.’34
The 1789 Revolution in France bequeathed national unity as an
integrating ideal. The Revolution ‘completed the nation, which became
one and indivisible’, as Albert Soboul, a French historian, put it.35 But
this ideal only began to become consistent reality during the Third
Republic, from 1870. Weber identifies three powerful agents of change
and integration. The first was a government-financed crash programme
of railway- and road-building, especially of all-weather secondary roads
in rural areas. The railway network expanded from some 20,000 kilo-
metres in 1879 to 65,000 kilometres in 1910. The second factor was
schooling. In 1876 nearly 800,000 of the 4.5 million children of school
age were not registered in any school, and many who were didn’t
attend. Girls were especially likely not to be at school. As education
minister in the early 1880s Jules Ferry pushed through far-reaching
reforms that made primary schooling compulsory, free and secular, and
required all teaching to be in the French language. The government
financed a massive school-building programme, improved teaching
methods and introduced history and geography as classroom subjects.
The third agent of change was military service. Introduced by Napoleon

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this had involved many get-outs for the better-off and was seen as a
heavy tribute on the peasantry levied by an alien state. By the 1890s
exemptions were curbed, conscripts were better treated and fed and
the army came to be seen by the people as ‘ours’ not ‘theirs’. Schools
and the army alike taught their charges patriotism and laïcité (secu-
larism). As Weber concludes: ‘A Catholic God, particularist and only
identified with the fatherland by revisionists after the turn of the [twen-
tieth] century, was replaced by a secular God: the fatherland and its
living symbols, the army and flag. Catechism was replaced by civics
lessons.’36
The secular religion of French republicanism has proved lasting and
generally popular. Shortly after he was elected president in 2017
Emmanuel Macron told an audience of young people that the French
state ‘built itself on the French language’.37 Article 2 of the French
constitution of 1958 states baldly that ‘the language of the Republic
shall be French’ and no other languages have official status. Joseph Pérez,
a French-born historian of Spain of Valencian descent, recounted that
he grew up in France in the 1930s speaking the Valencian variant of
Catalan as his mother tongue. He went to school: ‘in the Jacobin
schools, a small Spaniard or Portuguese entered and left as a Frenchman.
. . . The Jacobin idea is to found a nation of citizens with the same
rights; nobody said anything to me about being Spanish.’38
In recent decades the squashing of local languages, customs and
particularisms has met some resistance, with the revival of Breton and,
to a lesser extent, Occitan and (French) Basque nationalism, not to
mention the cultural demands of some Muslim immigrants. In 2008 a
constitutional revision recognised that ‘regional languages contribute
to the heritage of France’. It became possible for pupils to study a
regional language as an optional subject, and in some cases these have
been used for up to half of teaching. Few pupils take up this option:
only 170,000 (out of 12 million) school students receive classes in a
regional language and only a minority of them go to private schools,

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run by cultural associations, that offer ‘immersion’ in that language. In

2021 the National Assembly approved a law promoted by Paul Molac,
a Breton nationalist, which would have allowed ‘immersive teaching’
of regional languages in public schools.39 The law was opposed by
Macron’s government. Within weeks, the constitutional council struck
down the clause regarding immersion. But the council said it was
constitutional for local governments to finance the teaching of regional
languages as a curriculum subject.40
Why doesn’t Spain have the cultural uniformity of France? Since the
time of the enlightenment part of the Spanish elite was deeply
Francophile, known as afrancesados. Spanish governments in the nine-
teenth century did make nation-building efforts. But these were under-
mined by the poverty of the state and they tended to be too little, too
late to overcome regionalisms.41 In another missed opportunity, in a
tax reform in 1845 a Moderate government surrendered control over
the tax system to local boards of landowners and other notables. The
result was that the rich undertaxed themselves and concealed wealth,
while small farmers and consumption were overtaxed. The system was
highly inefficient: between 1850 and 1890, for each peseta the Spanish
government invested in tax and customs collection it harvested only
six. In France, the equivalent figure was fourteen.
Governments recognised the importance of investment in transport
links. They invited foreign capital to build railways. Bayonne, the
capital of French Basqueland, was connected by train to Bordeaux and
Paris by 1855; the line from Madrid to Irun, over far more difficult
terrain, was completed by 1864. Railway construction speeded up
further in the 1880s and 1890s, although lack of maintenance dogged
an inefficient network. But roads and schooling lagged in Spain. The
ministry of fomento (development), set up in 1845 to oversee transport
and communications, spent only 9% of the national budget between
1850 and 1890 while France and the Netherlands spent around 15%
of (bigger) budgets on transport. As late as 1910, 4,000 of the 9,200

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towns in Spain lacked road or rail connection.42 Governments had

other priorities: more than half of the Spanish budget went on debt
service and the army. In 1898 the state spent as much on the Church
and on clerical salaries as it did on infrastructure, and five times more
than it did on schooling.
Universal education had been decreed since the 1812 constitution,
though it was not enshrined in legislation until 1857. This law made
schooling compulsory for children aged from 6 to 9 years. But it tasked
local councils with providing primary schools and they lacked resources.
Provincial authorities were supposed to build a secondary school in
each provincial capital. By the late nineteenth century half the schools
envisaged by the law still didn’t exist. Only 40% of children were in
schools, and many of them were being taught by the Church.43 The
result was that by 1900 one Spaniard in two was illiterate, compared to
one in six French people, or one in thirty Britons. In The Forge, his
evocative memoir of his childhood, Arturo Barea tells a story of
Mentrida, a village only 60 kilometres from Madrid, around 1910:

the school teacher had tried to hold daily evening classes for the
young people, where they could learn to read and write, which
hardly any of them knew how to do. But the priest was furious and
the mayor forbade the classes. The school teacher stayed on for
nothing except to teach the young children how to read. That was
all he could do, because after they were seven to nine years old, the
children were used to work in the fields.44

In Spain military service remained far from universal for more than
twenty years after it had become so in France. Only the working classes
served as soldiers, the army treated them poorly and conscription was
hated. In 1909, in Barcelona, the embarkation of conscripts for the
war in Morocco triggered a riot and a week of church burnings that
Catholic propagandists subsequently called the Semana Trágica or

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‘Tragic Week’. This prompted a reform of military service by Canalejas

in 1912.
The second big reason for the survival and resurgence of regional
languages and feeling in Spain was the problem with which this chapter
began: while in France regions that retained their particular languages
and cultural identity the longest tended to be poor and remote, in
Spain by the late nineteenth century they were the most economically
dynamic parts of the country.

In just three hours on the calm, sunny morning of 3 July 1898, a

Spanish battlefleet of four armoured cruisers and two destroyers was
annihilated off Santiago de Cuba by a squadron of seven ships of the
United States Navy. This doomed Spain to swift defeat in the Spanish-
American war and the loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
It was the extinction of the last remains of the empire that had domi-
nated the world in the sixteenth century.45 The desastre (disaster), as it
was dubbed, was a crushing blow to Spanish self-esteem. It set off a
bout of moody soul-searching and calls for the ‘regeneration’ of a
country held to have been suffering centuries of decadence. Sagasta,
the prime minister at the time, seemed to be the only realist, saying:
‘We are a poor country, is it strange that we have been beaten?’46
‘Regenerationism’ would take different forms in Madrid, Barcelona
and in the army. In Barcelona, as we have seen, the desastre gave a deci-
sive boost to Catalan nationalism (see chapter 3). In Madrid a loose
group of writers and intellectuals known as the Generation of 1898
(although in fact they spanned two generations) reflected on the causes
of Spanish decline and backwardness, as they saw it, and came up with
some contradictory remedies. Some were broadly liberal. They argued
for a crash programme of public, secular education and for Spain to
become more European. In the shock of defeat, much of this came to
pass, with a reform that raised tax revenues and, at last, the creation of
an education ministry in 1900. Others, who included Miguel de

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Unamuno, a Basque philosopher and writer, thought that Spain should

reconnect to its Catholic traditions. Joaquín Costa, an Aragonese
historian and politician, not only called for more governmental effort
in transport infrastructure and industrial development but also
expressed contempt for the Restoration parliamentary regime (it was
he who branded it caciquismo) and called for an ‘iron surgeon’ to
pursue radical political renewal, not necessarily by democratic means.
Many of the Generation of 1898 were associated with the Institución
Libre de Enseñanza (Free Institution of Teaching), a project to spread
rational, humanist education. It spawned a body to finance postgrad-
uate study abroad (the Junta para Ampliación de los Estudios) led by
Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a neurologist who won the Nobel Prize for
medicine in 1906. These efforts were influential in training a liberal
intellectual elite. They were matched on the conservative side by the
Jesuits, who had founded the country’s first private Catholic university
at Deusto in Bilbao in 1886.47
The abiding sense of failure fuelling ‘regenerationism’ was most
clearly expressed by José Ortega y Gasset, a writer and philosopher.
Often referred to by Spaniards as a liberal, he was in many ways an
elitist conservative. In vigorous prose in España Invertebrada
(‘Invertebrate Spain’), a hugely influential short polemic first published
in 1922, he offered some sharp insights mixed with deep cultural pessi-
mism and bad history, dressed up with pseudo-science.48 He viewed
the rise of separatisms in Catalonia and the Basque Country as part of
a broader ‘particularism’ – a retreat from the common national interest
into the local and the sectional – which he saw as the country’s biggest
problem. He detected a similar growth of particularism in Galicia,
Asturias, Aragon and Valencia. He attributed its rise to the weakening
of Castile. ‘Castile had made Spain and Castile has unmade it.’49 But
he also blamed the lack of a common national project, especially after
the loss of empire, and the historical weakness of the Spanish aristoc-
racy and of its elites in general.

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As for the army, Ortega argued, it had forgotten that it was part of
Spanish society as a whole and pursued what it saw as its narrow corpo-
rate interest. The desastre soon spurred the generals to seek redemption
in an opportunistic, brutal and unpopular war to expand the Spanish
colony in northern Morocco. That merely exposed the army to another
humiliation, the routing of 20,000 troops by a few thousand tribesmen
at the Battle of Annual in 1921. Ortega went on: ‘Morocco turned the
dispersed soul of our army into a clenched fist, morally disposed to
attack. From that moment the military group became a loaded shotgun
without a target to shoot at.’50 Wasn’t it an inevitable consequence, he
asked, that it fell upon the nation itself, in repressing a general strike in
July 1917? It was not coincidental that Franco and many of his fellow
coup leaders in 1936 had earlier fought in Morocco.
More broadly, the desastre and other turn-of-the-century political
developments prompted ideological realignments, especially on the
‘territorial question’ of how Spain should be organised. On the one
hand, Liberals’ ideal of Spain had changed. Their support for local
militias and juntas turned many Liberals and Republicans into decen-
tralisers and federalists, though others continued to favour a strong
centralised state in Jacobin mould. On the other hand, the army shed
its nineteenth-century commitment to liberalism, while also returning
to its pre-Restoration tradition of political intervention. The Church,
weakened by Mendizábal, had gained renewed strength as part of a
Catholic revival across Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth
century. Conservatives and the Church hierarchy began to see in a
strong central state the best guarantee of their interests, especially since
the socialist and anarchist movements formed part of international
organisations or networks. The army and other conservative forces
adopted a defensive, identitarian nationalism that saw in Catalan and
Basque nationalism a threat to national unity. ‘The conservative world
began to think that everything was in danger: religion, property, family
and even the nation, that at the outset had been the creation of a liberal

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revolution against absolutism,’ as Álvarez Junco puts it.51 A first attempt

at conservative centralisation came with Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship.
The Second Republic that followed tried to get to grips with orderly
decentralisation.

In a celebrated parliamentary debate on the Catalan statute of 1932,

Ortega y Gasset, who was elected as a deputy for a small Republican
party, argued that Catalonia was a ‘perpetual’ problem that ‘cannot be
settled, it can only be lived with’. Manuel Azaña, the prime minister
(later president) of the Republic, in a long reply to the debate in which
– in an oratorical tour de force – he reviewed the sweep of Spanish
history, began by noting that ‘the policy of Madrid’ towards Catalanism
was to deny its existence instead of recognising it for what it was, the
primordial problem of the organisation of the Spanish state. ‘The reality
is the fact of differentiated sentiments in the regions of the Peninsula,’
he went on. ‘We might prefer that in Spain a policy of assimilation, of
unification had triumphed, it might be that to some it might seem that
this would have been more worthwhile and that now all Spaniards
might speak the same language.’ However, he added to applause: ‘To
me this would have seemed to be an impoverishment of the spiritual
wealth of Spain. But the fact is, like it or not, it hasn’t happened.’52
This encapsulated the Republic’s approach towards the ‘territorial’
question, expressed first in the Catalan statute (see chapter 3). The
Basques’ Catholic conservatism provoked little sympathy among
Republicans and delayed a statute of autonomy for them. But it was
approved by a referendum in 1933 (though it failed to command a
majority of the vote in partly Carlist Álava). It was hastily put into
effect when the PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco – Basque Nationalist
Party) remained loyal to the Republic at the start of the Civil War.
There was barely time to constitute the Basque provisional government
before Franco’s tanks rolled in. Towards the end of the nineteenth
century Galicia, too, saw a revival of regionalist sentiment and of the

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galego language. A statute of autonomy for Galicia was approved in

June 1936 but the outbreak of the Civil War prevented it being put
into effect. Regionalist groups emerged in Andalucía, Valencia and
Aragon as well.53
In victory, Franco imposed a rigid conservative centralisation, with
the sole exceptions of Navarre and Álava: in deference to their loyalty
to him he let them keep some of their fiscal privileges. He imposed
Spanish nationalism in its new conservative and identitarian form. The
public use of all regional languages was banned. All Spaniards were
required to ‘speak Christian’ or ‘the language of the empire’ as the
regime put it. But as Azaña had asserted, the denial of the existence of
‘differentiated sentiments’ did not make them disappear. Azaña’s argu-
ments triumphed posthumously in the 1978 constitution.
Carlton Hayes, an American historian who served as ambassador in
Madrid during the Second World War, noted that the achievement of
national consciousness everywhere was ‘the history of the overcoming
of centrifugal forces in the life of the nation by centripetal forces’.54 In
Spain the centrifugal forces were too strong to be overcome – but they
were also too weak to prevail.55 Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas, a historian
at the University of Santiago de Compostela, makes a similar point:
‘Spain may be considered an unfulfilled nation state but it is also an
imperfect multinational state, since the alternative national identities
have not yet managed to impose their social hegemony within their
territories.’ He notes that ‘mixed marriages, linguistic assimilation,
multiple identities and hybridisation have been an almost constant
feature of Spanish history’. That is the reality that the 1978 constitu-
tion, with its mixture of decentralisation and national unity, attempted
to address.

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 CHAPTER 5

LET’S TALK ABOUT FRANCO

T he massive stone cross atop a granite outcrop in a pine forest in

the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama is visible from the
outskirts of Madrid. Beneath it lie an open esplanade and a semi-
circular colonnade marking the entrance to an enormous stone vault,
250 metres long, dug into the mountainside. In its outer vestibule
stand a pair of statues of exterminating angels carrying large swords.
Everything about the Valley of the Fallen is intended to overawe, to
inspire fear rather than sorrow or reconciliation. It is not a war memo-
rial, but rather a monument to a victory, to General Francisco Franco’s
extermination of the ‘reds’ in the Spanish Civil War, in what he called
his ‘Crusade’ (with a capital ‘C’). In the decree of 1940 in which he
ordered its building he stipulated: ‘The dimension of our Crusade . . .
cannot be perpetuated by the simple monuments with which it tends
to be commemorated in towns and cities. . . . The stones that will be
erected must have the grandeur of ancient monuments . . . so that
future generations pay an admiring tribute to the heroes and martyrs
of the Crusade.’1 Franco’s idea was that the Valley would be the burial
place of his troops and supporters. But despite using, in part, the forced
labour of prisoners, it took eighteen years to build. When it was

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complete many nationalist families didn’t want to move their relatives’

remains, and mayors sent some Republican dead as well. Perhaps
34,000 people are buried there, of whom 21,423 have been identified.
Many bones are irretrievably jumbled up.
After dying in his bed in 1975 Franco was buried at the Valley, in
haste and without much thought. But his presence there, in one of
only two named tombs on either side of the altar (the other is that of
José Antonio Primo de Rivera, son of the former dictator and the
founder of the Spanish Falange, the fascist party) came to be widely
seen as an aberration. Apart from anything else, Franco didn’t die in
the war. Above all, ‘a dictator can’t have a state tomb in a consolidated
democracy like Spain’s’, as Carmen Calvo, Pedro Sánchez’s deputy
prime minister, rightly said. In October 2019, in an operation organ-
ised by Sánchez’s government and attended by twenty-two of the dicta-
tor’s descendants, Franco’s coffin was dug up. In scenes broadcast live
on television it was then carried by the family, first to a hearse and then
a helicopter which took it for reburial at a quiet public cemetery at El
Pardo, in a military cantonment on the outskirts of the capital where
Franco’s wife was already interred. Sánchez was carrying out a resolu-
tion of the Spanish parliament and a promise he made on becoming
prime minister. It took more than a year to overcome legal objections
from Franco’s family – who wanted to rebury him, prominently, in
the crypt of Madrid’s cathedral – and the threatened disobedience of
the Benedictine prior who administered the basilica and monastery
at the Valley. The Spanish Catholic hierarchy and the Vatican slapped
down the prior; the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the govern-
ment could rebury Franco at El Pardo.
‘It’s a great victory for Spanish democracy,’ Sánchez said of the court
ruling that allowed the government to go ahead with the exhumation.
Slightly more Spaniards agreed with him than disagreed, even if the
timing of the operation, a fortnight before a general election, looked to
some like a campaign stunt. Only Vox actively opposed what it called

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a ‘profanation’ of Franco’s tomb. The PP complained that it opened old

wounds, but said it would rather discuss the future.
More than two years after Franco’s departure from the Valley, the
government had not decided what to do with the place. The Socialist
parliamentary group wanted to turn it into a ‘museum of memory’.
Emilio Silva, the president of an association for the recovery of histor-
ical memory, and many historians say this museum should explain
the Valley’s own history and propaganda uses. Many think it should
be desacralised and the Benedictines evicted. Others would like it to be
left as an untended ruin. They include Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, a
historian who was assigned to work at the Valley after he was arrested
for political activism when a student in 1947. With the help of
his political group he escaped after four months. ‘They shouldn’t
spend a centavo on maintaining the Valley,’ he said. ‘Let nature do
its work.’2
It is often claimed that Spain has been uniquely inhibited in dealing
with the legacy of its past. In fact, several other European countries
have struggled to reach agreement on what to do with places associated
with their dictators, and have taken time to do so.3 Modern Spain is
not in thrall to Franco’s ghost, at least not obviously so: the dictator’s
small number of active sympathisers exercise little or no influence on
politics or the state (at least if one excludes Vox, which rarely refers to
Franco explicitly). Most Spaniards alive today have no memory of him.
Having been omnipresent for almost four decades, he disappeared
from public discourse and debate with surprising speed. A poll in El
País newspaper twenty-five years after his death found that 42% were
‘indifferent’ to Franco, 38% had ‘negative feelings’ towards him and
17% ‘positive feelings’. While 59% said his regime was ‘definitely in
the past’, 33% said ‘it has some influence’, but only 5% thought it was
‘still a significant influence’.4
If Franco has recently again figured more prominently in political
discourse, that is partly because this suits the propaganda of Podemos

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and Catalan separatism. Nevertheless, the dead dictator still casts a

shadow. The lack of unanimity over the exhumation showed that the
country has yet to agree on the past – and perhaps it never can. Spain
has many museums, but none of its twentieth-century history. Many
on the left point out that it has no equivalent of the anti-fascist memo-
rials in Germany or Italy. But the contrast is misleading, as this chapter
will explain. And one might argue that there is no more powerful
public memorial possible to the victims of Franco and fascism than
Picasso’s Guernica, the artist’s great denunciation of the horror and
pain of war. Painted for the pavilion of the beleaguered Spanish
Republic at the Paris international exhibition of 1937, it has hung
since 1981 in the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid, with its context fully
explained. Yes, there is unfinished business from the dictatorship – but
quite how much is a matter of bitter political dispute. It is an issue
about which sweeping statements are often wrong.

When democracy came to Spain in the late 1970s it was not imposed
by conquering foreign armies, as in Germany or Italy after the Second
World War. Rather, it arrived through agreements between moderate
supporters of the dictatorship and a realistic democratic opposition
(see chapter 1). There was a rupture with the past, codified in the 1978
constitution, but a less radical one than, for example, in neighbouring
Portugal, with its revolution of 1974. One pillar of Spain’s democratic
transition was the amnesty law and a broad understanding not to use
the past as a political weapon – arrangements often misleadingly
dubbed a ‘pact of forgetting’. Given how deep and raw the conflicts of
the past were, that was wise. These accords did not preclude the swift
dismantling of franquismo. But the amnesty did mean that no fran-
quista official or soldier was put on trial for their actions.
This largely seamless transition was widely hailed as a success. But
younger generations and some on the left worry that Spain never
addressed the crimes of its past and some of the deeper scars. They

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think it should. The move to do so began with Zapatero, who repre-

sented a new generation with no direct memory of the Civil War and
little of the dictatorship. Zapatero’s paternal grandfather was an army
captain in León who was executed in August 1936 for refusing to join
Franco’s rebellion (his maternal grandfather, whom he knew, fought
for Franco, which he played down). Zapatero believed in the politics of
wedge issues: if his government’s law of ‘historical memory’ of 2007,
timid though it was, was bitterly opposed by the PP that was surely
part of its political purpose. There were also other reasons for the law.
The attempt by Baltasar Garzón, a Spanish judge, to charge and extra-
dite General Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s dictator, under a claimed
universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity, exposed Spain to
the accusation of hypocrisy. And a number of civil society groups had
begun to press for what they called ‘historical memory’.
The Historical Memory Law attempted to correct an anomaly:
Franco’s regime had honoured its own dead but ignored or persecuted
Republican victims. The law declared Franco’s military tribunals and
their verdicts illegitimate; prohibited the relatively few remaining
public monuments that recognised Franco and his allies; required the
Church to remove plaques in homage to the ‘fallen for God and Spain’
in the ‘Crusade’; prohibited any franquista commemorations at the
Valley of the Fallen; and called for the Valley to become a memorial to
all victims of the war. It offered government money for the opening of
the unmarked graves into which many of the victims of political repres-
sion on both sides were thrown.5 In a democracy people clearly have a
right to know where their relatives are buried, especially if they were
victims of the state, though some historians questioned whether a law
was needed to do what the government should have done anyway.
When the PP returned to power in 2011 amid the economic slump it
cut funding for the Historical Memory Law. But some local govern-
ments and civil society associations continued to finance and organise
exhumations.

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One day in November 2018 I took the AVE to Valencia and arrived
amid a deluge that made the short taxi ride to the suburb of Paterna
almost impossible. But we made it to the small municipal cemetery. It
is surrounded by high brick walls with burial niches; palms and
cypresses are dotted among the graves. Just off the central pathway a
blue and white tarpaulin protected a 2-metre-deep hole from the rain.
It was one of many unmarked mass graves scattered among the flower-
decked formal tombs. That morning Alejandro Vila, an archaeologist,
and his team had exhumed a skeleton from the hole, the 266th since
they began work at the cemetery eight months before. In an office at
the entrance sets of bones were carefully arranged on trays. The team
sampled their DNA for matching with that of surviving relatives.
Valencia was one of the last bastions of the doomed Republic. After
their military triumph Franco’s forces unleashed a reign of terror. Military
tribunals conducted summary trials not just of Republican fighters and
members of left-wing parties but of civilians who were accused of
sympathising with what had been the legal government. ‘It was a political
purge,’ said Vila. At Paterna alone more than 2,000 civilians were
summarily shot and their bodies dumped. ‘We know nearly all of their
names, though we don’t know if all of them are there in the cemetery,’ said
Rosa Pérez, a United Left (Communist) representative in the Valencia
diputació (provincial council) who is in charge of historical memory. The
diputació is paying for the dig. Relatives of the victims, many of them now
the grandchildren, take a close interest. ‘Many come almost daily,’ said
Vila. ‘They feel relieved. There was a long night of silence. They feel a
burden removed.’ Some families want to take the remains back to their
towns. More just want confirmation and to be able to put up a memorial
plaque in the cemetery. Some don’t want their relatives to be exhumed,
according to Pérez. In all, perhaps 100,000 or more people were buried in
such graves around the country. Between 2000 and 2019 784 graves were
opened and the remains of 9,600 people exhumed. According to a govern-
ment adviser only about another 20,000 are still recoverable.6

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Nearly all the public memorabilia of the dictatorship has disap-

peared, with the exception of the odd street name or memorial in small
villages or towns. As time passes remaining anomalies are being recti-
fied. In 2015 Manuela Carmena, a labour lawyer who had narrowly
escaped the massacre of her office colleagues by far-right gunmen
during the transition, was elected mayor of Madrid for a left-wing
coalition. She set up a broad-based committee of historians which
recommended changing fifty-two street names, a move that was
approved by all parties except the PP, which abstained. In 2020 a judge
required the Franco family to hand over to the nation, without compen-
sation, the Pazo de Meirás, a country house in Galicia which had been
‘donated’ to the dictator in 1938 by sympathisers, but as the summer
residence of the head of state rather than as private property. The house
had been built by Emilia Pardo Bazán, a nineteenth-century writer and
feminist. The court found that Franco had illegally appropriated the
property in 1941 with a forged document of purchase.7 The family still
conserve a town house in A Coruña which was similarly ‘donated’.
And several of Franco’s wartime generals have prominent tombs in
cathedrals.
In 2020 Carmen Calvo unveiled a draft law of ‘democratic memory’
that would go much further than the 2007 law. It was a mixed bag. It
reiterated the government’s commitment to finding the remains of
victims. The law would also annul the verdicts of Franco’s military
tribunals (rather than merely denying their legitimacy) and withdraw
titles and medals awarded by the dictatorship. It proposed the ejection
of the Benedictines from the Valley of the Fallen, and its redesignation
as a civilian cemetery with an explanation of its history. Other provi-
sions were more questionable. It would give the government the power
to shut down groups that ‘exalt’ or ‘apologise for’ the dictatorship, such
as the Francisco Franco foundation. This is a private archive run from
an obscure Madrid flat, which attracts a small number of nostalgics. To
turn it into a martyr for freedom of expression seemed unwise. Two

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other parts of the bill were the most troubling. One would require
schools to incorporate ‘democratic memory’ into the history curric-
ulum. That looks like the government establishing official history and
deciding who was good and who was bad. Second, the bill proposed
setting up a special prosecutor to investigate human rights abuses from
1936 to 1978. Not only was this largely futile since most perpetrators
were dead, but it also came close to overturning the amnesty law by the
back door.
Powerful constituencies, including UN lawyers, some human rights
groups, Podemos and some Socialists want to unpick the amnesty and
thus the transition. One reason is that it contravened what is now
called ‘transitional justice’.8 This holds that peace agreements must
include provisions to hold accountable those guilty of large-scale
human rights violations through prosecutions and/or truth commis-
sions. It favours reparations to victims and official efforts to preserve
the memory of past abuse. This is well-intentioned and in some cases
has been at least partially effective, especially with truth commissions
set up soon after democratic transitions (such as in Argentina, Chile,
El Salvador and South Africa).
In the autumn of 2021 Esquerra and EH Bildu (which incorporates
supporters of ETA) proposed an amendment to the democratic memory
bill to repeal parts of the amnesty. In response the Socialists and
Podemos tabled another amendment to their own bill which would
interpret the amnesty law to recognise that international humanitarian
law now holds that crimes against humanity cannot be amnestied nor
subjected to time limits. Calvo had left the government but her replace-
ment, Félix Bolaños, admitted that this change would have no practical
effect, since the law cannot be retrospective and anyway almost all fran-
quista officials are dead. This episode suggested that the debate about
history had degenerated into tactical gesture politics.
Desirable though they all are, truth, justice and reconciliation form an
impossible trinity. Arguably, Spain’s transition to democracy was successful

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precisely because it did not incorporate transitional justice, which might

well have delayed it, made it more violent or prevented it altogether. The
amnesty law and other legislation during the transition did allow for repa-
ration. More than 700,000 people benefited, receiving a total of more than
€21 billion in compensation or pensions over the next forty years. They
included families of those executed during the war or afterwards,
Republican soldiers and their families, those imprisoned for political
reasons during the dictatorship, and civil servants of the Republic and their
families.9 Calvo’s law was also attempting to fit the messy and complex
history of the Civil War and its aftermath into a simplistic template which
owes as much to contemporary political battles as to the past. Familiar
though that history may be to some, it is relevant to review it.
The Spanish Civil War has generally been seen by outsiders – who
were responsible for writing its history while Franco was still alive – as
a heroic anti-fascist struggle that was the prelude to the Second World
War. This was certainly one dimension of it. But it also featured ‘red
terror’, some of it spontaneous and some directed by the Comintern,
as Orwell and others reported. The war carried further meanings for
Spaniards. In its origins it was an internal conflict, the continuation of
the battles of the nineteenth century with the stakes raised by totali-
tarian ideologies, modern armaments and outside intervention. It
erupted in the context of deepening political tensions between a
modernising urban society and a backward rural one, between unitary
Spanish nationalism and regional identities, between Catholics and
anti-clericals, between civilian democrats and military praetorianism
(see chapter 4). It was also in part a class war that set landlords, indus-
trialists and sections of the middle class against organised worker and
peasant movements. The war was not inevitable, as portraying it as the
prologue to the world war might suggest. Chance, contingency and the
actions of individuals played a role too.
Even while the Generation of 1898 was fretting, Spain had changed
much in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Partly because

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the country didn’t enter the First World War, it enjoyed a ‘silver age’ – as
it was later dubbed – of economic progress and cultural ebullition. The
population of the main cities doubled between 1900 and 1930. A growing
and more diverse middle class occupied the opulent art nouveau residen-
tial buildings in the new ‘expansions’ of many cities, while a new working
class of rural migrants gathered in slums on the periphery. The result was
a society that ‘offered the most violent contrasts’ of modernisation and
backwardness as Manuel Azaña would write in 1939. ‘In some urban
centres, a high standard of living, adapted to all the customs of contem-
porary civilisations, and a few kilometres away villages that seemed still to
be in the 15th century.’10 At least half of Spaniards had ceased to be illit-
erate and, for the first time, less than half of them worked in agriculture.
But in a total population of 24 million there were still up to 2 million
small-scale farmers in the north and 1.5 million landless labourers working
on large estates in Andalucía, Extremadura and La Mancha.
Azaña, a bookish, shy man with an unworldly air and thick specta-
cles, was, in Paul Preston’s words, ‘the personification of the Second
Republic’.11 He was a lawyer, intellectual, senior civil servant and writer
before entering politics as a liberal republican. He was prime minister
from 1931 to 1933, as well as war minister, and then president of the
Republic from 1936 to 1939. He was an outstanding orator, both in
parliament and in outdoor mass meetings. He was a democrat, a man
of laws and of absolute personal honesty and integrity. He was perhaps
the greatest Spanish liberal. His core belief was that the essence of the
patria (the nation) was the equality of citizens before the law, and not
exclusionary definitions of racial or religious identity. He believed, too,
that politics should be governed by reason and votes. He remained
loyal to the Republic to the end, even while knowing it was doomed
(he died in 1940 in exile in Montauban in France). All this made him
an object of particular hatred and venom on the right.
Azaña was also vain, lacking in empathy and could be rigid. Like
the statesmen of Spain’s eighteenth-century enlightenment he tended

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to overstate the extent to which laws could change realities. His polit-
ical judgement was sometimes faulty. He was lulled into a false sense of
security by the ease with which the monarchy collapsed in 1931. He
and others called this a ‘revolution’, but it involved no fundamental
change in the structures of power. Arguably, the Republic tried to
change too much too quickly. Azaña consistently underestimated the
extent to which the country remained split down the middle politi-
cally, as well as the threat to the Republic posed first by the Catholic
right and then by plotters in the army.12
The Republic began in 1931 under the auspices of the centre-left
with a drive, led by Azaña, to tackle the unfinished business from the
nineteenth century: to curb the Catholic Church’s influence, reform
the army and address the social and regional conflicts that Primo de
Rivera’s dictatorship (see chapter 3) had tried to smother but had not
extinguished. Azaña complained that, despite Mendizábal’s reforms,
the Church had regained political influence during the Restoration
monarchy. ‘Instead of seizing property, it seized the consciences of the
propertied and thus made itself master of both conscience and prop-
erty.’13 A new constitution separated Church and state, turned the
Church into a civil association subject to law, cut clerical salaries,
forbade religious orders from teaching and removed the crucifix from
public schools. It was a determined attempt to impose French-style
laïcité. ‘Spain is no longer Catholic,’ Azaña said. That was a statement
of juridical fact that sounded to his opponents like a provocation. The
constitutional curbs on the Church prompted some centrists to leave
the government coalition. Thanks to the advocacy of Clara Campoamor,
a feminist lawyer elected as a Radical deputy, the constitution also
included not just divorce and the legal recognition of children born
outside marriage but also votes for women. That followed a fierce
debate in which some on the left opposed female suffrage because they
thought women would be too influenced by Catholic priests, while
many on the right opposed on traditionally sexist grounds.

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In his role as war minister Azaña vowed to ‘republicanise’ the army.

He trimmed the top-heavy officer corps with early retirements. He
shut down the military academy in Zaragoza, of which Franco had
been the director since 1928 and which had been dominated by afri-
canista officers, as those who served in the colonial war in Morocco
were known. Azaña tried to institute greater civilian control over army
promotions, and promoted officers known to sympathise with the
Republic.14 These measures were appropriate for a democracy but
would be bitterly resented by many in the army who saw Azaña as their
enemy. Many military officers were also opposed to the statute of
autonomy for Catalonia approved in 1932.
The Republic was born in a difficult international context. Like the
rest of Europe, Spain was hit by the Great Depression: between 1929
and 1935 the economy contracted by almost 10%, investment fell by
around 35%, exports declined by a quarter, unemployment rose and
the budget fell into deficit. The government lacked the funds to finance
its reforms. An agrarian statute envisaged expropriation of large estates
with compensation. Both this and a labour reform aroused the alarm
of proprietors without satisfying peasants and workers. The anarchists
began a campaign of strikes against the government.
Some leaders on both sides of the political divide began to question
democracy, rhetorically at least. José María Gil Robles, of the Confederación
Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA), a new and fast-growing
Catholic right-wing party, admired the authoritarian and corporatist
Estado Novo (new state) installed by Antonio Salazar in Portugal in 1933.
‘What does it matter if it costs us bloodshed?’ Gil Robles said during the
1933 election campaign. ‘Democracy is not an end for us, but rather a
means to go on to conquer a new state. When the moment comes, the
parliament will submit or we will repress it,’ he said.15 In the same election
campaign Francisco Largo Caballero, the leader of the left-wing of the
Socialist party, threatened: ‘if you want we will make the revolution
violently. . . . We are in an all-out Civil War. Let’s not be blind, comrades.’16

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(This was almost three years before the Civil War began.) With the left
divided because Largo Caballero refused to continue the Socialists’ coali-
tion with more centrist Republicans, the right swept to power in the elec-
tion. There were moderates, too, in both CEDA and the Socialist party.
But when CEDA entered the government in October 1934 the left
responded with a call for revolution. The UGT, the Socialist union confed-
eration, called a general strike. The miners of Asturias rose in an armed
insurrection, imposing a revolutionary social order for a fortnight. They
murdered thirty-four priests or seminarians. The government dispatched
Franco and 18,000 troops to suppress the rising. He did, at a cost of 1,100
dead among the insurgents, 300 among the troops and 30,000 arrests.
Azaña always thought that the unity of the Republican parties and the
Socialists was fundamental to the success and survival of the Republic. He
forged a Popular Front including both the Socialists and the small
Communist Party and narrowly won an election in February 1936. An
atmosphere of mounting polarisation was further inflamed by tit-for-tat
murders: when a Socialist lieutenant in the Assault Guards, a police force
created by the Republic, was murdered by Falangist gunmen, in retalia-
tion his comrades killed José Calvo Sotelo, the monarchist parliamentary
leader. That was the trigger for the military coup which a group of generals
had already planned. Their leader, General Emilio Mola, intended a
violent putsch that would see political and union leaders arrested and the
installation of a military dictatorship in the mould of Primo de Rivera’s
regime. Military officers who did not join the rising would be executed.
But the coup, launched on 17–18 July only half succeeded. A
majority of senior generals and a large minority of their troops stayed
loyal to the Republic, as did most of the navy and the air force. In some
cities, including Madrid, the workers’ organisations rose, prompting
garrisons to hesitate. The government hesitated, too, to arm the
workers, though it soon would. Coup attempt had become civil war,
revolution and counter-revolution. By early August Spain was divided
into two zones according to the loyalties of military commanders and

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the balance of forces in different cities and regions. The nationalist

rebels had parts of Andalucía and most inland areas north of Madrid
with the exception of a coastal strip from the Basque Country to
Asturias; the Republic controlled the rest.
The nationalists won, after almost three years of total war, for two
main reasons. First, they received swifter and more effective foreign
support than the Republic. Hitler and Mussolini sent squadrons of
transport planes to convey Franco’s Army of Africa, including the Foreign
Legion and battle-hardened Moroccan mercenaries, to the mainland.
That was a crucial intervention: without it the coup would probably
have failed and the war might never have happened. They followed that
up with equipment and the German Condor Legion, which in bombing
the Basque towns of Durango and Guernica committed war crimes (as
denounced by Picasso). Denied help from the British and French govern-
ments by their policy of non-intervention, the Republic did get Soviet
aid, especially tanks and the International Brigades organised by the
Comintern. This served to prolong the war, not to win it.17
The second reason was that the nationalists enjoyed unity of
command and purpose. In the Republican zone, arming the workers
empowered myriad left-wing militias who were often more interested
in making revolution than war. The Republic would eventually orga-
nise a disciplined army because of the growing influence of the
Communists and the dedication of loyal regular officers. They included
General José Miaja, who commanded the defence of Madrid, and
General Vicente Rojo, who rose to be the chief of the Republican
general staff. That army resisted. It had initial tactical successes in
important battles (such as Brunete and Teruel in 1937 and the Ebro in
1938) but was unable to turn them into victories mainly because of
poor communications and inferior junior officers.

The Spanish Civil War quickly acquired mythical status. By one count,
at least 40,000 books had been published about it by 2007, and plenty

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more have appeared since. According to Enrique Moradiellos,

a Spanish historian, two myths have emerged around the war: the
myth of the Civil War as an epic and heroic conflict between good
and evil, to be praised and remembered; and the myth of a tragic
collective madness that should be deplored and forgotten.18 Modern
historiography suggests a more nuanced view. Spaniards experienced
the war as a desperate fratricidal conflict that divided families, neigh-
bours and colleagues. On both sides during the war there were heroes
and villains, idealists and opportunists, acts of cruelty and acts of kind-
ness. Families were sometimes split, with brothers fighting on opposite
sides, either out of conviction or more often because of where the
outbreak of war found them. Both armies had recourse to forced
recruitment.
The politics were more complicated than the first myth allows.
Moradiellos argues that the Second Republic saw a ‘triangular fight’ in
which three forces confronted each other: republican democratic
reformism, fascistic authoritarian reaction and internationalist socialist
revolution. The split between democrats and revolutionaries that had
weakened the governments of the centre-left continued on the
Republican side during the war. It ran down the middle of the Socialist
party. Largo Caballero, the vain, incompetent but powerful president
of the UGT, the Socialist trade union federation, gloried in the sobri-
quet of ‘the Spanish Lenin’ bestowed upon him by the correspondent
of Pravda, the Soviet newspaper. In the spring of 1936 he had fatally
weakened the pre-war government by his sectarian refusal to allow
Socialist ministers and by blocking the appointment as prime minister
of Indalecio Prieto, the tough and capable leader of the party’s moderate
wing and his great rival.19 Had the Republic won with Soviet aid, Spain
would almost certainly have suffered a Communist regime, just as
Eastern Europe did after 1945.
This dismayed Manuel Chaves Nogales, the journalist from Seville
who had reported with such insight from Catalonia (see chapter 3).

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He defined himself as ‘a liberal petit-bourgeois’ and ‘citizen of a

democratic and parliamentary republic’, both anti-fascist and anti-
revolutionary by temperament. He was told before the war started that
a fascist group planned to kill him, while anarchists and Communists
thought he was ‘perfectly shootable’. When the war broke out the
workers’ committee of Ahora, the newspaper he edited in Madrid,
ejected the owner and took control. Chaves worked amicably with
them. He left the capital in November 1936, the day that the Republican
government and Largo Caballero, who had become prime minister in
August, fled Franco’s siege for Valencia. He saw that as the end of the
parliamentary republic in which he believed. In early 1937, in exile in
Paris, he published a collection of extraordinarily vivid reports of
episodes of the early months of the war. In the preface he wrote that
whichever side won the result would be ‘a dictatorial government that
with arms in hand will force Spaniards to work desperately and suffer
hunger without a murmur for 20 years until we have overcome the
war’.20 How right he turned out to be.
The democratic reformists lost doubly. Some like Azaña, or Juan
Negrín, the Socialist prime minister from May 1937 to March 1939,
loyally served the Republic to the end. Many others, liberals, demo-
crats and moderate Socialists, saw no option but to take the path of
exile even before the war was over. They included people like Clara
Campoamor, Ortega y Gasset and many other intellectuals and writers.
One was Arturo Barea, a committed Socialist who had worked in the
Republic’s censorship office during the siege of Madrid. Shell-shocked
from the bombings by Franco’s forces, he fell foul of the Communist
Party’s mistrust of him and of Ilsa Kulcsar, an Austrian independent
Marxist whom Barea met during the war and subsequently married.
They reluctantly took refuge first in France and then in Britain. The
Forging of a Rebel, Barea’s extraordinarily vivid autobiographical trilogy
about his childhood in Lavapies, a working-class barrio of Madrid, his
service in the war in Morocco and then his eye-witness account of the

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Civil War, was not published in Spain until 1978. Chaves, too, found
refuge in Britain. Long forgotten in Spain, he has been rediscovered
and his work republished only in the past decade.
The Republican government enjoyed democratic legitimacy of
origin, and Franco’s rebellion had none. Franco’s project was authori-
tarian, repressive, obscurantist and utterly reactionary, a rebellion
against the modern world. Azaña stayed at his post, despite his many
misgivings about the revolutionaries on the Republican side, because
of his fundamental rejection of Franco’s rising. In a speech in Valencia
in 1937 he said:

Even if all the evils which are held against the Republic were true,
war wasn’t necessary. It was useless as a remedy against those evils.
It made all of them worse, and added those that came from so
much destruction.21

But the Republicans’ conduct was far from spotless. Just as Franco and
the Falange did in their part of Spain, left-wing activists imposed a
reign of terror in their zone. It used to be said that the repression in
Republican Spain was more spontaneous, the work of out-of-control
militias. Although there was much of that, recent studies have estab-
lished that it involved a far more organised elimination of political
opponents.22
Estimates of the death toll in the Civil War and its aftermath vary
wildly. Recent calculations by Spanish historians suggest that around
300,000 to 350,000 people died in the war, of whom 175,000 were
killed at the front or in bombardments. Of these, three-fifths died on
the Republican side. Another 155,000 were victims of repression, of
whom around 100,000 in franquista areas and the rest in the Republican
zone. A further 20,000 were executed by the Franco regime in the
first six years after the war ended. Around 350,000 people died of
disease and hunger during the conflict. At least 170,000 went into

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exile permanently.23 As in the Carlist wars, prisoners were often shot

out of hand, at least in the early weeks of the conflict. And as in any
war, there were cases of rape and sexual violence against women.
Franco’s military tribunals did commute many death sentences against
Republicans; more prisoners were pardoned than executed, which
shows that there was no ‘Spanish holocaust’. But the dictator’s aim was
certainly to crush ‘the Reds’. Not for him the magnanimity in victory
of Espartero in the First Carlist War. Rather, he erased the name of
Principe de Vergara (as Espartero had been ennobled) from a long
avenue in Madrid and replaced it with that of General Mola.
Life and death were a lottery for civilians, especially in the early
months of the war, and for Republicans, in its aftermath. The most
notorious murder was that of Federico García Lorca, the poet and
playwright, in August 1936; he was seized from his house outside
Granada by three men, including a former CEDA deputy and a
Falangist landowner. When Colonel Juan Yague’s column of the Army
of Africa took Badajoz in August 1936, some 1,200 disarmed militia
and civilians were herded into the bullring and shot. Women and chil-
dren fleeing Malaga ahead of the nationalists were strafed on the road
to Almería by Franco’s air force and shelled from the sea. At the start of
the siege of Madrid, on the orders of Santiago Carrillo, a young
commissar who would go on to lead the Spanish Communist Party,
some 2,000 prisoners, including army officers and civilians, were taken
from prison and shot in the area of Paracuellos del Jarama, a village
that today overlooks Madrid’s Barajas airport. Leopoldo Alas, the
rector of the University of Asturias and a member of Azaña’s Republican
Left party, was shot by a franquista firing squad in Oviedo; one of its
members, who was a former student of the rector’s, was shot too, after
refusing to fire. Melquiades Álvarez, a friend of Alas, fellow law
professor at Oviedo University and a conservative republican, was
arrested and then killed by leftist militiamen in Madrid in August 1936
because he looked ‘bourgeois’. News of his murder led Azaña, who had

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joined Álvarez’s Reformist Party in 1913, to say he wanted to resign.24

Gregorio Marañon, who is the chair of Madrid’s opera house and
whose paternal grandfather was a famous Spanish doctor and liberal,
has told the story of his maternal grandmother, who belonged to a
liberal family which had suffered exile, persecution and assassination at
the hands of absolutist governments in the nineteenth century. In
August 1936, aged 70, she was dragged out of her house by Republican
militiamen and shot against the cemetery wall of Aravaca, on the
outskirts of Madrid.25 Joan Peset i Aleixandre was a bacteriologist and
lawyer who had been rector of the University of Valencia and then an
MP for Azaña’s party. During the war he had worked in military hospi-
tals and had tried to prevent killings by anarchists. When Valencia fell
he was accused, without evidence, by three envious professional rivals
of ordering killings. A military tribunal found him guilty of rebellion
and sentenced him to death but recommended commutation. After
the Falange presented to the tribunal a lecture Peset had given in which
he condemned the 1936 coup, it activated the death sentence. He was
shot in the cemetery in Paterna in 1941.26

Was Franco a fascist? Should he be bracketed with Hitler and Mussolini?

Unlike those two, Franco was a career military officer. He was born
into a lower middle-class naval family in the Galician port of El Ferrol.27
‘I am a soldier,’ was how he defined himself. His ideology was that of
many officers of the Army of Africa: a fierce Spanish nationalism which
saw the Catholic religion as integral to the country’s past glory. For
him, the causes of the country’s decline were liberalism, freemasonry (a
particular obsession), Communism and Catalan and Basque nation-
alism, all to be fought uncompromisingly. He was suspicious of the
outside world. Rather than Hitler or Mussolini (who were both over-
thrown by foreign invasion), he bears comparison to the reactionary
military dictators of Eastern Europe between the world wars and those
of Latin America or Salazar in Portugal (1933–70).

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In Morocco, where he served for ten years, Franco showed himself

to be a brave, dedicated but cold-blooded officer, surviving a serious
combat wound. He had enjoyed a swift rise, promoted to brigadier-
general aged just 33 in 1926. Like General Augusto Pinochet of Chile,
he abused power to accumulate personal wealth, in his case in the form
of property and land, the appropriation of public donations and the
extraction of bribes. According to Paul Preston, he died with a fortune
worth €400 million (in 2015 values). He was also extraordinarily
cunning and ruthless, with a supremely developed instinct for his own
survival and the weaknesses of rivals. He turned the gallego trait of
inscrutability into an art form. He used his command of the Army of
Africa at the start of the war, and his negotiation of aid from Germany
and Italy, to place himself swiftly at the head of the rebellion. At two
days of talks at an airfield near Salamanca in September 1936 he
secured the backing of his fellow generals, many of whom were his
seniors in the military hierarchy. They agreed to him becoming
Generalissimo of the armed forces and head of government for the
duration of the war.28 Many of the generals hoped for and expected a
swift post-war restoration of the monarchy. Franco turned this condi-
tional mandate into one of the twentieth century’s longest-lasting
personal dictatorships. That was the result of good fortune as well as
skill. Several potential rivals departed the scene: generals Sanjurjo and
Mola, more senior rebels, died in air crashes; the start of the Civil War
found José Antonio Primo de Rivera on the Republican side of the
divide, where he was imprisoned and executed.
Franco headed a broad right-wing coalition that ranged from Fascists
and Carlists to moderate Catholics. As Preston has noted, he was
masterly at the manipulation and control of the different ‘families’
within the regime, playing them off against each other and forcing their
complicity by involving them in corruption. Like Argentina’s Juan
Perón, who helped Spain economically in the late 1940s and chose
Franco’s Madrid as his place of exile from 1955 to 1973, Franco was

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adept at leaving each group the impression that he agreed with them.
He also ‘had the gift of being convinced by his own lies’, as Preston puts
it.29 Franco’s regime was based on three institutional pillars: the army,
the Church and the ‘Movement’, formed in 1937 when he forcibly
merged all existing right-wing parties into a single official party of the
state, under the unwieldy name of the Falange Española Tradicionalista
y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista or FET y de las JONS.
Founded in 1933, the Falange itself was small at the outbreak of war. At
first the Movement had many of the outward trappings of the Falange
but over time it became less ideological, a machine for rewarding the
regime’s supporters with jobs or sinecures. By the 1960s a fourth insti-
tutional pillar emerged in the form of a professional, meritocratic
bureaucracy.
Franco was a fascist of convenience rather than conviction, placing
Falangists in prominent positions during the Second World War when
they were useful to him and then pushing them aside. He owed his
victory in part to the Axis powers, and thought they would win the
Second World War. He knew that Spain was too weak, economically
and militarily, to join the war. But he sent a force of ‘volunteers’, the
Blue Division, to fight on the Russian front and hoped to scoop up
Gibraltar from what he assumed would be an Allied defeat.30 The
suspicious nationalist and anti-liberal in Franco liked the Falange’s
economic policy of autarky and state control. The Falange’s lasting
imprint was corporatism, the Mussolini scheme of vertical ‘syndicates’
which conciliated the interests of workers and business, or subordi-
nated the former to the latter. But fascism was not Franco’s essence, as
Azaña grasped early on. In 1937 he wrote in his journal:

There are or might be in Spain all the fascists you want. But there
will not be a fascist regime. If force triumphs against the Republic,
we would fall back under the power of a traditional ecclesiastical and
military dictatorship. No matter how many slogans are translated

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and how many mottos are used. Swords, cassocks, military parades
and homages to the Virgin of Pilar. The country can offer nothing
else.31

As the Second World War ended, Franco swiftly distanced himself

from the Axis. Almost overnight, the regime’s ideology began to stress
Catholicism, in the Spanish conservative tradition dating back to the
nineteenth century or even to the Counter-Reformation. A photo of
the Pope replaced those of Hitler and Mussolini on Franco’s writing
table. He named Alberto Martín-Artajo, the head of Catholic Action,
a lay organisation, as foreign minister, a post he held from 1945 to
1957. Martín-Artajo was misled into believing his job was to work for
a return of Catholic monarchism. Franco’s propagandists falsely
claimed that he had helped to save the Allies by stalling Hitler’s
supposed pressure for Spain to join the war (in fact, Hitler told Ciano,
Mussolini’s foreign minister, in 1940 that Spanish intervention ‘would
cost more than it is worth’).32 The dictator now presented himself as an
anti-Communist cold warrior, ‘the sentry of the West’. This was enough
to secure a defence treaty with the United States, which was invited to
set up military bases in Spain, and a Concordat with the Vatican.
By 1950 repression had begun to ease, but living standards were
lower than in 1930. The pursuit of ultra-protectionist autarky brought
the economy close to bankruptcy. That prompted a new phase in the
regime. Luis Carrero-Blanco, the colourless naval officer who was
Franco’s long-serving chief of staff and would become his de facto
prime minister, drafted in a team of talented economists, several of
them from Opus Dei, a Catholic lay organisation. They implemented
a ‘stabilisation plan’ in 1959 that opened the economy to the outside
world. Helped by foreign investment, the start of mass tourism to
Spain and remittances from hundreds of thousands of Spaniards who
had emigrated in search of work, over the next decade and a half the
economy grew at an annual average rate of close to 7%. A large middle

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class came into being. That brought Franco wider public support. The
civil service started to recruit its members on merit, including the chil-
dren of Republicans.
As his health deteriorated, Franco withdrew into semi-isolation in
his last years. Henry Kissinger reported that when he and President
Richard Nixon visited El Pardo in 1970 for talks, Franco soon fell
asleep. In 1969 he had named Juan Carlos, Alfonso XIII’s grandson, as
his successor. Some in the regime hoped that after Franco’s death things
would continue as they were. He himself had claimed that he was
leaving matters ‘tied down, and well tied down’. Any chance of that
disappeared in 1973 when ETA killed Admiral Carrero-Blanco, with a
bomb that blew his car high into the air after he had left morning mass
at a church on Calle Serrano in Madrid. That prompted a final burst of
repression – the police would carry on torturing to the end. But after
Franco died the moderates in the regime swiftly gained the upper hand
over the hardliners.

In 1938, in his last public speech, from the balcony of Barcelona’s city
hall on the second anniversary of the uprising, Azaña warned that if
future generations ‘on some occasions feel that their blood boils with
rage and once again the Spanish temper grows furious, with intoler-
ance, hatred and an appetite for destruction, think of the dead and
learn their lesson . . . paz, piedad y perdón (peace, mercy and pardon).’
That was the spirit of mutual forgiveness and tolerance in which the
transition was carried out. In many ways Spain’s current parliamentary
monarchy represents the values of Azaña and the Republic.
Was there a ‘pact of forgetting’, and if so was it a bad thing? The
term is at least a misnomer. Rather, Spanish democracy can be seen as
a pact which encouraged remembering: a poll in 2008 found that 74%
said that when they were young their family said ‘little or nothing’
about the Civil War and for 70% the same applied to the Franco
regime.33 But since the 1970s Spanish society has ‘remembered’ the

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Civil War and the dictatorship in a flood of publications, research,

exhibitions, films and commemorations. Javier Cercas, a contempo-
rary novelist who has written movingly of the Civil War, has said that
there was a pact of remembering in another sense: everyone was
conscious of the horrors of the past and determined to avoid repeating
them.34 The sweeping amnesty approved in the transition was a demand
of the left, not of the right. It had been the policy of the Communist
Party since 1956 and the Socialists for even longer. There was much to
be said for agreeing not to use the past as a political weapon, given how
bitterly divisive it was.
‘Historical memory’, the banner of those who denounce a pact of
forgetting, is an oxymoron. Memory is not history. It is individual and
it is fragile.35 Any attempt to turn it into a collective state-sponsored
product, as Sánchez’s government seemed to be trying to do, is an
attempt to rewrite history for political ends. ‘Memory only seeks to
rescue the past in order to serve the present and the future,’ as Jacques
LeGoff, a French historian, has put it.36 History, in contrast, should be
an attempt to grapple as objectively as possible with the facts and
complexities of the past.
Those who make the case for ‘historical memory’ have two argu-
ments. One is that public remembering recognises and eases the suffer-
ings of victims. The other is that the nurturing of ‘historical memory’
will prevent a repetition of past atrocities. But the first issue is what and
how to remember, who should be celebrated and who condemned in a
putative exercise of ‘democratic memory’. As this chapter has shown
both the Civil War and the Franco regime were less straightforward
than myths allow. There was civil war, not genocide. Almost half the
country had voted for the right in 1936. Foreign governments eventu-
ally recognised Franco. In the same poll in 2008 almost 60% agreed
that Franco had done both bad and good things.37
The starting point for this discussion must be that the Republican
administration in 1936 was unquestionably the legitimate government

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of Spain, and that the nationalist generals staged an illegal coup

attempt. Go further, and there are shades of grey. Cercas has pointed
out that while the Republic had right on its side politically, it did not
enjoy a monopoly of moral reason or virtue. ‘Just as there are scoun-
drels who support good causes, there are people who in good faith back
the wrong side. To judge them now is too easy.’38 Not all of those on
the Republican side were democrats and not all of those on the nation-
alist side were not; and those who were democrats weren’t necessarily
continuously so. Prieto, whose questionable role in the uprising of
October 1934 was the only blemish on an otherwise impeccably demo-
cratic political career, wrote to Negrín in 1939 with self-critical aware-
ness: ‘Few Spaniards of the current generation will be free of blame for
the infinite misfortune into which they have plunged the fatherland.
Of those of us who have been active in politics, no-one.’39
Pedro Sánchez, visiting Chile in 2018, stated that: ‘we have to set
up a truth commission to agree a national version of what happened in
the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship.’ He added that the commis-
sion should be ‘the most plural possible’ and should ‘incorporate all the
historical perspectives on the Civil War’ so that ‘from there we can
definitively close all the wounds’. It sounds wholly reasonable. More
than fifty truth commissions have been set up around the world since
the 1980s. Their primary function is to establish what happened, and
to allow victims to tell their stories if they want to. That can be espe-
cially valuable in the immediate aftermath of a conflict. Some propo-
nents claim that time is no barrier. President Macron in 2021 decided
to set up a commission into France’s colonial war against Algerian
independence of 1954 to 1962. ‘France has been in denial for a very
long time,’ said Benjamin Stora, the historian who will direct it.40 That
followed a similar decision in Belgium, where a commission is looking
at the country’s appalling record as the colonial power in the Congo.
Yet, in the case of Spain, the work of historians and researchers
means that little about the Civil War and the dictatorship remains

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unknown. Any gaps would best be filled by reforming the official

secrets act to give researchers access to military archives, something
successive governments have promised but failed to do, a failure that
smacks more of bureaucratic inertia than conspiracy. And eighty-five
years after the start of the Civil War it is the descendants, rather than
the victims, who would give testimony to a truth commission. Some
Republican families certainly long felt that their suffering was not
recognised. It wasn’t during the dictatorship, but it is now. It is highly
questionable, too, whether a single ‘national version’ of the past can
ever be established. Remembrance and reconciliation are especially
painful and difficult after civil wars, as General Charles de Gaulle
pointed out towards the end of his life: ‘All wars are bad. . . . But civil
wars, in which in both camps there are brothers, are unpardonable,
because peace is not born when the war ends.’
‘We should pose questions more than answers,’ Santos Juliá, one of
Spain’s most distinguished historians, who died in 2019, told me.41 To
close, rather than open, wounds, the ‘democratic memory’ law would
have to be negotiated with the PP. The government showed no inten-
tion of doing that. And a truth commission would have to be an exer-
cise in self-criticism and mutual recognition and forgiveness by both
right and left. In 2002 the PP did bring itself to condemn the coup of
1936.42 But conscious that many of its older voters grew up franquistas,
it is uncomfortable about delving too deep into the past. And the left
continues to mythologise the Republicans.
Everything about the proposals for a truth commission and the
proposed law of democratic memory suggested that history was once
again being used as a political weapon. In fact, this trend resumed
around the turn of the century. ‘That didn’t happen in the transition,’
said Juliá. ‘Nobody asked where was your father in the Civil War.’
Twenty years later politicians began to derive political identity from
the doings of their grandfathers. Podemos, in particular, has used anti-
franquismo as a political discourse. But both sides of the political divide

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have recently played politics with history. After the publication of the
draft ‘democratic memory’ law, Madrid’s city council, in the hands of
the PP, decided to tear down a plaque to Largo Caballero which had
been approved unanimously in 1981 (though both he and Prieto still
have prominent statues in Madrid).
The second argument by defenders of ‘historical memory’ and transi-
tional justice is that a failure to confront the past leads to a weaker or
flawed democracy still impregnated with authoritarian streaks. In a cele-
brated phrase George Santayana, a Spanish philosopher who spent much
of his life in the United States and Italy, argued: ‘Those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ This is wrong. As David
Rieff has argued in a thoughtful and erudite critique of ‘historical memory’:

far too often collective historical memory as understood and

deployed by communities, peoples and nations – which . . . is
always selective, more often than not self-serving, and historically
anything but unimpeachable – has led to war rather than peace, to
rancour and ressentiment (which increasingly appears to be the
defining emotion of our age) rather than reconciliation, and to the
determination to exact revenge rather than commit to the hard
work of forgiveness.43

This certainly applies in the Balkans: for Serb nationalists defeat at the
Battle of the Black Mountain in 1389 plays a similar role to 1714 for
their Catalan equivalents. It applies, too, in Northern Ireland, and in
the commemorations of the Confederacy in the southern United States
from which a line leads to the current attempts to restrict the right of
black Americans to vote. As Rieff concludes: ‘we do not have to deny
the value of memory to insist that the historical record . . . does not
justify the moral free pass that remembrance is usually accorded
today.’44 According to Carmen Calvo, ‘we don’t have the right to forget,
we have the obligation to remember.’45 Again, this is wrong. There is

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no absolute moral obligation to remember, and proponents of ‘histor-

ical memory’ have no claim to moral superiority. These are questions
for individuals, not the state, to decide as they see fit.
The practical question is whether Franco’s ghost still exercises influ-
ence over Spanish society and over the institutions of its democracy. And
the answer is: very little. There are one or two bars – out of many tens of
thousands – which are shrines to his memory. But his overt supporters
are a small hard core, numbering no more than a few thousand. It took
a few years for the Civil Guard to adopt democratic practices. Democracy
brought a new national police force, alongside the guard. Like the police
forces, the judiciary is predominantly conservative – as these institutions
tend to be in many countries – but today none of its members was
appointed by Franco. The armed forces lost their political veto when
Suárez legalised the Communist Party against their opposition, and with
the failure of the 1981 coup attempt. Entry into NATO and participa-
tion in peacekeeping missions has brought about the democratic
modernisation of the army that Azaña yearned for.
The events of the past few years have prompted faint rumblings of
discontent in the security forces. Some were alarmed by the threat to
the unity of Spain posed by Catalan separatism. There were murmur-
ings when Pablo Iglesias and Podemos, an openly Republican party
whose loyalty to the constitution was initially equivocal, entered the
government. The government’s deals with Bildu and Esquerra for the
2021 budget produced particular fury on the right. The army was
annoyed, too, that Sánchez agreed with the Basque Nationalist Party to
hand over an important barracks in San Sebastián to the city council
for urban development. In November 2020 this disquiet surfaced
when a hundred or so retired officers signed an open letter to King
Felipe in which they complained that the ‘social-communist govern-
ment, supported by philo-ETA people and separatists’ was threatening
national unity. Some 270 retired officers – out of a total of around
20,000 – signed another letter, organised by the head of the Francisco

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Franco Foundation, claiming that ‘the unity of Spain and constitu-

tional order’ were at grave risk. A leaked WhatsApp chat group
contained at least one posturing comment invoking Franco.
General Miguel Ángel Villaroya, the chief of the general staff, issued
a statement criticising the letters and the chat group, and insisted that
those involved didn’t represent the armed forces. Prosecutors investi-
gated but concluded that the WhatsApp group involved purely private
communications with no intention that they be made public.46 These
events were soon put in perspective in April 2021 in France, where a
score of retired generals and around 1,200 other former service personnel
signed an open letter to a right-wing magazine. They complained of the
‘disintegration’ of France at the hands of anti-racists and Islamists ‘who
are contemptuous of our country, its traditions and its culture’, and
warned that military intervention might be necessary. The army identi-
fied eighteen serving soldiers among the signatories. A study found that
in the first round of the 2017 election 41% of military personnel and
54% of police voted for Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate,
compared with 16% of electorate as a whole. But the army commander
insisted that, as in Spain, the great majority of service personnel respected
their duty of political neutrality.47 Germany, too, has recently seen signs
of far-right sympathies in the army. In October 2020 Horst Seehorfer,
the interior minister, reported that there had been 1,400 cases of
suspected far-right extremism among the police, the army and the intel-
ligence services. The following year the army dissolved a company of the
special forces because of its ties to the extreme right.48 So it is hard to see
Spain’s military malcontents as a consequence of a supposedly flawed
democratic transition. Rather than Franco, they seemed to be more in
tune with Vox, which is just one among a dozen or so hard-right parties
that have emerged across Europe in this century.

For the first thirty years or more of the democratic period, Spanish
nationalism was in abeyance, discredited by the authoritarian form it

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had taken under Franco. After the PP got into power in 1996 the most
Aznar did was to install a gigantic Spanish flag in the Plaza Colón, in
the heart of bourgeois Madrid, which then started to become a rallying
point for demonstrations by the right. As right-wing national-populist
parties sprung up elsewhere, many commentators remarked on the
absence of one in Spain, often attributing this to Franco’s toxic legacy.
In fact, it was only a matter of time, and the required circumstances,
for this to change.
What roused Spanish nationalism from its long hibernation was
above all the separatist procés in Catalonia. In the autumn of 2017,
Spanish flags appeared on balconies across the country. And Vox
emerged from obscurity. The party was founded in 2013 by PP leaders
in Catalonia and the Basque Country, who broke away in fury at what
they saw as Rajoy’s pusillanimous response to those territories’ nation-
alisms. Its founding leaders included Santiago Abascal, whose family
had suffered repeated attacks and harassment by ETA sympathisers;
Javier Ortega Smith, a lawyer with franquista and military connections;
Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, an aristocratic property developer; and
his wife, Rocío Monasterio, an architect of Spanish-Cuban descent.
Vox’s breakthrough came in the Andalucian regional election in 2018,
when it won 11% of the vote and 12 of the 109 seats in the regional
assembly.
There were three factors behind its growth, Espinosa de los Monteros
told me. ‘Catalonia has given us visibility,’ he said. The second was a
defence of traditions, such as hunting and bullfighting, against polit-
ical correctness and feminism. In Freudian terms, Vox represented the
Spanish male id. It refused to accept that gender violence was an issue,
falsely claiming that women killed men just as much as men killed
women. And the third factor was that WhatsApp and other social
networks allowed the party to bypass the traditional media. As Catalan
separatism receded somewhat, Vox increasingly emphasised illegal
immigration. In the campaign for a Madrid regional election in May

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2021, it stigmatised immigrants who were unaccompanied minors,

exaggerating their numbers and their cost to the state.
One evening in April 2019 I went along to the Plaza Colón to listen
to Vox’s final rally in the campaign for the election that would see its
entry into national politics. Perhaps 15,000 people attended, filling
most of the raised section of the square, beneath the vast Spanish flag
and in front of the brutalist monument to Columbus’s voyage to
America. All four of Vox’s founding leaders spoke. Their pitch was
simple: the uncompromising defence of the unity of Spain, the
upholding of traditional conservative moral values (‘those of your
father and grandfather’ as Abascal put it) and a rejection of illegal
immigration, in that order. There was no mention of Franco. Talking
to several of those who came to listen, the message was always the
same. They were former PP voters who saw the party as weak and
corrupt. They liked Vox because ‘it defends the family, life and the
nation’, as Ricardo Rojo, an administrative worker in the Madrid
municipal government told me. Only once, on a big occasion, did
Abascal make reference to Franco, and that was indirectly. He claimed
in a parliamentary debate on a censure motion he tabled in October
2020 that Sánchez’s administration was ‘the worst government in
80 years’. In this muddled speech he defended Donald Trump, aligning
with his ‘anti-globalism’, attacked the ‘Soviet pretensions’ of the
EU (even as it proposed to give Spain €140 billion in emergency aid)
and the ‘theme park’ of regional autonomy. All the other parties in
the Congress of Deputies, including the PP, voted against the motion.
In a depressing exercise of historical stupidity, in their parliamentary
clashes and in the Madrid regional election campaign of 2021, both
Vox and Podemos deployed the rhetoric of the Civil War, of ‘reds’ and
‘blues’. Fortunately, it seemed that most Spaniards were not swayed
by this.
Clearly Vox draws on some of the same traditions of national
Catholicism as Franco did, and which pre-dated him. But it is hard to

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see its emergence as a consequence of any alleged failure of the transi-

tion. After all, a far-right party (Chega) has recently emerged in
Portugal. Vox grew swiftly, achieving 15% of the vote and fifty-two
seats in the November 2019 election, making it Spain’s third-strongest
party. Researchers have found that those who vote for Vox tend to be
men who lean to the right and who are unhappy with the functioning
of democracy. Significantly, they tend to be younger than average, as is
true for Chega as well. ‘Iberian populist radical right supporters are not
older people who are nostalgic about the authoritarian regimes of the
past, but are instead predominantly a new generation of people
attracted by the radical right,’ according to a recent study.49 Vox voters
appear to be broadly satisfied with the work of previous PP govern-
ments. This implies that many former PP voters now sympathise with
Vox and could return. In other words, an effective leader of the PP
might be able to curb Vox’s growth.
While one of Vox’s leaders had contact with Steve Bannon, Trump’s
former adviser, the party itself identifies most closely with the Catholic
nationalist government of Poland. Abascal has also held friendly meetings
with Viktor Orban of Hungary and Giorgia Meloni of Fratelli d’Italia,
the descendant of Mussolini’s party. Vox did not favour the nationalist
corporatist economics of France’s Marine Le Pen. ‘We are liberal on
economics and conservative on moral questions,’ Iván Espinosa de los
Monteros, one of its leaders, told me in 2019. It later made some attempt
to move away from its neoliberal, low-tax economic policy towards a kind
of nativist welfarism. Across Europe in the past decade, right-wing
national-populist movements have exploited discontent at economic
stagnation and the sense of dislocation prompted by mass immigration,
globalisation and the financial crash of 2008. Rather than Franco, disquiet
about those issues and Catalan separatism are the sources of Vox’s support.
Spain needs to address them, as later chapters will make clear.
But first there is another recent matter which relates to historical
memory: the long campaign of terror by ETA which blighted the

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Basque Country in the name of nationalism. In a parliamentary

exchange in 2020, Cuca Gamarra, the PP’s parliamentary spokes-
woman, criticised the government’s selective approach to historical
memory by referring to its having negotiated support for its budget
from EH Bildu, which includes sympathisers of ETA: ‘How come you
think it’s sensible to rake up the embers of 70 years ago while with
unworthy pacts you trample on the memory of the victims of ETA?’ To
which Carmen Calvo replied: ‘Why do you need to bring ETA
constantly into Spanish politics?’50 The answer is that ETA’s terror is
much more recent than Franco’s. It has been another aspect of Spanish
exceptionalism, even if it is now at last receding.

149
 1. Diego Velázquez’s
great painting, Las
Meninas (The Ladies in
Waiting), ‘plays with
our sense of certainty
about what we see
when we look’.

2. Voting for the constitution in 1978, which ended four decades of dictatorship.
3. Lieutenant-Colonel Tejero, leading a squadron of Civil Guards, burst into the
Congress in a coup attempt in 1981, the defeat of which secured democracy.

4. Supporters of Catalan independence throng Barcelona at the Diada (national day)

demonstration in 2012 which marked the start of the separatist procès.
5. Catalan and Spanish flags on balconies in Barcelona in 2017. The declaration of
independence that wasn’t revived dormant Spanish nationalism.

6. The Benedictine monastery of Montserrat was the cradle of a revival in Catalan nationalism
in the 1950s and 1960s.
7. Francisco Goya’s The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, or Los Fusilamientos (The Executions):
with the popular uprising against Napoleon’s forces, ordinary people became the protagonists
of Spanish history.

8. Antonio Gisbert’s Execution of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach at Málaga, an
icon of the liberal struggles of Spain’s nineteenth century. In 2021, for the first time the
Prado hung it next to Goya’s Los Fusilamientos.
9. Manuel Azaña, the prime minister and then president of the Republic in the 1930s, filled
bullrings and football stadiums for mass meetings.

10. The Spanish Civil War of 1936–9 involved both a battle between democracy
and dictatorship and an attempted social revolution led by anarchist militias such as
these in Barcelona.
11. General Francisco Franco saluting his victorious nationalist troops at the end of the
Civil War.

12. The exhumation of one of tens of thousands of victims of the Civil War and post-war
repression who were thrown into unmarked graves.
13. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao became a globally known poster child
for urban renewal in the Basque Country’s former industrial capital.

14. The bursting of a housing bubble in 2008 threw Spain into an economic slump and left
tens of thousands of empty apartments such as these at Seseña near Madrid.
15. With remarkable speed Spanish society has thrown off social conservatism and embraced
feminism.

16. Large swathes of rural Spain have emptied out, with villages inhabited only by the elderly.
17. For many commentators, Spanish politics, with its crispación or confrontation for its
own sake, began to resemble Goya’s Duel with Cudgels.

18. Pedro Sánchez, prime minister from 2018, was the great survivor of Spanish politics.
19. In 2022 Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the experienced president of Galicia, took over as the
national leader of the conservative People’s Party.

20. Pablo Iglesias, here with Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, tried to be the great
disruptor of Spanish politics, but resigned his formal posts in 2021.
21. Santiago Abascal exploited fears over Catalan separatism and immigration and turned
Vox into Spain’s version of the European populist-nationalist hard right.

22. The future of the monarchy lies with King Felipe and Queen Letizia and their daughters.
23. Every day, high-speed trains streak across what used to be a large country from Madrid’s
Atocha station.

24. For better or worse, partying and sun have become symbols of the Spanish way of life.
 CHAPTER 6

THE BASQUE PARADOX AND

GALEGUISMO

A bookshop called Lagun, meaning ‘friend’ or ‘companion’ in the

Basque language, opened in 1968 in Plaza Constitución in the
heart of the old quarter of San Sebastián. Lagun’s owners were Socialists,
and were fined by Franco’s dictatorship for closing the shop to support
a strike. But it was ETA that would make their venture almost impos-
sible. The terrorist group and its sympathisers, who call themselves the
abertzale (patriotic) left-wing, considered the old quarter to be their
territory. ‘They didn’t like our presence there,’ Ignacio Latierro, the
co-owner of Lagun told me in 2018. From the mid-1980s they first
began to spray paint Lagun’s windows and then break them repeatedly.
The owners responded by placing wooden screens on the windows. ‘It
was like Fort Apache,’ said Mr Latierro. Sympathetic citizens rallied to
their support. ‘For a fortnight we sold books like never before.’ Then
in January 1996 the abertzales sacked the shop, burning its stock of
books in the square. It carried on operating, under police guard. ETA
shot the husband of Mr Latierro’s business partner, leaving him gravely
wounded. In 2001 Lagun moved a few blocks away to a site in the
city’s main shopping district where it has survived into calmer times
after ETA gave up violence in 2011. ‘It was the bookshop with the

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most bodyguards in the world,’ Mr Latierro went on. The hostility of

both ETA and the Franco regime was ‘for the same fundamental
reasons: we weren’t prepared to do what they wanted’.
It is a paradox that the only serious violent challenge to Spanish
democracy came in the Basque Country. With a total population of
just 2.2 million, it is one of the most prosperous and developed parts
of Spain. Since the transition, it has enjoyed the most wide-ranging
autonomy of any region in the EU. The Basque government not only
runs public services, its own police force (known as the Ertzaintza) and
a public television station but also collects its own taxes. In an arrange-
ment known as the concierto económico, it hands over a small slice of
revenue to the central government to pay for the few remaining services
this provides. The result is that in the Basque Country and Navarre,
which enjoys a similar privilege, public spending per person is higher
than in any other Spanish region. It is a paradox, too, that an organisa-
tion like ETA that claimed to be a radically left-wing opponent of the
Franco regime should end up practising the closest thing to fascism the
country has seen in the past forty years. It was ‘the last trace of fran-
quismo’, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, who as Zapatero’s interior minister
did much to bring it to an end, told me in 2008. ETA’s murders of
political opponents in combination with the violent intimidation of
the abertzales, in their attacks on Lagun and in the wider practice
of what they called kale borroka (struggle in the streets), all in the name
of nationalism, closely resembled the actions of the squadristi, the para-
military activists and thugs who paved the way for Mussolini’s rise to
power in Italy in the 1920s. Or as Eduardo Madina, a former Socialist
member of the Congress of Deputies from Bilbao, put it: ‘These few
people, here, who didn’t tolerate anything that wasn’t their ideas . . .
turned the Basques into the last corner of the country that resisted
democracy.’1
After declaring two truces, one in 1998 and the other in 2006, both
of which it soon broke, ETA at last announced ‘a definitive end’ to its

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violence in 2011 and its disbanding in 2018. Its successor political alli-
ance, EH Bildu, is now engaged in a ‘battle for the narrative’ as Arnaldo
Otegi, its leader who was an ETA member, has said.2 In other words, it
is attempting to rewrite the recent history of the Basque Country.

Basque nationalism has many similarities with its Catalan equivalent,

in its identitarian defence of a separate language and culture, its sense
of victimhood, its historical links to the Catholic Church and the
frequent internal divisions among its followers. But there are also
differences. Basque nationalism only emerged right at the end of the
nineteenth century, and only achieved broad support in the current
democratic period. It constitutes ‘a truly spectacular triumph of the
invention of an identity and of a tradition’, according to Álvarez Junco.3
That identity is based partly on a fertile collection of myths developed
from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. They include such fables
as that the Basque language was brought to the area by Tubal, the
grandson of the biblical Noah, that the Basques were the first Europeans
and that Noah himself had written their fueros (legal privileges). Much
is made of the fact that Basques tend to have a different blood group
than other Spaniards. ‘Ultimately, what is striking is not the enigma of
the [Basque] past in itself, but the existence of a people bewitched by
the ethnographic spell which has been cast over that enigma,’ according
to Joseba Zulaika, a Basque anthropologist.4
The notion that Basques form a separate race is questionable. A study
published in 2021 found that they show genetic differences from other
Spaniards but these differences seem to be relatively recent, dating from
the end of the Iron Age (around 2,500 years ago),5 and they are greater
in the core Basque-speaking areas than in the Basque periphery. The
researchers found that Basques and other Spaniards all descend from the
same Stone Age migrants from Europe’s eastern steppes. It appears
that the ancient Iberians, too, spoke a non-Indo-European language.
The differentiation only began when the Romans turned up in

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Iberia. Contrary to some myths, they did conquer the Basques but few
seemed to have settled in the core areas. The Arab-Berber invaders
scarcely got there at all. Impenetrable mountains and an incomprehen-
sible language discouraged genetic mingling, the researchers surmised.
It was this geographical isolation that formed the Basques. The
Basque Country is very different from the lands to its south, though
not so much from Cantabria and Asturias to the west. It is a place of
steep, forested mountains and tight valleys, wedged between the
Pyrenees, the Cantabrian chain and the Bay of Biscay. That was why
Euskara, the Basque language, clung on in rural areas. It is one of only
four surviving non-Indo-European languages in Europe, along with
Finnish, Estonian and Magyar. The bedrock of Basque society was the
solid stone farmhouse, the baserri in Euskara, that can still be seen
today and is similar to the Catalan masia. The region developed its own
folklore and culture. This includes a tradition of choral singing and
poetry recital, as well as sports such as pelota or Jai-Alai, akin to squash,
in addition to stone-carrying, caber-tossing and rowing in thirteen-
oared open fishing boats called traineras. Basque cooking is more
elaborate than its austere Castilian equivalent. Not only is the region
studded with Michelin-starred restaurants but Basque eateries can be
found across Spain. The powerful Basque bourgeoisie have long been
patrons of the arts. The Bilbao Fine Art Museum has one of the finest
collections outside Madrid. Two internationally renowned Basque
sculptors, Eduardo Chillida and Jorge Oteiza, led an artistic revival in
the region in the later decades of the dictatorship.
Basque nationalists seek to create their own state spanning the three
Spanish Basque provinces, Navarre and three Basque districts around
Bayonne that make up part of the French department of Pyrénées-
Atlantiques. Like Catalonia, the Basque Country has never previously
been an independent nation state. The feudal lordship of Vizcaya was
incorporated into Castile around 1100; the other Spanish Basque
provinces, Álava and Guipúzcoa, had followed by 1200, while across

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the Pyrenees the French Basque districts were part of Gascony. Navarre,
parts of which are culturally Basque but others not, was an indepen-
dent kingdom until it was absorbed by Castile in 1515. For centuries
Basque identity was not anti-Spanish; rather, by some accounts at least,
the Basques saw themselves as the most authentic Spaniards of all.6
And that is how many Spaniards saw them. In the many demonstra-
tions against terrorism in cities across Spain, the chant was often Vascos
sí, ETA no (Basques, yes; ETA, no). Sancho Garcés III, the king of
Navarre from 1004 to 1035, briefly united all the Basque lands, but
only because he gained control of the kingdom of León which held the
coastal areas at the time. Significantly he styled himself ‘King of the
Spains’.7 A fierce Christianity took root in the Basque Country. Before
Queen Isabella expelled the Jews from the rest of Castile in 1492, the
Basque lords had done the same in the name of ‘purity of blood’. Inácio
de Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, was from Guipúzcoa. As seafarers,
colonists and royal officials, the Basques played a leading role in Spanish
America, and Basque surnames are still common today in countries
such as Mexico, Colombia and Peru.
Under their medieval fueros, each Basque province and many towns
enjoyed autonomy over laws, a reduced level of taxation and exemp-
tion from military service. These privileges were accepted by successive
monarchs. Because the Basques had backed the Bourbon cause in the
War of the Spanish Succession the fueros survived the Nueva Planta,
and only came into question in the nineteenth century. Under the
Peace of Vergara, which ended the First Carlist War, the fueros were
incorporated into the Spanish constitution and the customs barrier
moved to Spain’s border with France, ending what had been a kind of
free-trade area. In the telling of history by some Basque nationalists,
1839 and the end of the fueros play a similar role to 1714 for their
Catalan peers. The fueros were an anachronism in a liberal state that
was attempting to build a homogeneous nation. A law of the Restoration
monarchy in 1876 scrapped them altogether, replacing them with an

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 THE BASQUE PARADOX AND GALEGUISMO

economic arrangement – the concierto económico – under which the

Basque provinces continued to collect their own taxes but shared the
revenues with the central government. Only Navarre retained a fuero,
recognition of its history as an independent kingdom that had merged
with Castile.
Not coincidentally, Basque nationalism emerged just when the iron
and steel works of Vizcaya became the second great pole of the Spanish
industrial revolution after Catalan textiles. Along with the ironworks,
shipbuilding flourished in Bilbao and metallurgical businesses, many
of them family-owned, in Guipúzcoa. A powerful Basque bourgeoisie,
in Bilbao especially, came to dominate much of Spanish finance and
business. The factories and shipyards drew in migrants from elsewhere
in Spain. Bilbao and the other Basque cities were Spanish-speaking
strongholds of liberalism and socialism while San Sebastián became an
elegant summer resort for the Spanish monarchs and the European
aristocracy.
This dilution of a supposedly ‘pure’ Basque race alarmed Sabino
Arana, an eccentric and reactionary writer from a Carlist family
who founded the PNV in 1895. His ideology and conception of
Basque identity were based on a fundamentalist Catholicism and a
racist hostility to other Spaniards whom he dubbed maketos. That
echoed the anti-Semitic concern with the ‘purity of the blood’ of
the Spanish Inquisition. He saw women as subordinate to men. Arana
and his brother invented a name for the Basque provinces (Euskadi)
and a flag, the red, green and white ikurriña, whose design they
copied from the Union Jack. Arana called for independence. In contrast
to Catalonia, he based this claim on race rather than language. Euskara,
a clutch of dialects whose use was largely confined to rural areas, was
only codified into a single language in 1968. The great Basque writers
– such as Miguel de Unamuno and Pio Baroja – preferred to write in
Castilian Spanish. Only in the current democratic period has Euskara,
which is now energetically promoted by the Basque regional

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 SPAIN

government, started to acquire a literature. Arana invented many new

words in Euskara, including versions of Spanish Christian names. One
neologism was jeltzalea, meaning a supporter of his slogan Jaungoikoa
Eta Lege Zarra (‘God and the old laws’). In Euskara he called his party
Eusko Alderdi Jeltzalea. Its official initials today are EAJ-PNV.
The PNV gained early support in the countryside and especially
among the urban lower middle class, which felt squeezed between the
cosmopolitan financial elite and the largely immigrant workforce. At
first the heirs to Carlism looked on the PNV with suspicion as a rival.
But the party put down roots, through social clubs called batzoki,
unions and hill-walking clubs. Towards the end of his life, ill and in
prison, Arana had moderated his demand for independence into one
for autonomy. His legacy to the movement he created was thus ambiva-
lent, and enabled the PNV to attract supporters of both.8 Many of its
subsequent leaders have combined an emotional commitment to inde-
pendence with a hard-headed appreciation of the benefits of autonomy
within Spain. After Arana’s early death the PNV became increasingly
pragmatic. In the Civil War of the 1930s the PNV and the main Basque
cities backed the Republic, while 80,000 Carlist volunteers from
Navarre and Álava fought for Franco. What swayed coastal Basque
loyalty to the Republic was the grant of a home-rule statute in 1936.
José Antonio Aguirre, a PNV leader who was a far more attractive figure
than Arana, became the first lehendakari or president of the regional
government. Aged just 32, he was the mayor of Getxo, a bourgeois
suburb of Bilbao, a former footballer for Athletic Bilbao and the heir to
a family chocolate factory.9 Politically he was a moderate centrist. It is
Aguirre’s portrait that hangs today in the vestibule of the PNV’s
imposing headquarters in Bilbao.
In victory, Franco was vengeful towards the Basques. He took it as a
particular betrayal that the conservative, Catholic PNV should have
backed the Republic. In contrast, because they had supported him, Álava
was allowed to keep its concierto económico and Navarre its fuero and

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 THE BASQUE PARADOX AND GALEGUISMO

Euskara was tolerated there, in the only exceptions to Franco’s unitary

regime. But Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa, the ‘traitorous provinces’ as he
called them, were singled out for punishment in a decree published after
their capitulation: their concierto económico was abolished and the public
use of Euskara banned, as with Catalan. This collective punishment
would eventually prompt a violent reaction.

The two souls of Basque nationalism surfaced again when part of the
PNV’s youth wing broke away in 1959 to form Euskadi Ta Askatasuna
(Basque Homeland and Liberty’, ETA). By then the PNV had evolved
into a staid pro-European Christian Democrat party, most of whose
leaders wanted autonomy rather than independence. ETA wanted to
take on the dictatorship more actively. It defined itself as ‘a revolutionary
Basque organisation for national liberation’. Its worldview combined
ultra-nationalism, authoritarian Marxism-Leninism and Catholic mysti-
cism. ‘It began as a national cause, became a revolutionary cause and
ended as pure, hard terrorism,’ was how Andoni Ortuzar, the current
president of the PNV, described ETA’s trajectory.10 Though its founders
were students and urban professionals it quickly put down roots in the
small towns inland from San Sebastián and Bilbao, partly through a
network of herriko tabernas (people’s taverns). It revived the Carlist tradi-
tion of insurrection.11 Another legacy of the Carlist tradition was that
many Catholic priests in the Basque Country were nationalists and some
supported ETA more or less explicitly. They included José María Setién,
the bishop of San Sebastián from 1979 to 2000, who refused to hold
funerals for victims of ETA in his cathedral. ETA would later attract
support from a new left of feminists and ecologists. Most of its members
were from the middle class, and many of its victims were civil guards
from poor, rural Spain. ‘It was a class struggle in reverse,’ as José Antonio
Pérez, a historian at the University of the Basque Country, put it.12
ETA began with propaganda actions, such as placing the banned
ikurriña on church towers and bombing franquista monuments.13 In

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1968 it murdered a hated police commissioner in Irun. This was

designed to provoke Franco. He duly responded by declaring a state of
siege in the Basque provinces, with the police shooting some suspects,
carrying out mass arrests and torturing detainees. In 1970 the regime
put fifteen ETA members, including two priests, on trial before a mili-
tary court in Burgos for the murder of the commissioner. Five were
sentenced to death. That prompted an international outcry which
caused the dictatorship to commute the sentences to long prison terms.
Then, in 1973, in a carefully planned operation ETA detonated high
explosives under the car of Admiral Carrero-Blanco. The murder of the
man whom Franco was counting on to continue the dictatorship after
his death brought ETA popularity among many Spaniards. Had it
abandoned what it called its armed struggle with the transition to
democracy, history would judge it very differently.
But it didn’t. ETA was part of a wave of urban guerrilla or terrorist
groups that emerged in Europe in the 1960s, such as the IRA in
Northern Ireland, the Red Army Faction in Germany and the Red
Brigades in Italy. Alone among them it took its violent campaign into
the twenty-first century. In all, ETA would be responsible for 853
murders and its shootings and bombs injured 2,632.14 It forced thou-
sands to flee the region.15 More than 90% of its 853 killings, of which
357 were of members of the security forces, occurred after the death of
Franco, despite the amnesty that freed its prisoners and despite the
arrival of democracy. In 1978, the year of the constitution, it killed
sixty-five; in 1979, when the Basque statute of self-government was
approved, it killed eighty-six.16 The group resorted to indiscriminate
terror, in a war against Spanish society as well as the state. A car bomb
at a hypermarket in Barcelona in 1987 killed twenty-one people and
injured forty-five; another, six months later, outside the barracks of the
Civil Guard in Zaragoza killed eleven, including five children, and
wounded eighty-eight. In the 1980s, in what it called, in a sinister
Orwellian term, the ‘socialisation of suffering’, ETA began to murder

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 THE BASQUE PARADOX AND GALEGUISMO

local councillors from the Socialists and the PP in the Basque Country.
It kidnapped eighty-six people in all, to raise funds and to spread
fear. An academic study estimated that ETA raised €106 million
through kidnapping, €21 million from extortion and €19 million from
robberies. The group kidnapped fifty-five businessmen, of whom four
were murdered, five freed by the police and thirteen released after being
shot in the legs as a punishment. The rest paid a ransom. Much of the
kale borroka street violence against shops was linked to extortion.17 In
ETA’s fanatical worldview violence became a self-sustaining end in
itself, and it killed several of its own members or former members who
dared to dissent.
The transition to democracy coincided with harder economic times
in the Basque Country. Its heavy industry had become uncompetitive.
In 1971 Vizcaya had the highest income per head of any Spanish prov-
ince, followed by Guipúzcoa and Álava in second and third place. The
ten years after 1975 saw no economic growth in the region, and unem-
ployment surged from 1.8% to 23.6% as a painful economic adjust-
ment took place.18 But ETA’s main ally was the brutal police repression
in the aftermath of Carrero-Blanco’s death. Police excesses continued
in the early years of democracy. It was a serious blot that during Felipe
González’s first government some members of the police organised a
death squad called the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL).
This killed twenty-seven ETA members and suspects between 1983
and 1987. Another thirty-five were killed by other far-right paramili-
tary groups. This was partly an enraged response to ETA’s killings of
army and police generals which were designed to provoke a coup.
Behind the GAL also lay frustration that French governments tolerated
the use of their territory across the border as a safe haven for ETA.
GAL was not only illegitimate, it was disastrously counter-productive.
As a result of the repression up to a fifth of the Basque population felt
alienated from Spain’s young democracy. Rather than terrorism, the
abertzales proclaimed that ETA’s violence was a defensive response against

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the violence of an essentially undemocratic state and that it was a

consequence of an unresolved political conflict between the Basques
and (the rest of) Spain. False and far-fetched though this narrative was,
it was lapped up to varying degrees by some foreign observers. It is
expressed, for example, in Mark Kurlansky’s The Basque History of the
World, a bestseller that combines credulity towards many nationalist
fables, the presentation of the Basques as comic-book heroes akin to
Asterix, and a nauseating moral equivalence between terrorism and a
democratic state, whatever its imperfections.19 Not only was there a huge
disproportion between the scale and duration of the GAL’s murders and
those of ETA, but a police general and a Socialist interior minister were
jailed for their involvement in the death squad, and it was swiftly shut
down.
In summary, the police violence was an aberration which was
punished; ETA’s violence was a political project and a tool to seek
power. The conflict was not between the Basque people and the Spanish
state but involved a minority of Basques who refused to accept the will
of the majority and the rules of democracy. Unlike in Northern Ireland,
‘there were never two sides here’, José Antonio Pérez, the historian, told
me. ‘There was never a political party or a social group that supported
police crimes.’ He and other historians also question the abertzale
narrative that the police continued to practise systematic torture against
ETA suspects long after Franco was dead. An investigation by the
Basque government into allegations of torture reported that there were
4,000 cases between the 1960s and today. But many of these claims
were made years later. ‘There is no proof except in a few cases,’ he says.
In the 1980s and 1990s ETA created a society dominated by fear.
By one calculation, over 40,000 Basques were under threat, and many
had to live for years with bodyguards shadowing their every move. In
what is a relatively small, claustrophobic society, the menace came
from neighbours, former classmates or work colleagues. That made it
especially chilling. It might begin with spray-painted threats, such as

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the sign of a target, on front doors. In a book published in 2021

Eduardo Madina, the Socialist politician, and Borja Sémper, who
became the president of the PP in Guipúzcoa, talked of those years.
Born within a day of each other in 1976, both were lucky to be still
alive. In 1997 the Civil Guard arrested an ETA team, led by Iratxe
Sorzabal, which was poised to shoot Sémper in the neck at the law
faculty in San Sebastián where he was studying. The gunwoman had
desisted at the last moment because she thought he had a bodyguard,
though on that occasion he didn’t. In 2002 a bomb detonated under
Madina’s car while he was driving to work. He lost a leg but survived,
he thinks mainly because his height (he is 6 feet 3 inches) meant that
the blast missed his upper body.20
Fernando Aramburu, a Basque writer who lives in Germany, offered
a powerful and authentic fictional account of those years in Patria
(Homeland), a novel that has sold more than a million copies in Spain
and was turned into a Netflix series. Set in Hernani, a town a few miles
inland from San Sebastián, it tells the story of two couples who were
neighbours and close friends. Txato sets up a successful haulage
company. He helps his poorer pals, Joxian and Miren, who is so close to
Txato’s wife, Bittori, as to seem like a sister. Then Miren’s middle son,
Joxe Mari, joins ETA, having become entangled in the abertzale world
through his drinking buddies in the herriko tabernas. Txato becomes a
target of extortion. The first time he pays up. Then he refuses. After all,
he reasons, his father was wounded fighting Franco on the Basque front
during the Civil War, and: ‘I’m from here, I speak Basque, I don’t get
involved in politics, I create jobs. . . . Don’t they say they’re defending
the Basque people. Well, if I’m not the Basque people, who is?’ Overnight
Txato and Bittori’s lifelong friends turn their backs on them, and Txato
is ostracised from his Sunday morning cycling fraternity. He is murdered.
Joxe Mari is captured, tortured and jailed, and eventually repents.21
In the end three things brought about ETA’s defeat. The first and
most important was better policing, and cooperation from the French

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government. In 1992 French police arrested the entire ETA leadership

in Bidart, just across the border. The Civil Guard repeatedly tracked
down its successors. Militarily, ETA was beaten by the early 2000s. The
second was that global opinion hardened against ‘armed struggle’ and
terrorism after the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States
and of 11 March 2004 in Madrid. Third, after decades of looking
the other way, either out of fear or indifference, Basque society at
last began to turn against the gunmen. The trigger was two atrocities in
the summer of 1997. First the Civil Guard stumbled upon a home-
made dungeon where José Antonio Ortega Lara, a prison officer, had
been held as a hostage for eighteen months. He was emaciated and
close to death. Ten days later ETA kidnapped Miguel Ángel Blanco, a
29-year-old PP councillor in the small inland town of Ermua, almost
halfway between Bilbao and San Sebastián. They gave Aznar’s govern-
ment forty-eight hours to move all ETA prisoners to jails in the Basque
Country, though they knew that no Spanish government could or did
give in to such threats. Blanco was taken to a forest less than an hour
away and killed with two bullets to his head, having been forced to
kneel.22 But in those forty-eight hours massive demonstrations
demanding his release took place across Spain, including the Basque
Country.
Blanco’s murder was a turning point. ETA came to realise that it
had lost the tacit consent of a broad swathe of Basque society. Through
Herri Batasuna (HB, Popular Unity), the party of the abertzales which
it directed, ETA sought and obtained an agreement with the PNV.
Under the Pact of Lizarra, signed ahead of a Basque regional election
in 1998, both parties agreed to seek independence and break off coop-
eration with the PP and the Socialists while ETA declared a truce. The
PNV party president, Xabier Arzalluz, a former Jesuit priest and the
éminence grise of the Basque government, had previously collaborated
with both González and Aznar in return for the transfer of powers. But
he showed a sinuous ability to play several games at once. He declared

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that ‘the Basque people don’t fit in this constitution’. The Basque

parliament approved a reform of the autonomy statute that would have
included ‘the right to decide’ on independence and a relationship of
‘free association’ with the rest of Spain. It was overwhelmingly rejected
in the Spanish parliament in 2005 (by 303 to 29, all of whom were
peripheral nationalists). ETA’s truce was long over by then. In 2000 it
murdered twenty-three people, including the general secretary of the
Basque Socialist Party.
In response Aznar’s government proposed to the Socialists that they
agree a law to ban HB. Some Socialists were initially reluctant to back
a move that many abroad saw as illiberal. But Zapatero had proposed
a pact with the PP aiming to take terrorism out of the arena of partisan
competition and quickly agreed to it. That was the right judgement.
The law was later upheld by the European Court of Human Rights. It
forced the abertzales to choose between ‘guns or votes’ as Rubalcaba,
Zapatero’s interior minister, put it. They would eventually choose
votes: Arnaldo Otegi, an ETA operative who was HB’s general secre-
tary, began to press his remaining armed comrades to make peace.
Another truce came in 2004. Although this was broken in 2006 when
ETA blew up two newly arrived Ecuadorean migrants in the car park
at Barajas airport in Madrid, the group was a spent force.
Moderates had taken control of the PNV. Zapatero’s government
pursued ETA’s remnants implacably while organising arm’s-length
talks. It agreed gradually to move the 300 or so ETA prisoners, who
had been deliberately dispersed around the country, to jails in the
Basque Country, but made no political concessions. Aznar’s govern-
ment had staged direct talks with ETA after the 1998 truce, but that
did not stop the PP criticising Zapatero. In 2011 three hooded ETA
members, including Sorzabal, who had tried to kill Sémper, declared
an indefinite cessation of violence. This time it lasted. Sortu, the
successor to HB, had amended its statutes to include a rejection of
violence and was legalised in time for the 2012 election, in which it

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stood as part of EH Bildu, a new abertzale coalition. In 2018 ETA at

last announced its disbandment. To promote their narrative of an
underlying political conflict, the abertzales tried to dress this up as the
result of a ‘peace process’ with a motley group of international observers
attending a ceremony across the border in France. Rajoy’s government
took no part in this but nor did it obstruct it. Rubalcaba wrote: ‘The
only truth is that Spanish democracy suffered a lot, it’s true, but in the
end it vanquished the terrorists, who didn’t achieve any of their polit-
ical objectives.’23

The Euskadi of 2018 was a very different place from the Basque
Country of half a century earlier, when ETA had begun its violent
campaign. Whatever its political ambiguities the PNV, which has run
the Basque regional administration for all but three years since its
inception in 1980, has provided generally clean and effective govern-
ment, and piloted an economic transformation. That was exemplified
by Bilbao, which changed from being a heavily polluted rustbelt city to
a globally known poster-child for urban renewal. Its emblem was the
Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, an American archi-
tect, and opened in 1997. It is a remarkable building, its titanium
exterior mimicking the folds and creases of the hills behind or, seen
from the opposite bank of the River Nervión, resembling a ship about
to take sail. Creating what was then the first overseas franchise of the
New York museum required heavy public investment (perhaps US$170
million) and continuing public subsidy. The decision to do this owed
much to the PNV’s political control at all levels of government: region,
province and city hall.24 The Guggenheim was, above all, a bold state-
ment about the future of the Basque region. It changed the sociology
of the city, attracting cultural tourism, as Miguel Zugaza told me. The
director of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum from 1996 to 2002, he
returned there in 2017 after a successful stint running the Prado and
felt the ‘Guggenheim effect’. When he left, his museum got 150,000

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tourists a year; when he returned it got double that, many of them

foreign tourists.
In the Guggenheim’s wake the city hired other starchitects to design
new bridges (by Santiago Calatrava), new metro stations (Norman
Foster) and a new airport terminal (Calatrava again). It opened up the
previously decaying left bank of the river as a pedestrian paseo. Yet, as
important as Bilbao’s facelift was to the region’s economic renaissance,
so too were the Basque government’s effective industrial and training
policies. ‘The industrial and business vocation of the 1970s is still here,
but industry is much more modern and competitive now,’ according to
Pedro Azpiazu, its economic councillor. Though services make up
more than half of the Basque economy, industry still accounts for over
a fifth of its GDP. Including Navarre, the region houses half of Spain’s
car industry, a quarter of its aeronautical industry and 80% of machine-
tool making.25
In the early 1990s the Basque government adopted an industrial
strategy aimed at promoting business clusters, focusing on technology,
the car industry, aeronautics and biosciences. One of its fruits is the
Automotive Intelligence Centre, outside Bilbao. A private-sector
project with help from the diputación of Vizcaya, it is a research and
innovation hub that houses thirty-one companies, ranging from local
to multinational, and provides 800 jobs. It has its own training
academy. Mercedes has a big plant nearby in Vitoria and Volkswagen
in Pamplona. Many of the 300 car parts makers in the region are the
Basque equivalent of the German mittelstand of mid-sized family-
owned manufacturers. Behind Bilbao’s airport the regional govern-
ment and the diputación set up the Vizcaya Science and Technology
park, with 200 high-tech companies and Spain’s second-biggest busi-
ness incubator (after one in Barcelona). Iñigo Angulo-Barturen, the
founder of a biotech start-up housed there, praised the political
commitment of the region’s authorities to business development, and
the availability of qualified staff. Vocational training, a weakness in

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Spain in general, works well in the Basque Country. There are some
25,000 students in training centres in the car industry alone, mostly in
dual schemes involving government and businesses, which combine
instruction with work experience.
All these new businesses allowed the region to regain a top spot in
income per head in Spain, behind only Madrid and above the EU
average. Of course the concierto económico and the resulting generous
funding of the public sector helped. But on the whole public money
was well spent in the Basque Country. Given the PNV’s long stint in
power it is perhaps surprising that there have been only isolated cases
of corruption reported in the region. That may owe something not
only to Jesuit morality, but also to the smallness of the political and
business worlds in Euskadi. ‘Government is very close to the people,’
according to Iñigo Urkullu, the lehendakari since 2012. ‘We can almost
say everyone knows everyone else.’26 It may also help that the practice
of the PNV is to separate the job of head of the party from that of head
of the regional government.
The PNV is the most impressive political machine in Spain. Its
current leaders, with Ortuzar running the party and Urkullu the
regional government, are shrewd realists. Their political objective is a
new statute that would embody the sharing of sovereignty with Spain
rather than independence. ‘We are not starting from scratch, we have
spent forty years building institutions,’ Ortuzar told me when I sat
down with him for an hour at the party headquarters in Bilbao in
2018. ‘There’s nobody in Europe closer to being a nation [state]
without being one.’ But, he went on: ‘The Basque national cause is not
incompatible with Spain. A nation doesn’t have to have a state, not in
Europe today.’ What he would like, he said, is a confederation but he
quickly added ‘we are conscious that this doesn’t exist, not even in
Switzerland’. This circumspection reflects public opinion. The regional
government has succeeded in reviving Euskara. Most children in public
schools are taught in it, and for about 40% of the population it is their

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habitual language. But that hasn’t translated into wanting to break

away from Spain. Polls suggest that two-thirds of the population of
Euskadi feels itself to be both Basque and Spanish and fewer than a
quarter favour independence.27 It is hard not to conclude that the
current situation of radical autonomy represents the best of all possible
worlds for the Basques.

‘The remaining task before us is to avoid that the defeated impose their
false narrative,’ Rubalcaba wrote when ETA disbanded. In June 2021
King Felipe, Pedro Sánchez and Urkullu opened a memorial centre to
the victims of terrorism housed in the imposing former branch office
of the Bank of Spain in Vitoria, the regional capital. A public founda-
tion attached to Spain’s interior ministry but with the support of the
Basque government, the centre is in memory of the victims of all
terrorisms, including Islamist attacks. But 60% of the victims were
those of ETA. It includes a reconstruction of the dungeon where Lara
Ortega, the prison official, was held hostage. Its aims are to honour and
remember the victims, to provide a truthful narrative of what happened
and to spread information about this among young people. ‘We are
professional historians, trying to reconstruct a historically rigorous
account,’ according to Raúl López Romo, who is in charge of its exhi-
bitions. The idea of a conflict between two sides is propaganda to
whitewash the image of ETA, he went on, while admitting that it is
present in Basque society and abroad.
Take Hernani, the town of 18,000 people with a medieval centre
and several industrial estates portrayed in Patria. It remains an abertzale
stronghold. As ETA announced its disbandment in 2018 I visited
Hernani and spoke to Koro Etxeberria, the deputy mayor from EH
Bildu. ‘The conflict still exists, though in different parameters,’ she
insisted. She hadn’t taken part in it, but ‘the armed struggle was to get
rights that have been usurped. . . . Here repression by the forces of the
state was brutal.’ Others felt excluded from Hernani. The local

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secretary of the Socialist party spent a decade without going to the

centre of town. He is greeted now, but not talked to. ‘There are places
you don’t go,’ Latierro, of the Lagun bookshop, said. ‘In the 1950s and
1960s my generation went to Hernani to dance there on Sundays in
the square. I have only been back there twice in the past 20 years.’
On the same visit I crossed the border to Hendaye to speak to Agus
Hernan, a leader of the Foro Social, an umbrella group of abertzale
social movements. He argued for the idea of ‘inclusive memory’, by
which he meant that there were two sides with equally valid narratives.
‘Our idea is that we all have to live together and that means listening to
all accounts.’ In a score of towns across the Basque Country there were
initiatives by mayors to set up conversations between victims and those
responsible. But for many victims this was hard. ‘Reconciliation is an
empty word,’ said Consuelo Ordoñez, a leader of a victims association.
‘I don’t have to be reconciled with my brother’s killer.’ Her brother,
Gregorio Ordoñez, was the PP deputy mayor of San Sebastián, shot in
the neck by ETA in 1995 as he sat in a bar with two party colleagues.
‘Basque society is still kidnapped. The majority don’t want to talk.’
In 2021 Otegi went further than ever before in apologising for
ETA’s violence, saying to victims: ‘We want to tell them that we feel
their pain and to state that it should never have come about. Nobody
can derive satisfaction from this happening. It shouldn’t have gone on
for so long.’28 For some victims’ groups this was a step in the right
direction, since it dropped Otegi’s previous distinction between the
relatives of civilian victims, to whom he apologised, and those from the
police. Others said it still fell short of a clear condemnation of terrorism.
They also wanted the prisoners to help with unsolved crimes and an
end to the welcome ceremonies for freed prisoners who returned home.
For many, the political acceptance of EH Bildu by the Socialists
came too soon. Because of the tight parliamentary arithmetic, Sánchez’s
government negotiated the approval of its budget in both 2020 and
2021 with the abertzales, along with other groups. The Socialists also

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relied on the support of Bildu to form a regional government in Navarre.

‘We Socialists now see Bildu as a normal party,’ declared Jesús Eguiguren,
a former president of the Basque wing of his party who had held talks
with Otegi during Zapatero’s government.29 This contrasted with the
cordon sanitaire other parties continued to place around Sinn Féin in
the Irish Republic two decades after the Good Friday Agreement ended
the IRA’s violence. Yet the PP’s refusal to accept that ETA’s dissolution
was an important change for the Basque Country also carried costs. On
taking over from Rajoy Pablo Casado replaced the leadership of the
PP’s Basque branch with hardline conservatives. They seemed out of
touch with Basque society as it had evolved rapidly over the previous
decade. Polls showed that many younger Basques had little knowledge
or memory of ETA’s crimes. In a regional election in 2020, although
the PNV retained power in coalition with the Socialists, the big winner
was EH Bildu, with 28% of the vote, which consolidated its position as
the second-largest party. Admittedly its gains were mainly at the expense
of Podemos, and the turn-out of 51% was depressed by the pandemic.
The PP won only 7% of the vote, down from 21% in 2001. It looked
as if EH Bildu might, before too long, form part of a Basque govern-
ment, which would bring new difficulties for Spain.

Travel some 500 kilometres west from Bilbao and you come to Galicia,
the third of Spain’s historic ‘nationalities’, in the constitution’s term. It
too has a pronounced regional identity. It is a land of mists, forests and
long Atlantic rías (inlets); of pilgrim routes to the vast medieval cathe-
dral of Santiago de Compostela; remote from almost everywhere, its
people are famous for their caginess. Like Catalonia and the Basque
Country it has its own language – galego, which to the outsider sounds
like a mixture of Spanish, Portuguese and autochthonous elements,
and which has a literature dating back to the twelfth century. It has a
long history of human settlement, originally by Celtic peoples, and
it has clear borders. Like Catalonia and the Basque Country, the Arab-

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Berber presence was light and brief. For a period in the tenth
and eleventh centuries it was an independent kingdom, although
centred on León, before being absorbed dynastically by Castile. It
has characteristic folklore, such as the bagpipes, and legends derived
from a plethora of ancient Celtic fortresses known as castros. In the
mid-nineteenth century Galicia saw a cultural movement known as the
rexurdimento, inspired by the Catalan Renaixença.30
Nevertheless, its story is very different from that of Catalonia or the
Basque Country. Political nationalism came late to Galicia, perhaps
because it was long one of the poorest parts of the Iberian Peninsula, a
land of emigration rather than immigration. The first nationalist organ-
isations were founded during the First World War and the first nation-
alist party, the Galeguista, in 1931. Its members were mainly from the
urban middle class in what was then an overwhelmingly rural region.
Galician representatives in the Cortes were negotiating a statute of
autonomy when the Civil War broke out in 1936. Franco’s coup was
successful in Galicia. The dictatorship’s repression meant that the seed
of nationalism would not flower again until the 1960s, and then mainly
in cultural form such as the renewed public use of the galego language.
Unlike in Catalonia or Euskadi, nationalist parties did not play a leading
role in negotiating Galicia’s autonomy statute of 1981. Represented
since the 1990s mainly by the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) the
nationalists have never obtained more than 30% of the vote in regional
elections, and more often 15% to 25%. Rather, it has been conserva-
tives who have successfully overseen a strong regional identity in Galicia.
Manuel Fraga, Franco’s former information minister and a founder
of what is today the PP, was the regional president in Galicia from 1989
to 2005. After a brief Socialist-led interlude, the PP has ruled again since
2009 under the leadership of Alberto Núñez Feijóo until 2022. Polls
find half of respondents saying they feel equally galego and Spanish,
while only around 15% think of themselves as having a separate national
identity. ‘We’re not on the psychiatrist’s couch asking who we are,’ Feijóo

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told me when I talked to him in his office on a hill opposite the cathedral
in Santiago. Like Fraga before him, Feijóo practises galeguismo. ‘We have
defended Galicia as a place that has its language, culture and particulari-
ties,’ he said. ‘We are the party of the home, the land.’ In what he calls
‘cordial bilingualism’ teaching in school is half in galego and half in
Spanish, though the BNG complains that in practice galego gets shorter
shrift. Nevertheless, Feijóo argues that his galeguismo has halted nation-
alism. It also prevented Vox from making headway. Autonomy has
served not to create nationalists in Galicia but to strengthen the region’s
double identity, according to Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas, the historian
at the University of Santiago de Compostela. ‘Galegos feel very galego.
But they don’t see a contradiction in that with being part of Spain.’
It is a regionalism that wants to get ahead rather than break away,
and to defend its interests by having a strong influence in Madrid. This
is a formula that has largely worked. Since democracy arrived, Galicia
has progressed from its poverty to enjoying an income only slightly
below the national average, becoming the Spanish region with the
fastest economic growth in this century. In other words, it was a text-
book example of ‘levelling up’. Its success owed much to political
stability and a cohesive society. Unlike Catalonia and the Basque
Country, where primogeniture kept the masia and the baserri intact,
Galician tradition was to divide farms among all children. That led not
only to rural poverty and emigration but also to a culture that values
private property, the leira (homestead) and hard work. Its economy has
diversified. It boasts Europe’s largest fishing industry, shipbuilding,
dairying and timber. Its white wine from the Albariño grape has
become an international brand. Galicia also has two industrial main-
stays. Inditex, based near A Coruña has grown from being a single
draper’s shop to the world’s biggest provider of fast fashion through
Zara and its other chains. Second, the vast Citroën plant near Vigo
anchors 30,000 car industry jobs. The regional government has invested
European funds in motorways. It is still six hours to Madrid by car but

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it used to take twice as long. Another motorway runs along Spain’s

north coast to the French border. A third connects Galicia with Porto,
in northern Portugal, in what has become a seamless economic region.
After many delays, in December 2021 the last section of the AVE high-
speed railway to Madrid was completed, slashing journey times.
Having caught up, Galicia’s challenge is to continue to progress socio-
economically. Critics of Feijóo complained that he failed to halt an
exodus of talent, as young professionals seek opportunities abroad. ‘The
economic model gives priority to cement over knowledge,’ Núñez Seixas
argued. Galicia spends little on research and development (R+D)
compared with the Basque Country. It has three airports where one
would suffice; many galegos cross the border to Porto, which has a wider
range of international flights. Economic dynamism in the coastal strip
from A Coruña to Vigo contrasts with the hollowing out of the interior.
Half a century ago more than 800,000 people in Galicia were involved in
farming.31 Now only 45,000 are. In the emptier countryside forest fires
are common. Galicians are ageing. The regional government is trying to
encourage immigration. Ana Pontón, who revived the BNG in the
regional election in 2020, highlights these problems and argues that their
solution lies in ‘the right to decide’ on independence, or at least a Basque-
style concierto económico. But there is little sign that most galegos are likely
to agree.
The PP in Galicia is much more moderate and pragmatic than its
national incarnation was under Pablo Casado, whom Feijóo replaced in
April 2022 (see chapter 9). Feijóo is a manager rather than an ideologue.
His critics saw him as a cacique. But that may have merely reflected the
power and prominence that regional governments have acquired across
Spain. Alongside the three historic nationalities the estado autonómico
has created a mosaic of more or less strong regional identities, some
initially artificial. That is both a strength and a weakness, a point to
which we will return.

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 CHAPTER 7

THE FADING OF THE

SPANISH DREAM

L inares is a dense, compact town of 58,000 people in the province

of Jaén, near the gateway to Andalucía from Spain’s central plateau.
It has been successively a centre of lead mining, a railway hub and
the site of a large factory making Santana jeeps. Today it is a town
with a reputation for having the highest unemployment rate in
Spain, at 33%. The Santana factory, which employed more than 2,000
people in its heyday, closed in 2011. High-speed trains to Seville
and Granada bypass Linares. So do tourists heading for nearby Úbeda
and Baeza with their ancient churches and renaissance palaces of
honeyed stone.
A large Corte Inglés department store in the main square of
Linares closed in March 2021 and stands decaying like a rotten tooth.
Inditex, the fast-fashion giant, recently closed most of its shops in
the town too. ‘Many young people are neither studying nor training,’
Manuel Gámez of a civic pressure group told me when I visited Linares
in June 2021. In economic terms, ‘the whole province of Jaén is
a páramo (wasteland),’ he said. Indeed, Jaén is known mainly for
its ‘green sea’ of endless olive trees that produce a fifth of the world’s
olive oil. We were talking in Gámez’s furniture shop, which received

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only one customer during our hour-long conversation. The business

was in its third generation, but ‘my children won’t be able to live from
it’, he said.
Linares briefly drew national attention four months earlier when an
altercation at a bar terrace involving two off-duty policemen triggered
a street brawl which ended with fourteen arrested and twenty police
lightly hurt. The national media portrayed a town at breaking point.1
That was an exaggeration. Linares’s reputation is overdone, insisted
Raúl Caro-Accino, the mayor. Formerly the director of the local
chamber of commerce he was an independent, elected for Ciudadanos
in a town that long voted Socialist. He pointed out that the store
closures were the result of national business decisions related to the
take-off in internet commerce during the pandemic. He enthused
about technology businesses in industrial estates on the outskirts of the
town. He took me to see one called Sicnova that makes customised
steel parts using 3D printing. Evolutio, a cloud-services subsidiary of
British Telecom, planned to set up a research centre in Linares. These
businesses were drawn by the presence in the town of the technology
faculty of the University of Jaén and its business incubator. The unem-
ployment rate was in line with other places in southern and western
Spain, the mayor insisted. ‘We have a problem of unqualified labour,’
he admitted.
What that meant was long-term unemployment for many people in
Linares, and a self-fulfilling sense of failure and lack of opportunity.
‘I’ve been looking for work for months,’ said Carlos Márquez, aged
21, who was laid off from a job selling mobile phones in a hypermarket
before the pandemic. ‘There’s nothing in Linares. I would have to
go somewhere else.’ Some blame themselves for failing to get qualifica-
tions. ‘I was unemployed for ages, I didn’t study, I was lazy,’ said
Antonia Delgado as she walked along the Pasaje del Comercio, the
main shopping street, with her son. She had just got a month’s work
looking after old people, but wasn’t optimistic. ‘There are no

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opportunities. Things were bad and are now worse with the pandemic.
This place is dead.’
Spain’s economy stands out in Europe mainly for its chronic high
unemployment, especially among women, young people, men over 50
and those with few skills and little education. A large chunk of the
unemployed have been so for more than a year, or even two. This is the
main reason why inequality and poverty rose above the European
average after the great recession of 2007–9 (in Spain’s case, 2008–13).
It is a waste of human potential and a policy failure. One might expect
this to be more of a scandal than it is, especially with left-wing govern-
ments in office since 2018. But this social problem is ‘quite invisible’,
according to Xavier Coller, a sociologist at Pablo de Olavide university
in Seville.2 That is partly because while the jobless are poor they are
‘not dying of hunger’, he said. Those who don’t qualify for unemploy-
ment insurance receive €400 per month from the government. Some
are immigrants. The unemployed are often thought to profit from the
black economy, especially in Andalucía. This may be equal to around
17.5% of Spain’s GDP, though that is close to the EU average.3 A
second feature of the economy is a kind of dualism exemplified by
Linares, with a modern, internationalised segment coexisting with a
large mass of small, unproductive family businesses. A third, more
positive, feature is the Spanish economy’s ability to grow fast and rein-
vent itself, at least partially.
Until the slump of 2008 to 2013, each generation of Spaniards
since the 1960s had lived better than their parents and the middle class
steadily expanded. Many achieved – or could at least aspire to – the
Spanish dream of owning a flat and a car, and taking a month’s summer
holiday. In many cases they spent that holiday at a second home, either
at the beach or in the pueblo, the rural village whence their parents or
grandparents had migrated to the city. This dream is now fading under
the impact of two deep slumps in a decade. A poll of 18–34-year-olds
for El País newspaper, published in July 2021, found that 75% thought

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they would be worse off than their parents while only 12% thought
they would be better off. This generation has reached adulthood not
just in a stop–start economy but also in a dysfunctional labour market
in which precariedad (precariousness, or lack of stability) and tempo-
rary contracts are the norm. Its plight was summed up in Feria, a
surprise bestseller by Ana Iris Simón, a previously unknown writer
born in 1991. In a video that went viral she challenged Pedro Sánchez,
complaining: ‘I’ve been made redundant three times, and my tempo-
rary contract expired two days after I was due to give birth for the first
time. I have neither a car nor a mortgage because I can’t afford them.’4
Her parents were postal workers from La Mancha, and lifelong
Communists. Her memoir began: ‘I envy the life my parents had at my
age.’ As she highlighted, the implicit social contract between genera-
tions is fraying. While the welfare state looks after older Spaniards,
younger generations get short shrift and face uncertain prospects. This
– and not nationalisms or historical memory – is the biggest problem
facing the country. And it doesn’t get anything like the attention it
should.
What has gone wrong? In both the 2008–13 recession and in the
pandemic slump of 2020–21 Spain was hit worse than most of the rest
of Europe. In different ways, both recessions highlighted structural
weaknesses in the economy. Yet in between the country enjoyed a
vigorous recovery, and the contrast between what happened in each of
these recessions points to potentially encouraging underlying changes.
But remaking the social contract will require far-reaching reforms. And
there is little sign that the politicians can find sufficient consensus to
enact them.

Between 1995 and 2007 Spain’s economy grew at an average rate of

3.5% a year, well above the EU average of 2.2%. Unemployment, which
had rocketed upwards with the economic restructuring and oil shocks
of the 1970s, at last fell steadily during this long expansion, reaching a

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floor of 8% in 2007. Yet the growth was unbalanced, unsustainably

skewed towards the construction and housebuilding boom. It was also
inefficient. A later study for the Bank of Spain by a team of economists
found that productivity declined during this period while it increased in
the EU as a whole.5 In other words, the growth all came from adding
workers – this was when immigration took off and younger women
joined the workforce at a faster rate than in the past – and capital, helped
by the cheapness of credit as Spain joined the euro. The ratio of total
credit to GDP tripled between 1994 and 2007. Much of this money
was in effect wasted, and not just the billions which went on white
elephants. There seem to have been several reasons for this inefficiency
in allocating resources. One was that some of the growth was in indus-
tries that depended on government regulation, such as banking and
energy as well as construction and infrastructure. The authors of the
study refer drily to the ‘important macroeconomic costs of cronyism’.
Another reason was that newer and more efficient firms seemed to find
it harder to get bank credit. As a result, there was insufficient competi-
tion to drive efficiency. At the top Spanish business often resembled a
cosy, male oligarchy. Chief executives of publicly quoted companies
behaved as if they were owners rather than the hired help of share-
holders. They stayed for ever. Francisco González glued himself in as the
CEO of BBVA, one of the big three banks, from 2000 to 2018. He was
forced out only when he was charged with maladministration, after the
bank’s management hired José Manuel Villarejo, a rogue former police
commander, to spy on the boss of a construction company which
attempted to organise a takeover bid for BBVA. González, who pleaded
his innocence, faced further charges of using the bank for private
purposes. Two other long-standing bosses, Antonio Brufau of Repsol,
an oil and gas company, and Isidre Fainé of La Caixa, another big bank,
were investigated over their firms’ use of Villarejo though charges against
them were dropped for lack of evidence. Ignacio Sánchez Galán has run
Iberdrola, a large electricity company, since 2001.

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The flaws of Spanish crony capitalism were exposed by the bursting

of the housing and credit bubbles in 2008. Between that year and
2013, Spain lost 9% of its GDP in real terms, private consumption fell
by 14% and unemployment surged again, to 27% by early 2013.6
Young people were hit especially hard: the average income of those
under 35 fell by a quarter between 2008 and 2014, while youth unem-
ployment (i.e. among those aged 15 to 24) peaked at a searing 57% in
2013. Almost 230,000 companies perished, according to an estimate
by the Círculo de Empresarios, a business think-tank. Perhaps 1 million
young Spaniards, as well as some of the recent immigrants, left the
country in search of work.7 The scars took years to heal. It was not until
mid-2017 that the economy surpassed its level of 2008.
There were still places where it hadn’t. Take, for example, Talavera
de la Reina, an hour and forty minutes south-west of Madrid on a slow
train. The site of a battle during the Peninsular War it was long known
for its blue and yellow hand-painted tiles and pottery. When I visited
in 2017, it had become notorious for unemployment, just as Linares
became in the pandemic slump. Although its population had shrunk
by 5,000 (to 85,000) since 2012, its jobless rate was still around 35%.
During the housing boom Talavera had thrived, as many people
worked in building materials firms sited along the Tagus valley or
commuted to the Madrid suburbs to work on construction sites. Those
jobs disappeared and had not come back. On the wall of the bullring
someone had spray-painted, in English, ‘Make Talavera Great Again’
(it was not long after Donald Trump’s election victory under the slogan
‘Make America Great Again’). There seemed to be only the faintest of
chance of that. Its pottery had fallen out of fashion. Its moribund
textile industry had failed to modernise. The exhibition centre,
normally used for livestock marts, was hosting a two-day ‘Job and
Enterprise Fair’, but only about 100 jobs were on offer. ‘Talavera needs
to change its economic structure,’ explained Joaquín Echaverría of the
local chamber of commerce.

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That was true for Spain as a whole, and to an extent it has happened.
The skeleton of a new and more competitive economy emerged from
the wreckage of the housing bust. As well as the economic blackspots
there were plenty of less remarked bright spots. In 2017 I visited a
research centre tucked away in Abrera, in the Llobregat valley west of
Barcelona, amid a jumble of old wine-producing villages and box-like
modern factories and warehouses. The centre was one of a dozen owned
by Gestamp, a firm from Burgos that in just two decades became one
of the world’s leading makers of bodywork, doors and bonnets for the
global car industry. With more than 100 plants in 23 countries and
revenues in 2019 of €9.1 billion, Gestamp is a specialist in hot
stamping. This process makes parts six times more resistant than if they
are cold-stamped, allowing cars to be safer, lighter and less polluting.
What was once mere metal-bashing had become a high-tech opera-
tion. ‘We are working on cars that will only go into production in five
or six years’ time,’ explained Juan José Matarranz, one of over sixty
scientists and engineers at the Abrera centre. This work included differ-
ential heating of parts for shock absorption and smart doors that close
automatically when they detect an obstacle. Alongside, in a factory
equipped with robots, laser-cutters and high-temperature forges,
Gestamp churned out parts for shipment to Ford and Audi in the
United States as well as for SEAT’s large car plant down the road at
Martorell.
Spain has become Europe’s second-biggest producer and exporter of
cars, after Germany. The industry represents 8.5% of GDP and
provides 19% of exports and some 2 million jobs, most of them of
good quality. In June 2021 Pedro Sánchez and King Felipe went to
SEAT’s plant at Martorell to announce that the first big project on
which the government planned to use European post-pandemic aid
was a bet on electric mobility. This would involve €4.3 billion in public
investment, partly to set up a nationwide charging network and offer
subsidies to trade in diesel and petrol cars.8

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When recovery at last began in 2014 it was led by exports, which

reached 33% of GDP by 2017, up from 23% in 2009. More than
150,000 Spanish companies exported in 2016, half as many again as in
2007. As well as cars, Spain also makes trains and parts of Airbus jets.
It excels, in modern formats, at traditional nineteenth-century indus-
tries. As noted, Inditex, is the world’s leading retailer of fast fashion.
One of its dozen clusters of factories and suppliers worldwide remains
in Spain, producing clothes worth €1.2 billion in 2018.9 Many top-
quality, hand-stitched women’s shoes are made in Mallorca. The
country has a broad-based food and drink industry. It supplies Europe
with much of its fruit and vegetables. Its many excellent wines are
starting to command higher prices abroad. Iberian ham, from pigs
reared outdoors which gorge on acorns, is a luxury product whose
exports are growing. New exports included chemicals, pharmaceuti-
cals, machinery and professional services. In many cases, in textbook
fashion, firms looked to sell abroad because the recession cut demand
for their products at home. One study found that this explained almost
75% of the increase in exports between 2009 and 2013.10 Another
talked of a Spanish ‘export miracle’.11
One addition to the ranks of exporters was ASTI Mobile Robotics,
based in a large, featureless shed beside the motorway between the
Castilian towns of Burgos and Lerma. Inside, on the main shop floor,
when I visited in 2018, a score of workers armed with iPads were
testing driverless contraptions mounted on red or orange steel frames.
The robots, or automatic guided vehicles, they were designing, building
and controlling with customised software operated in factories and
warehouses in sixteen countries, delivering parts to production lines.
They were the brainchild of Veronica Pascual, a young aeronautical
engineer who took over her parents’ small conveyor-belt maker when
it ran into trouble. She turned it into a mid-sized multinational with
300 workers and sales growing by 30% each year since 2015. As a
research-intensive high-tech company with global ambitions, growing

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fast and run by a woman, ASTI was everything that Spanish business
traditionally was not. But commanding the capital and resources to
achieve global scale in a high-tech business is tough. In 2021 Pascual
sold the business to ABB, a giant Swiss-Swedish engineering company,
though she was to have a senior role in its robotics division.12
Companies like ASTI have sprung up across the country, led by a
new generation of entrepreneurs, many of them educated abroad and
more internationally minded than their parents. In Barcelona, Madrid
and the Basque Country, start-ups in technology and biomedicine
flourished, some linked to universities. The first Spanish ‘unicorns’ (a
privately owned start-up whose market value exceeded US$1 billion)
included eDreams, a Barcelona-based online travel agency; Cabify,
based in Madrid and a rival to Uber; and Glovo, a meal delivery outfit.
Tourism also boomed (before the pandemic brought it to a halt),
though that was partly because of terrorist incidents in rival destina-
tions, such as Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey. Most of it remained the tradi-
tional low-cost sun and sangría holidays on the costas. But a growing
segment was year-round cultural tourism as cities across the country
sought to replicate Bilbao’s ‘Guggenheim effect’. Some merely wasted
money on starchitects, but several succeeded sooner or later. Malaga
was once a dull place skirted by tourists heading for the Costa del Sol.
Under the leadership of the mayor since 2000, Francisco de la Torre, it
acquired a cluster of art museums, including outposts of the Russian
state museum and Paris’s Pompidou Centre, and became a tourist
destination in its own right. Santander, along the coast from Bilbao,
was pursuing a similar course to its neighbour. Valencia’s €1.3 billion
splurge on the City of Arts and Sciences, a complex of fantasy build-
ings including an opera house, aquarium and several museums, started
to pay off at last, as tourist numbers rose. The proportion of foreign
tourists who came to Spain mostly for cultural reasons was still only
15% of the total but was rising fast, from 8 million in 2012 to
12.9 million in 2017.13

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Recovery was helped by favourable external conditions, including

low interest rates and oil prices (Spain imports much of its energy). But
it was also aided by Rajoy’s economic reforms. The clean-up of the cajas
and the banking system meant that credit began to flow again. The
bank rescues had cost €66 billion, according to an estimate by the
Bank of Spain, but at least they seemed to have worked. In the pandemic
slump the banks proved not to be a source of worry, though regulators
kept a weather eye on them. The collapse of Banco Popular, a mid-
sized lender, in 2017 was a delayed reaction from the housing bust
rather than the start of a new wave of insolvency. The banking industry
went through a wave of necessary shrinkage, cost-cutting and mergers,
of which the most notable was the absorption of Bankia by La Caixa.
Between 2008 and 2020 the banks closed almost half of their branches
and laid off 37% of their workers. Even so, Spain still had more bank
branches per head than anywhere in the EU, except France.14
The labour reform helped firms to compete. The Spanish economy
proved to be more flexible than those of France or Italy, reckoned José
Luis Escrivá, the director of a new independent fiscal authority appointed
by Congress, who went on to become social security minister in Sánchez’s
government. He compared 2017 with 1999, a cyclically neutral year, and
pointed out many differences. A current account deficit of 3.3% of GDP
had changed to a surplus of close to 2%. Before the great recession, infla-
tion and labour costs in Spain were uncomfortably high. Since then unit
labour costs had fallen well below the eurozone average and inflation was
lower than in Germany. The labour reform of 2012 contributed to rapid
job creation as the economy picked up. Fátima Báñez, the labour minister
who introduced it, said that it set in motion ‘a new employment culture
in Spain, of flexisecurity’. She claimed it had helped to generate more
than 3 million jobs in the recovery, and meant that the Spanish economy
no longer had to grow faster than 2.5% per year before employment
expanded.15 The main macroeconomic weakness was that the public debt
and the fiscal deficit were both much higher as a result of the recession.

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But the structure of the economy was only partially changed, and
the policy environment in which businesses operated was only half-
reformed. At the top, big Spanish companies were still disproportion-
ately to be found in regulated industries, clustering in Madrid in a nexus
of politics and the media. They included banks, utilities and construc-
tion firms. The biggest expanded into Latin America in the 1990s
and into the UK and Europe in the following decade before, in many
cases, retrenching. There is a Spanish mittelstand of mid-sized, often
family-owned, manufacturers, especially in Catalonia, the Basque
Country, Navarre, north-east Castile and Valencia. And then there is
the vast mass of low-productivity small and micro businesses. Under
1% of Spanish firms have more than fifty workers, compared with
3% in Germany and 1.8% in Britain, according to the Círculo de
Empresarios. Moving up the scale was hard. That was partly because
the rules discouraged it: once a firm had fifty workers or sales of over
€6 million a year it had to set up a union committee, comply with addi-
tional regulations and pay higher taxes. There was a case for phasing
in such requirements as firms grew, and raising the floor at which they
came into effect. Companies like Gestamp and ASTI, which invested
heavily in innovation and R+D, were exceptional. Public spending
on R+D was slashed during the great recession. In 2019 it totalled only
around 1.3% of GDP, half the average in the OECD (Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development) group of mainly rich
countries.
Spain enjoys world-class communications infrastructure, as seen in
its high-speed trains, motorway network and modern ports and airports
(although railway connections for freight and in rural areas are weak).
It has the most extensive fibre-optic network for high-speed data trans-
mission in Europe. But the burden of ineffective government regula-
tion is heavy. The piles of pointless red tape for which Latin America is
notorious were largely invented in Spain and are alive and well there.
In the World Economic Forum’s Competitiveness Index in 2019 Spain

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ranked an impressive seventh out of 141 countries for infrastructure. It

was placed in a lowly 114th position for the burden of government
regulation, well below countries such as Guatemala and Paraguay for
example.16
Spain is a country dominated by lawyers and engineers. Its elite civil
servants belong to a corps called Abogados del Estado (state lawyers).
For help in filing your tax return, you go to a tax lawyer rather than an
accountant. The country has suffered regulatory inflation for decades.
The norms approved each year have multiplied around tenfold since
1978.17 Most of that has involved regulations from regional govern-
ments and parliaments, although municipal ordinances have increased
too. Studies found that the proliferation of regulations appeared to be
a deterrent to the expansion of firms outside their home town or region.
They also suggested a lack of trust between state and citizens.
Bureaucratic sloth has deep roots. It was lampooned in a satirical article
published in 1833 by Mariano José de Larra, a Romantic writer, enti-
tled ‘Vuelva usted mañana’ or ‘Come back tomorrow’. Spaniards
overwhelmingly view the EU, with its single market, favourably. But
decentralisation has erected mounting barriers within their national
market: business permits for one region are not automatically valid in
others. The Rajoy government made an effort to restore a single market
in Spain but it was half-hearted and foundered on resistance from
Catalonia and the Basque Country, and the desire of other regions to
assert their powers. At the same time, the judicial system was under-
staffed and slow moving. Resolving civil and commercial cases took
around a year on average, a time period that is rising.
After the economy grew at an annual rate of over 3% from 2015 to
2017 the pace of recovery then began to slow, to just 2% in 2019.
Spain needed further reforms. Sánchez’s first government was too weak
to take ambitious measures. It faced a balancing act between cutting
the deficit, restoring social spending and raising business taxes. ‘We’ve
spent years being told that the crisis was over. The time has come for

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Spaniards to feel it,’ declared María Jesús Montero, Sánchez’s finance

minister, as she unveiled a draft budget for 2019, agreed with Podemos,
that modestly raised social spending while raising some taxes. In the
event Sánchez was unable to get the budget through parliament, a
failure which precipitated 2019’s twin elections. But the government
raised the minimum wage by a total of 35% between 2019 and 2022.
Given the low level of many wages that was politically justified; though
there was much debate as to its impact on jobs, it seemed to have been
neutral. But business was suspicious, especially after Podemos entered
government in January 2020. The coalition agreement promised rises
in income tax on high earners and on corporate taxes to finance
increases in social benefits. Sánchez was not an ideological radical. He
largely kept economic policy away from the hands of Podemos and in
those of Nadia Calviño, the economy minister, a moderate social
democrat trusted by both business and Brussels, where she had been
the European Commission’s budget director. But Podemos’s anti-
capitalist rhetoric and the frequent political noise generated by tensions
between the coalition’s two factions did little to encourage economic
confidence.

One evening at the end of February 2020 I found myself chatting with
a senior government official at a drinks party, and asked him how he
saw the economic outlook. He foresaw a slight dip in growth in 2020
and then a tranquil horizon. At that moment Covid-19 was raging
through northern Italy. Within three weeks it would force the govern-
ment to impose a drastic shutdown of the economy. The economic
impact of the pandemic was severe. GDP contracted by 10.8% in
2020, compared with the euro-area average of 6.5%. And Spain was
slower to recover than the rest of Europe. Forecasters originally reck-
oned that the economy would not match its pre-pandemic output
until 2023, later pushed back to 2024. But data for employment,
exports and tax revenues painted a less pessimistic picture.

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One big reason for the seemingly slow recovery was the weight of
tourism and the hospitality industry in the economy. These activities,
of course, were the most directly affected by lockdowns, border closures
and restrictions on gatherings. In 2019 Spain had received 84 million
foreign visitors, second in the world behind France. Tourism accounted
for 12% of GDP and 13% of jobs. Another fifth of the economy is
comprised by commerce, transport and hospitality, though there is
some overlap in these calculations. In 2020 fewer than 20 million
foreign tourists made it to Spanish beaches or cathedrals. It was ‘the
most catastrophic summer in 50 years’, declared José Luis Zoreda of
Exceltur, the industry lobby.18 The Canaries and Balearics, where
tourism made up over a third of the economy, were especially hard hit.
Beyond tourism, many small businesses lacked the resources to stay
alive. In 2021 disruptions to supply chains hit the car industry in
particular. And then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine further darkened the
economic outlook. After energy prices rose in 2021, inflation headed
for 9% in 2022. Rising interest rates meant that some thought the
economy might flirt with recession.
There were two mitigating factors. In contrast to the 2008–13
slump the government was able to provide emergency support. That
was because the political and social costs of austerity imposed during
and after the great recession had forced a radical change of mind among
European policymakers. The European Central Bank offered limitless
credit to governments at zero cost while the European Commission
waived its rules on fiscal stringency. The Spanish government offered
credit guarantees to businesses totalling some €80 billion. And it paid
most of the salaries of furloughed workers who numbered 3.4 million
at the peak in May 2020. By mid-2021 all but 360,000 were back at
work. Unemployment rose (to 15.6% in the second quarter of 2021),
but then fell again to 13.7% a year later, lower than its 2019 level. ‘This
is the first recession in which the fall in employment and tax revenues
has been less than that of GDP,’ Calviño, the economy minister, told

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me. ‘We’ve managed to ensure that jobs haven’t been destroyed, nor
family incomes, nor tax revenues.’19
Critics accused the government of being too slow and parsimonious
with direct cash support to businesses, as Germany offered for example.
That was partly because even in the new lax policy climate Spain had
less fiscal margin than others. Both the Rajoy and Sánchez govern-
ments had slowed the pace of deficit reduction. Despite the strong
economic recovery of 2014–19, Spain entered the pandemic having
posted a fiscal deficit of 2.9% of GDP in 2019 and with public debt
equal to 96% of GDP, both among the highest in the eurozone at that
time.20 Calviño insisted the government’s measures had been effective
in preparing the basis for recovery: ‘In other countries there were
announcements of bigger programmes but the reality was in line with
Spain.’ All told, government support totalled around 20% of GDP,
according to the OECD.
The second boost was that Spain was due to receive from 2021 to
2023 a total of some €70 billion in grants from the EU’s Next
Generation recovery scheme, and was eligible for a similar amount of
soft loans. In line with the European Commission’s guidelines, much
of this would go on big projects, such as that for electric mobility and
others aimed at creating a greener, more digital economy. But there
will be plenty of money, too, for overhauling the public administra-
tion, vocational training and for active labour market policies to help
the unemployed find jobs. On paper, it is a matchless opportunity to
tackle Spain’s chronic problems of joblessness and low productivity.
Will it be seized? There were complaints from the opposition and
the regions that the government had drawn up its plans for spending
the EU funds with insufficient consultation or participation in deci-
sion making. But officials insisted they had to move quickly and create
a coherent national plan, and in the event this satisfied the European
Commission. There was a tension between the EU’s desire that the aid
should achieve a structural transformation of Europe’s economies and

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the need of many Spanish businesses for continued counter-cyclical

spending. That was something the government was ill-placed to
provide, with public debt having risen to around 120% of GDP by
2021. The government faced a tricky decision as to when and how fast
to start cutting spending and/or raising taxes. There were fears of a
chain of bankruptcies once support was withdrawn. ‘You can’t go and
talk to many of my colleagues now about sustainability or digitalisa-
tion, but rather about how to get to the end of the month,’ said Gabriel
Escarrer, the chief executive of Meliã, Spain’s biggest hotel chain, in
August 2020. Conditions for many companies had eased somewhat
eighteen months later but were still fragile.

The aid was tied to promises of reforms, especially of the labour market
and pensions. The European Commission, the OECD and other
experts reckoned Spain needed to make its labour market still more
flexible while tackling the abuse of temporary contracts. They also
thought the country needed to adjust the pension system to longer life
expectancy, either by delaying retirement ages or capping benefits, and
to reform education, training and skills. On many of these issues
the government was caught between pressure from the European
Commission on one side, and from the unions and Podemos on the
other. On paper, the coalition was committed to counter-reform of
both the labour market and pensions. The coalition agreement stated:
‘We will repeal the labour reform. We will restore the labour rights
stripped by the 2012 labour reform’ (Sánchez had previously talked
only of changing the ‘worst’ aspects of it).21 The unions objected, in
particular, to clauses which ended the automatic rolling over of existing
contracts if negotiations were stalled and which gave priority to firm-
level agreements over sectoral ones. These measures reduced their
leverage. They were not much used in practice. But their existence
meant the unions had to be more prudent in bargaining. The 2012
reform meant that firms could adjust to a deterioration in trading

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conditions by cutting, or not raising, wages, rather than through lay-

offs as in the past. It was not coincidental that jobs were created at a
faster rate in the post-2013 recovery than in previous ones.22 The 2012
reform also introduced furlough schemes, which proved vital during
the pandemic. It did not end the duality in the labour market, in which
25% of workers were on temporary contracts, some as short as a week,
and in practice denied rights. But nor did it create this problem.
Temporary contracts were introduced by Felipe González’s govern-
ment in the 1980s as a response to a rise in unemployment. They had
expanded ever since, as a means to dodge the burdensome regulations
attached to permanent contracts.
Yolanda Díaz, the labour minister in the coalition government,
wanted not just to repeal the 2012 reform, thus making permanent
contracts even more inflexible, but also to abolish nearly all temporary
contracts by fiat. A Communist and the daughter of a trade union
leader, Díaz was appointed by Podemos. When Pablo Iglesias resigned
from the government, he chose her to replace him in his role as deputy
prime minister. She was a more conciliatory figure than he, and she
attracted sympathy from many who otherwise had little time for
Podemos. She said that what ‘doesn’t let me sleep’ was the imperative
that ‘we don’t come out of this crisis more unequal than we entered it’.23
That was indeed important: income inequality was relatively high
by European standards before the pandemic, although less so if housing
costs are taken into account, in a society in which most people are
owner-occupiers who have paid off their mortgages. In 2018 the
income of the top 20% was six times higher than the bottom 20%,
compared with an EU average of five times.24 But much of the increase
in income inequality was recent, the consequence of high unemploy-
ment and low salaries, and the best cure was faster growth. The problem
was that Díaz’s proposals would have rigged a system that already
favoured insiders even further against the jobless, and thus would have
done little to reduce inequality. They ‘would lead to the most restrictive

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and rigid labour-market regime in Europe in the country with the

second-highest unemployment rate and the highest youth unemploy-
ment rate,’ according to Marcel Jansen, a labour economist at the
Universidad Autónoma in Madrid.25 They risked destroying jobs rather
than creating them.
Díaz’s proposal was not backed by Calviño, the leader of the govern-
ment’s reformist wing. European aid strengthened her position –
Sánchez promoted her to first deputy prime minister in a reshuffle in
July 2021. The funds could be cut off if Spain approved blatantly job-
destroying measures. In the end, although Díaz spun the agreement
struck between unions, business and government in December 2021 as
a great victory, while Casado and the PP damned it as a counter-reform,
in reality far from repealing the 2012 reform it consolidated it. Its
main, and welcome, novelty was to curb the abuse of temporary
contracts, limiting them in most cases to ninety days a year and discour-
aging their use by linking them to higher social security contributions.
It restored the indefinite rolling over of collective agreements until a
new one was reached (something the Supreme Court had required)
and the pre-eminence of sectoral agreements for wage-bargaining but
not in working conditions. It retained the ‘flexisecurity’ elements of
the 2012 reform and blessed them with a tripartite agreement. It was
the coalition’s most important piece of legislation. Yet it was approved
in the Congress by just one vote (and that cast by mistake by a PP
deputy), as both the PP and the government’s nationalist allies baulked.
Although the outcome was much better than many feared, reformers
would have liked more. Many labour-market experts believed that to
encourage hiring Spain needed to make permanent contracts less
onerous for employers while endowing workers with an individual
fund for use if they are out of work. Under this system, adopted in
Austria, firms would pay a monthly sum to the worker’s individual
account instead of having to pay a large lump sum in severance pay if
the worker is laid off. The worker takes the fund with them if they

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move jobs. This scheme protects the worker rather than the job. It
could be combined with other measures to discourage temporary
contracts, and to equalise the rights and obligations of different kinds
of contracts. Sánchez had signed up to this reform in the abortive pact
he forged with Ciudadanos in 2016, but then backed away from it.
To be serious about tackling unemployment the government needed,
in addition, to overhaul radically the public employment service and
what economists call ‘active labour-market policies’, or measures to
help the unemployed get back to work. Spain spends some €6.5 billion
a year on these. Though in relation to the number of unemployed that
is less than in many other European countries, nevertheless it gets a
very poor return for the money. The central government pays, but
responsibility for the public employment service and active labour-
market policies is decentralised to the regions. The employment service
varies widely in quality, but in general is understaffed and bureaucratic.
In 2016 there was one caseworker for more than 250 unemployed
clients and anyway caseworkers had to devote much time to adminis-
tration.26 The Rajoy government introduced reforms, such as profiling
of the long-term unemployed and the allocation of funds to regions
according to quantitative indicators of how effective they were at getting
people into jobs. This was scrapped when Sánchez came to office, and
then reinstated under European pressure in 2021. Much more radical
reform is required. In a 2017 report AIREF, the independent fiscal
watchdog, noted that only 2% of those in jobs say they got them
through a public employment office. It called for the integration of
unemployment benefit, active labour-market policies and social poli-
cies into a single system that quickly profiles the unemployed to see
whether they need training or just benefits.27
Despite high unemployment, businesses complained that it was hard
to find workers. A study of the quality of education and the skills level
of the workforce in the twenty-one developed economies in the OECD
found that Spain ranked at the bottom.28 The country had two specific

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skills problems. ‘Skill levels in Spain are like an hourglass,’ says Jansen.
The proportion of graduates at the top is in line with the European
average; at the bottom is a bulge of people with few or no qualification.
There is only a slender middle of well-trained technicians. Only 23%
of the population has non-university further education, compared
with an EU average of 43%. And at the bottom, some 13% of pupils
left school at 16 without any qualification. That figure had fallen from
30% at the turn of the century, but it was still above the EU average
of 10%.
During the construction boom this high drop-out rate was partly
because of the lure of easy money for youngsters with no qualifications.
Tobias Buck, who covered Spain for the Financial Times, recorded in
his book After the Fall, about the post-2008 bust, a conversation with
David Pérez, a worker at a factory making metal window frames at
Cebolla, a town up the Tagus valley from Talavera. He had left school
at 16 and was soon earning up to €2,500 a month. A university
professor, by contrast, might get only €1,300. ‘We earned so much
money. The only people who didn’t have a BMW were the ones who
didn’t want one,’ said Pérez, who was by then unemployed after the
factory closed in 2012.29 Many people like him have been thrown on
the scrapheap of long-term unemployment at a relatively young age.
Schools did not do enough to encourage them to stay.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, Spanish education improved

in some ways and became more universal, but that progress largely
halted in this century. School rolls were swollen by immigration while
austerity meant a cut in education budgets. Public spending on schools
fell from €53 billion in 2010 to €44 billion in 2019, although there
were 10% more students. But money was far from the only problem.
The organisation of education contrasted with the health service,
which, despite limitations exposed by the pandemic, was generally
reckoned to be efficient and of good quality. Luis Garicano, the leading

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economist in Ciudadanos, noted that while hospitals had professional

managers and doctors had flexible contracts, head teachers had little
autonomy and schools were not subjected to proper evaluation.30
Teaching in Spanish schools was often archaic, based on rote
learning. The curriculum had too many subjects, and with an overly
academic bias (secondary school students are taught philosophy, for
example). Students who struggled were required to repeat a year, which
educationalists criticised as demoralising: in 2018, 29% of 15-year-
olds had had to repeat at least one year of schooling, compared with an
average in the OECD countries of 11.3%. Given the country’s income
level, Spanish students fared more poorly than they should have in
international tests. In the 2018 PISA tests of proficiency of 15-year-
olds in maths and science Spain performed slightly below the average
for OECD countries.31 As always there were big regional variations: in
the 2015 PISA test in maths, Navarre, and Castile and León, performed
as well as Canada, while Andalucía and the Canary Islands were similar
to Greece.
Social segregation in schooling is increasing. Basic education is free
and compulsory by law since the transition. But around a quarter of
pupils attend what are called escuelas concertadas – schools that are
privately operated, almost wholly by Church bodies. They are supposed
to follow the same entrance criteria as state schools and to charge only
for additional facilities (such as libraries or swimming pools). In prac-
tice that deters many poorer parents.
A new education law drawn up by Sánchez’s government tried to
address some of these problems. It made grade repetition less auto-
matic. It set out a reform of teaching methods in which encouraging
children to reason would be more important than memorising. But
it abolished external evaluation based on published school results. It
aimed, too, gently to restrain the expansion of escuelas concertadas. It
was the eighth education law since 1977. Education has been a polit-
ical football, kicked between the Socialists and the PP. Each law has

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repealed aspects of its predecessor, and none of the laws have been
agreed by consensus. The debate is polarised between the Socialists’
concern for equality and the PP’s championing of freedom of choice,
and between the right’s defence of religious instruction and the left’s
interest in ‘civic education’ which its opponents see as a political
agenda. Spain would do well to look at Portugal, which produces better
educational outcomes with less money. It has raised the school-leaving
age to 18, reformed teacher training and introduced rigorous evalua-
tion of schools.
Spanish universities have flaws, too. They are notoriously endoga-
mous, with a preference for appointing professors who studied at the
university in question and a deep reluctance to welcome foreign
academics. They produce too many humanities graduates and not
enough scientists. They have resisted external evaluation. Most have
little tradition in research and that penalises them in international
rankings. They lost 20% of their public funding and suffered a hiring
freeze between 2009 and 2015. Nevertheless, most do a creditable job
of teaching. In the Academic Ranking of World Universities for 2021,
a list compiled in Shanghai, only the University of Barcelona ranked in
the world top 200. But thirty-eight out of forty-seven public universi-
ties and the University of Navarre, a private institution linked to Opus
Dei and strong in medicine, placed in the top 1,000.32 The relatively
lacklustre universities contrasted with outstanding privately run busi-
ness schools, with four in the top twenty-five in Europe, according to
the Financial Times ranking for 2021.
The poor relations were vocational education and training. They
tended to be looked down upon. They were split between the educa-
tion ministry and the labour ministry. Some of the education courses
seemed to be effective but there were not enough of them. In 2018
I visited a further education college in Heliópolis in Seville, and sat in
on a class of fifteen students on a two-year course to train as head
waiters. Dressed in black trousers, white shirts and black-and-white

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striped ties they stood around a table set with spirits and liqueurs.
Normally they would be in their teens, but this group ranged in age
from 19 to 42. Most were confident they would get a job locally. ‘There
is always more demand than places,’ said Ildefonso Rodríguez, the
college’s director. ‘The problem is those who don’t get there.’
‘Training for work’, the labour ministry segment, functioned well in
the Basque Country and to an extent in Catalonia and Madrid, but
poorly elsewhere. In Andalucía, which most needed it, vocational
training was shut down for five years because of a corruption scandal
under the Socialist regional administration. Courses used to be run
jointly by unions and bosses’ organisations, with no evaluation of
quality. At the insistence of Ciudadanos, Rajoy’s government intro-
duced a voucher scheme that allowed jobless people to choose private
training providers, but many regional governments blocked this in
practice. Fátima Báñez, Rajoy’s capable labour minister, also intro-
duced German-style dual training schemes, in which pupils mix class-
room study with practical experience in companies. But it is hard to
involve the mass of small businesses in this. The Sánchez government’s
education law included the transfer of parts of ‘training for work’ to the
education ministry. The government also approved a vocational
training law, which aimed to generalise the dual model and incorpo-
rate new subjects. It also promised to provide 200,000 extra places.

As Spaniards live ever longer, the country’s pension system has come
under strain. Towards the end of its term, Zapatero’s government had
raised the legal retirement age from 65 to 67 and increased the number
of years of contributions taken into account when calculating the
pension from 15 to 25, both with gradual effect. Under the pressure of
the financial crisis, in 2013 Rajoy’s government approved a more
radical reform of pensions, which capped the annual increase in their
value at 0.25%. It also introduced a ‘sustainability factor’ under which
every five years pensions would be slightly reduced to take into account

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the increase in life expectancy. This was due to take effect in 2019. The
reason was that increased longevity threatened the basic principle of
the pay-as-you-go public pension system, under which pensions are
paid from the contributions of today’s workers whose retirement will
in turn be paid for by tomorrow’s workers. The account of the Social
Security Institute (INSS), which administers the system, fell into
deficit and it exhausted its reserves. As spending on pensions rose by
€7 billion each year, by 2019 the system’s deficit was €18.4 billion.
Pensioners did relatively well during the slump because Spain
suffered price deflation and they still got their 0.25% increase. Between
2011 and 2014, the average income of over-65s in real terms rose by
5% even as that of younger people plunged. Pensioners began to play
a key role in sustaining younger members of extended families. But
they lost income as prices began to rise again. The Rajoy reform became
the target of regular and persistent demonstrations by pensioners across
the country. Conscious that older people are a larger cohort than the
young, and that more of them tend to vote, the politicians panicked.
Pensions are the subject of one of the few surviving cross-party nego-
tiations, known as the Pact of Toledo. The parties, including the
PP, agreed to tear up Rajoy’s reform. The introduction of the sustain-
ability factor was suspended. Sánchez’s government reduced the INSS’s
deficit by an accounting trick, transferring parental pay to the general
budget (even so, the deficit was almost €12 billion in 2021). In
June 2021 the prime minister organised a ceremony at the Moncloa
with union and business leaders to celebrate an agreement formally to
reintroduce the indexation of pensions to inflation and to scrap the
sustainability factor. This was to be replaced with a ‘mechanism of
inter-generational equity’, which turned out mainly to involve an
increase of 0.6% in employer contributions and incentives to delay
retirement, from which business dissented. It amounted to a counter-
reform. It was followed immediately by a surge in inflation: the result
was that the government budgeted for an increase in pensions of over

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8% in 2023, more than in most other European countries and more

than wages were rising.33
Scrapping indexation as Rajoy did had proved politically unsustain-
able. The problem was that the politicians didn’t want to face up to
demographic and actuarial realities. Whatever the legal retirement age,
in practice Spaniards left the labour force at an average age of 62 and
were likely to live for another twenty years at least. Their pensions were
relatively generous at 96% of average earnings, well above the average
in the OECD countries. It was true that contributions were relatively
high. Pensions already gobbled up a rising share of public spending.
Spain’s total spending on pensions of 10.9% of GDP in 2019 was
above the OECD average of 8% but below that of other big Western
European economies. The problem was that the numbers were due to
get sharply worse because the baby boom happened later in Spain –
between the late 1950s and the 1970s – than elsewhere in Western
Europe.
Demographic calculations suggested that by 2050 there would be
78 pensioners for every 100 people of working-age population,
compared with an average of 53 in the OECD countries.34 Today’s
10 million pensioners would increase to 15 million. Restoring index-
ation added 1% of GDP per decade to the pension bill, reckoned Pablo
Hernández de Cos, the governor of the Bank of Spain. And that was
before the sudden rise in inflation. According to the OECD, the inter-
generational equity mechanism will raise only 0.2% of GDP while
scrapping the sustainability factor would increase pension outlays by
1% of GDP. So the reform would not be enough to make the system
sustainable. Future governments will undoubtedly have to do more.
It was almost impossible to have a rational discussion about
pensions. Escrivá, the social security minister, proposed further increase
in the years of contribution used when calculating pensions from the
last twenty-five years of work to the last thirty-five, which would reduce
new pensions by around 5%. But he was shot down. On the day of the

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Moncloa ceremony Escrivá said bluntly that the baby-boomer genera-

tion will have to choose between lower pensions or working longer.
Again he retreated under a storm of criticism. But he was right.

The pension issue illustrates the hard choices on taxation and spending
that Spain, like many countries, faces more broadly, especially in the
wake of the pandemic. The country has a fairly small welfare state by
Western European standards. The Franco regime chose to spend on
state companies. While expanding education, health care and social
protection, democratic governments also gave relative priority to
spending on infrastructure. The weight of pensions in public spending
is one reason why this is less redistributive than in some other coun-
tries. The Spanish welfare state mainly redistributes from the haves to
the haves. The pandemic shone a spotlight on holes in it. Even before
the virus struck 12.4% of Spaniards had an income below 40% of the
median (€1,050 per month) and were thus officially classed as being in
‘severe poverty’ compared with 6.9% in the EU as a whole. When the
government locked down the country in the spring of 2020, in Madrid’s
poorer southern neighbourhoods colas del hambre (hunger queues, as
they were dubbed) formed for food handouts provided by the Church
and community groups. Caritas, the Catholic charity, reported a surge
in demand for its help, including from people who had never been in
touch with it before.35
In response the government introduced a new national minimum
income. Drawn up by Escrivá, this was targeted, not universal as
Podemos wanted. It paid up to €1,015 per month to families and
€461.50 to individuals in ‘severe poverty’. Previously social assistance
was the purview of the regions and, as always, varied widely. The rich
Basque Country was generous; poorer Andalucía not. ‘Something that
was designed to reduce inequality had the opposite effect,’ Escrivá told
me.36 To offer an incentive to seek work, the new payment will be
tapered gradually if earned income increases. He estimated the total

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cost of the scheme at about €3 billion, or 0.24% of GDP. It was broadly

welcomed – only Vox voted against it. But it was only a qualified
success. The public administration was slow to process applications. A
year after the scheme was approved 276,000 households were receiving
the minimum income. Escrivá had thought that 850,000 would qualify
but many of these apparently didn’t apply. In the summer of 2021,
190,000 people still depended on the Madrid Food Bank, a charity.
The state also faced demands to spend more on young people and
families more generally. Because of the slump, the inter-generational
social contract frayed. While pensioners were protected, younger
Spaniards struggled (see next chapter).
On top of these social demands, the government will have to address
the fiscal deficit. Under the pressure of the pandemic, it swelled to
11% of GDP in 2020 before falling to 6.8% in 2021. As long as
interest rates remained low and the European authorities permissive, a
gradual reduction of the deficit would be manageable. But the emer-
gence of inflation in 2021 signalled that the era of cheap money was
drawing to a close, and faster deficit-cutting might be necessary. While
stressing that stimulus should not be withdrawn before recovery was
complete, Hernández de Cos, the governor of the Bank of Spain,
repeatedly called for a broad, cross-party agreement on Spain’s fiscal
course. There was little sign of that.
There were political choices to be made on the balance of tax and
spending. Tax revenues, plus social security contributions, were equal
to 35% of GDP in 2019. That was less than in France, Italy and
Germany, but broadly in line with Portugal or the United Kingdom.
The headline rates of income and corporate taxes were comparable
to the rest of the EU. But there were too many exemptions and loop-
holes. The nominal rate of corporate income tax was 25% but in 2017
Spain’s largest companies paid an average effective tax rate of 17%.37
Professionals find ways to avoid taxes. Many doctors insisted that
private patients pay them in cash, for example. The VAT rate was

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21% but the tax brought in less than the European average, mainly
because tourism and some other activities paid a reduced rate of 10%.
And environmental and ‘sin’ taxes (e.g. on alcohol) were lower than
average.38
Certainly there were strong arguments for the government spending
more on things such as childcare, education and skills. The left argued
that the government should gradually raise taxes to take them to the
EU average of around 40% of GDP. There is scope for some increases
in taxes. On the other hand, polls showed that taxes were increasingly
unpopular. Much public spending was poorly directed. The country
could get much better value from its existing spending if this were
subjected to more effective evaluation and oversight. The trick will be
to raise taxes without hurting economic growth. Many of the govern-
ment’s changes involved increasing the costs and regulatory burden
facing business, albeit modestly. In mid-2022, Sánchez veered left,
announcing windfall taxes on the revenues (not profits) of energy
companies and the bigger banks. The European Central Bank found
fault with the bank tax but the prime minister ignored its warning. He
began to criticise Spanish business. It remained to be seen whether all
this would have an impact on business investment.
Spain has increased its income per person, in purchasing-power
parity terms, by 50% in the past thirty years. But it is no longer
converging with the EU’s richest members. In 2007 Zapatero hailed
Spain’s achievement of an income per person of 105% of the EU
average and its sorpasso (overtaking) of Italy, with 103%. But those
figures were later corrected. Spain was at 103% of the EU average
income and Italy 107%. Then the great recession took its toll. In 2019
Spain’s income per person was 91% of the average and Italy’s 96%.39
Unless the politicians can reach agreements, Spain risks stagnation.
Make the right choices, and the Spanish dream can revive.

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 CHAPTER 8

SCANDINAVIA IN THE SUN?

I n February 1971 Richard Nixon sent General Vernon Walters, a

soldier turned diplomat and spy, to Madrid to visit Franco to find
out what might happen after he died. Walters told the American presi-
dent that this was a subject nobody in Spain dared discuss. In the
Pardo palace, in some trepidation and to flatter the elderly dictator,
Walters told him that Nixon was interested in his views on the situa-
tion in the western Mediterranean. Franco replied, in Walters’ account:
‘What really interests your president is what will happen in Spain after
my death, no?’ His answer was that he had created some institutions,
that Juan Carlos would take over as king and that ‘Spain will go a long
way down the road that you people, the English and the French, want:
democracy, pornography, drugs and so forth. There will be a lot of
crazy things but none of them will be fatal for Spain.’ Walters asked
him how he could be sure of that. ‘Because I left something that I
didn’t find on taking over the government of this country 40 years ago.’
Walters thought he would refer to the armed forces. But Franco said:
‘The Spanish middle class. Tell your president to trust the common
sense of the Spanish people, there won’t be another civil war.’ And with
that he shook Walters’ hand and ended the meeting.1

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This was surprisingly perspicacious. Spain’s society and social atti-

tudes have changed radically in the past forty-five years, changes largely
driven by the expansion of the middle class to which the dictator
referred, as well as by liberty and democracy. In 1975 the country was
almost uniformly Catholic and its people almost wholly native-born
Spaniards. The Church exercised sway over public morality, as it had to
a large extent ever since Queen Isabella I asserted that to be Spanish
was necessarily to be Catholic by requiring the country’s large Jewish
and Muslim populations to convert to Christianity on pain of expul-
sion. Women occupied a subordinate position, encouraged by both
Church and state to bear as many children as possible and required by
law to obey their husbands. A third of the population still lived in rural
areas and many city dwellers were relatively recent migrants from the
countryside.
All of this has changed in the past half century. Demographically
Spain has passed with extraordinary speed through the transition
that most countries experience when they get richer – in which
the birth rate declines, life expectancy increases and society ages.
Thanks to the arrival of large numbers of immigrants Spain is
now a multicultural country. Another change is geographic. The popu-
lation is ever more concentrated in coastal areas and the Madrid
conurbation. A large swathe of the interior is now dubbed ‘empty
Spain’, made up of deserted villages, dying towns and disappearing
services – at least in the popular imagination. As Spaniards have become
city dwellers, and as climate change makes itself felt, attitudes to nature
are changing.
Since 1977 Spain has successively legalised contraception, divorce,
abortion, gay marriage and euthanasia. Although these changes were
opposed by the Church, they enjoyed widespread popular backing,
including among many PP voters. Although women still face some
discrimination, Spain has in many ways become a feminist country.
Superficially, at least, social attitudes today are more akin to Scandinavia

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than to southern Europe. That may be a reaction to Franco’s attempt

to impose rules on private life. It may be too because Spaniards are
generally open to new ideas, more so than Italians for example. One
consequence of the isolation of the country under the dictatorship was
a burning desire to join the rest of Europe, in customs and laws as well
as politics and the economy. Dig beneath the surface and attitudes are
more ambivalent. And the extended family remains the bedrock of
society, which contributes to social cohesion.

Perhaps the single most dramatic change has been in the social position
and roles of Spanish women. While Franco was alive only a quarter of
adult women worked outside the home. Until a reform shortly before
he died, women needed their husband’s or father’s permission to take a
job, open a bank account, start a business, buy or sell property or even
to travel far from their home region. Only fathers and not mothers had
legal authority over their children. While adultery by women was in all
circumstances a crime punishable by prison, for men it was so only if
committed in the family home or openly flaunted.2 A law in 1961 had
allowed women to enter the professions but they were still barred from
becoming judges or serving in the merchant marine or the armed
forces.
In a conversation for this book, Elvira Lindo, a writer and feminist,
described the changes women have experienced in her lifetime:

My mother didn’t have any money of her own. My father gave

her money each week to keep house. I remember her shrieking
with joy when she was washing my father’s clothes and found a
banknote in a pocket. She wanted to be more independent and to
have more personal sovereignty. She wanted her daughters to get
an education to be able to have money. In her last years it made
her very angry not to have her own money. For us, it was completely
different.

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With democracy, change was swift. Contraception was legalised in

1977 and homosexual relations ceased to be a criminal offence in 1979.
Divorce followed in 1981, and with it legal equality between men and
women within marriage. Felipe González’s government legalised abor-
tion with some restrictions in 1985. Social attitudes changed too, but
at first less swiftly. Machismo remained, as Elvira Lindo said:

The ‘progressive culture’ of the 1980s was very deceptive. It was

apparently very left-wing but not with the concerns the left has
now. Environmentalism took a long time to arrive, and feminism
too. Women had to speak less, opine less and their words carried
less weight than those of men. I went to work in radio, I became the
director of a programme with men working for me. They would
make sexual comments. You lived with this in a very lonely way,
you had to take it home with you.

A second wave of change came with Zapatero’s government. Half the

ministers in his first cabinet were women, something that had hitherto
happened only in Sweden. On his watch, Spain became only the third
country in the world to legalise gay marriage. Further laws variously
allowed abortion on demand, quickie divorce, stem-cell research, and
promoted more gender equality in company boards and political party
candidates’ lists. A law against domestic violence increased penalties
and included measures to protect victims. The PP and the Church
opposed many of these changes but Rajoy did not undo them when he
was in office. Both Aznar and Rajoy appointed women to important
ministries.
From the outset, Pedro Sánchez described his government as femi-
nist. In his first cabinet, in 2018, eleven of the seventeen ministers were
women. It was an administration ‘in the image of Spain’, committed to
social and gender equality as well as economic modernisation, the
prime minister said. In 2021 Spain became only the fifth country in

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the world to legalise euthanasia. Again, the PP (and Vox) voted against
but public opinion broadly approved.
Viewed cumulatively, the changes in Spanish society and social atti-
tudes since the end of the dictatorship have been remarkable if still
incomplete. ‘Feminism has reached many layers of society,’ according
to Elvira Lindo. ‘Change was from the bottom up.’ More women than
men now go to university. Women make up 40% of scientific
researchers. In 1979 only 18 of the 350 members of the Chamber of
Deputies were women; in April 2019 166 women were elected to the
chamber, although that number fell to 154 in the repeat election in
November 2019. The gap between the average salaries of women and
men is closing, according to the INE. Some 43% of adult women work
outside the home compared with 54% of men. Women make up only
31% of the boards of Spain’s top thirty-five publicly quoted compa-
nies, but that is more than double the proportion in 2013. A majority
of prosecutors and lower-court judges are women but this is not the
case in the Supreme Court.3 Only a decade ago, Spanish newspapers
featured many photos of meetings and celebrations of the business,
political and cultural elites in which all those portrayed were men.
Such photos are much more likely to include several women now.
However, domestic roles have not changed as much as those outside
the home. Nine out of ten requests for time off from work to look after
children or older relatives both before and during the pandemic were
made by women.4
Spain is thus in the front rank of progress towards gender equality.
It placed fourteenth in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender
Equality index in 2021, ahead of France, the United Kingdom, the
United States and Italy. In another study, by Georgetown University
and the Oslo Peace Research Institute, it ranked fifth-best in the world
for the welfare of women. A poll in 2019 found that 43% of all respon-
dents (both women and men) considered themselves feminists, up ten
points in five years. Among women aged under 25 the figure was 65%.5

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Recent years have seen big demonstrations across the country on 8

March, for International Women’s Day.
The advent of the coalition government saw tensions between
different generations of feminists. Sánchez removed the equality port-
folio from Carmen Calvo, his deputy, and gave it to Podemos as part
of the coalition agreement. Pablo Iglesias gave the role to Irene
Montero, his partner. Montero, aged 33, presented several bills that
reflected fashionable concerns. One, which became law in 2022, aimed
to define sexual consent and specified sexual harassment as a crime.
Another would allow ‘gender self-determination’ from the age of 14
with parental consent, or from 16 without it. Older feminists, such as
Calvo, thought that if a person’s sex was defined as being a matter of
choice then this would jeopardise laws against discrimination against
women. These bills faced passive resistance within the government,
even after Sánchez sacked Calvo to reduce tensions and rejuvenate the
Socialist side of his government.
Vox represented a backlash against Spain’s social transformation.
Researchers found that its voters strongly opposed not just globalisa-
tion but also immigration and feminism. They also tended to be less
well-educated and more religious than average.6 Vox campaigned
against sex education in schools and the domestic violence law, which
it claimed discriminated against men. It wanted to overturn social
liberalism in the name of traditional values. Despite this attempt to
turn back the clock, the great majority of Spaniards seemed to be
generally supportive of sexual equality and diversity. ‘The changes were
deep,’ said Elvira Lindo. ‘Perhaps there’s a kind of feminism now that
doesn’t accept that, or thinks they weren’t deep enough, but anyone of
my age who compares their situation with their mother feels a big
change.’ Every time a woman is murdered, protests are held in town
and city squares, normally led by the local authorities. These crimes,
which now attract wide condemnation, are diminishing. In 2021 forty-
three women were killed by their partners or former partners, the

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lowest figure since data began to be collected in 2003 and proportion-

ately lower than in many other European countries.
There was some evidence homophobic crimes were increasing. That
might reflect more reporting, after Sánchez’s government created a unit
in the interior ministry to fight these crimes. It may also have been part
of a broader European trend, linked to social media, of groups of young
people committing gang rapes or homophobic attacks. One such
attack, the beating to death of Samuel Luiz, a 24-year-old nursing
assistant, in A Coruña in July 2021 prompted national outrage.
Nevertheless, such cases did not reflect the general mood. The
Eurobarometer poll in 2019 found that 86% of respondents in Spain
supported gay marriage. Another poll, by YouGov, found that 91% of
Spanish respondents would be supportive if a son or daughter came
out as gay, compared with 85% in Britain, 77% in Sweden, 75% in
Germany and 57% in France. Spanish respondents were also the like-
liest to say they were gay (10%) or know someone who is.7 In an elec-
tion in 2021 Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the PP regional president in Madrid,
who is on the right of her party, spent a morning campaigning in
Chueca, the capital’s gay barrio. ‘I don’t care how people organise their
lives in their home and in their bed,’ she said, and added that it had
been a mistake for the PP to have opposed gay marriage.8 This more
tolerant, diverse and equal society is also a more secular one.

Despite pandemic restrictions and damp weather, on Good Friday

evening in 2021 several hundred people queued to enter the Basilica of
Jesús de Medinaceli in the Barrio de las Letras in Madrid to pay their
respects to a seventeenth-century image of Christ. Most of the faithful
were over 40 but there was also a scattering of younger couples. The
Christ of Medinaceli is ‘very important for madrileños’, said Magdalena,
a regular worshipper. ‘They say Spain is not a Catholic country
anymore, but it’s a lie.’ Is it? Certainly there is a paradox. In the past
forty-five years of democracy Spain has become a secular society with

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astonishing speed, faster than anywhere else in Europe, except perhaps

Ireland. When Franco died, more than nineteen out of twenty Spaniards
were baptised Catholics and 60% of them attended mass. In 2001
82% of respondents to the CIS poll still defined themselves as Catholic,
but only half do now. Only about a fifth still go to mass regularly. Not
only has the number of marriages declined each year over the past
decade or so but in 2019 only a fifth of weddings were in a church.
Nowadays almost half of children are born to women who are not
married.
The ‘national Catholicism’ of the Franco regime swiftly dissolved into
official secularism. Four concordats in 1979, linked to the constitution,
separated Church and state. González’s government implemented these;
Aznar, contrary to the hopes of some in the Church, did not change
them. Zapatero’s government introduced a law which banned religious
symbols in public places. And yet the Catholic Church retains consider-
able influence. That is perhaps unsurprising given how deeply woven into
Spanish life it had been for centuries. Although there is no longer a
Catholic party, Catholicism ‘is what feeds Spanish political culture’,
according to Pablo Hispan, a PP deputy.9 A recent academic study high-
lights the continuing ‘entanglement of religious and national identities in
public and political discourse’.10 Almost every Spanish town still has its
religious processions, such as in Holy Week, and an annual patronal
festival with an official mass in which the mayor joins the priest. Despite
Zapatero’s law, it is not rare to find crucifixes in public buildings. The
Church wields particular influence in social welfare, education and the
management of heritage. Its charity, Caritas, helped to feed and/or provide
practical help to 1.4 million poorer Spaniards in 2020. Church-run
schools still educate around a quarter of Spanish children, including many
from the elite. And the Church manages 3,300 historic buildings. All this
may be why a third of taxpayers chose to donate 0.7% of their income tax
to the Church, money that would otherwise go to the state. This amounted
to €301 million in 2019.11 The number of donors is rising.

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It is an apparently stable compromise, but one that doesn’t leave

everyone happy. ‘The Church invades the public space, laws, budgets
and education,’ argues Juanjo Picó of Europa Laica, a pressure group.
Education is the most neuralgic subject. Religious instruction is an
optional curriculum subject, but around half of children in state
schools take it. Campaigners for a lay state say the place for religion is
church, not school, and want it dropped from the curriculum. They
complain that the Church has registered its ownership of some 35,000
properties, in some cases without legal title. In France and Portugal,
they note, church buildings are owned by the state. In Spain, ‘there’s an
entente cordiale’ between Church and state, Picó argued. ‘We have to
move to a real separation.’
The Church itself has changed. After the Second Vatican Council of
1962–5, some Spanish priests and a new generation of bishops who
had studied abroad began to oppose the dictatorship and support
the opposition, especially but not just in Catalonia and the Basque
Country. The Church as a whole was reconciled to change under
González, who had belonged to Catholic Action, a lay movement, and
studied at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. Things were
different during Zapatero’s governments. He faced a generation of
conservative bishops appointed under Pope John Paul II. The Church
saw in Zapatero a return of anti-clericalism.
The confrontations of that era over gay marriage and abortion have
ebbed. An uneasy peace prevails. Several things could upset it. Supporters
of Vox are not necessarily all ultra-Catholic, but ‘they do subscribe to
the traditional Catholic identity of Spain against Islam’, according to
Julia Martiñez-Ariño, a sociologist of religion.12 The Church hierarchy
has been careful not to encourage Vox. Cardinal Juan José Omella,
chosen as the president of the bishops’ conference in 2020, met all the
party leaders in his first eighteen months in the job, except Santiago
Abascal, Vox’s leader. The scandal of paedophile abuse by priests has had
less impact in Spain than in many other countries, but that may soon

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change. The Church itself opened an investigation only after El País, the
newspaper, presented to an aide to Pope Francis a dossier of cases dating
back to the 1930s involving 602 perpetrators and 1,237 victims.13 Some
in the Church fear a resurgence of anti-clericalism. ‘The attacks are from
political elites which have an interest in attacking the Church because it
still has prestige when it gives an opinion,’ José Francisco Serrano, a
Catholic journalist and historian, told me. ‘They don’t see the Church
as a religious entity but as a political entity.’ But under Sánchez the
Socialists show little desire for confrontation with the Church and seem
content to let social trends do their work.

These two sets of changes, in the position of women and of the Church,
lie at the root of a swift demographic transition in which Spain has
passed from high birth and death rates to low ones (excepting the deaths
caused by the pandemic). The country’s post-war baby boom peaked in
1975 when the fertility rate reached 2.9.14 By 2000 it had fallen to 1.2,
before recovering to 1.5 in 2010 and then falling again to 1.2 in 2019.
This is the lowest fertility rate in the EU after Malta, and one of the
lowest in the world. It is well below the 2.1 required to maintain the
population constant. In the 1960s Spanish women married earlier and
had more children than in any other country in Western Europe, except
Portugal and Greece. The collapse in the fertility rate reflected the wide-
spread use of contraception and the rejection by many women of their
previously assigned primary role as child-rearers.
But it was also aggravated by the economic slump. The average
age at which young people leave the parental home has risen to
30, which is three years above the EU average. Fully 64% of those
aged 25 to 29 still live with their parents, many more than the EU
average of 42% and fewer only than in Italy and Greece. The inability
of this Peter Pan generation to emancipate means that on average
Spanish women now do not have a first child until the age of
32, according to the INE. In the El País poll of young people cited in

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the previous chapter, almost two-thirds said they would like to have
two children. Spain spends relatively little on childcare and on
other incentives to have children. It could do much more. Instead, the
demographic shortfall has been offset by immigration.
Even as the birth rate plunged, Spain’s population grew explosively,
from 40 million in 1999 to 47 million in 2010. The foreign-born
population rose from just 165,000 when Franco died, to 800,000 in
1990, and peaked at 5.7 million (or 12.1% of the total) in 2012.15 The
slump prompted hundreds of thousands of immigrants to return home
or move on to other countries. Economic recovery brought another
increase in the immigrant population, to 5.3 million in 2021 (with a
slight reduction during the pandemic), according to INE.
Along with the liberation of women and the decline of the Church,
this amounted to a third historic change. Modern Spain had hitherto
always been a country of emigration. Millions of Spaniards left in
search of economic opportunity, mainly to Latin America from 1870
until the Civil War, and subsequently to Western Europe as well.16 And
those who went into exile, in Latin America or Europe in the aftermath
of the Civil War, numbered at least 170,000.
Spain’s experience of mass immigration came later and more
suddenly than in other Western European countries. It has also been
generally free of social tension. One reason for that was the recent
memory of emigration and exile. Another was that the first wave of
immigrants in the 2000s fitted in easily. The economy was growing,
and two of the largest contingents were from Spanish-speaking Latin
America (around 20%) and Romania, with linguistic and religious
similarities. Some 200,000 Venezuelans have arrived since 2015, fleeing
their country’s dictatorship and economic collapse. In 2021, as for most
of this century, the single biggest immigrant community was from
Morocco (around 14% of the total). Surveys show that Spaniards are
relaxed about immigrants, more so than most other Europeans. But
there is no room for complacency.

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The coming years will provide a double test of tolerance and inte-
gration. Most new arrivals still come through the airports, as visa over-
stayers. But a growing number come by sea from Africa, from very
different cultures. Almost every week in 2020 and 2021 several hundred
Africans made it to the Canary Islands, packed tightly into open fishing
boats. Hundreds died in the attempt. After a previous surge in arrivals
in the Canaries in 2006, Spain signed agreements with Morocco,
Mauritania and Senegal under which those countries would accept
their migrants back in return for aid and help patrolling the seas. But
deportations halted during the pandemic, and anyway governments
were reluctant.
Some of the new arrivals, especially from Mali, were fleeing violence.
Most were economic migrants, driven to leave by overfishing and
poverty. But in 2021, for the first time, three of the top five nationalities
seeking asylum in Spain were African. At times reception facilities in the
Canaries were overwhelmed. After weeks in temporary accommodation
on the islands, most of the migrants eventually made it to the Spanish
mainland. Many Africans moved on to the rest of Europe. But they
are an increasingly visible presence in Spanish cities. They face a more
uncertain welcome than the first wave of immigrants twenty years ago.
As the threat of Catalan separatism waned, Vox increasingly turned
its attention to campaigning against unauthorised immigration, espe-
cially through social media. For the Madrid election in 2021 it put up
posters contrasting the cost of looking after migrants who are unaccom-
panied minors with pensions for older Spaniards. It was a paradox that
Vox did particularly well in areas along the Mediterranean coast where
farmers depend on Moroccan and African labourers for the harvest.
Tumbling down the hillside to the south of the Calle Mayor, Lavapies
was, in the early years of the twentieth century, ‘the end of Madrid and
the end of the world’, in Arturo Barea’s vivid description of the barrio
in which his washerwoman mother lived and he went to school. One
came to it from above or below in the social scale, he wrote:

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Whoever came from above had stepped down the last step left to
him before the final and absolute fall. Whoever came from below
had scaled the first step upwards, which might lead to anywhere
and anything.17

After a brief gesture at gentrification in the 1980s, and having acquired

a role as a centre of alternative culture and leftist politics, in some ways
Lavapies’s sociology today would be recognised by Barea. It is a melting
pot for recently arrived immigrants, Maghrebis, Latin Americans and
now sub-Saharan Africans. The first African migrants came to Spain in
1984 and lived in a hostel in Lavapies because nobody would rent them
rooms since they had no papers. They began to sell as manteros (street
vendors), Malick Gueye told me. A Senegalese who arrived in Spain in
2005, he is the president of an association of manteros. In 2021 they
opened a shop in Lavapies, selling T-shirts, bags and hoodies, decorated
with anti-racist slogans.
Manteros have proliferated in Spain’s cities, spreading their wares of
fake designer bags and sunglasses on sheets roped at the corners for a
quick getaway if the police appear. ‘Nobody wants to be a mantero,’ said
Malick Gueye, complaining of police harassment. ‘Everyone wants a
dignified life where you get up and go to a job.’ The problem was that it
normally took three years to get a work permit. ‘Racism isn’t a monopoly
of Vox,’ but racists feel ‘empowered’ by its stance, he said. There has
been an increase in racist attacks, though they remained rare. ‘There’s a
breeding ground in favour of hatred in Europe from which Spain is not
exempt,’ Jesús Perea, the deputy minister for migration, told me.
One of Sánchez’s first acts on becoming prime minister was to
welcome to Valencia the Aquarius, a ship run by an NGO (non-
governmental organisation) with 630 immigrants on board, which had
been stranded off Italy for several weeks, denied a port. As migrant
routes moved westwards towards Spain the government became more
cautious. ‘We have to strike a balance between security and solidarity,’

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Perea said. But he remained optimistic. ‘The general day-to-day atti-

tude in Spain [towards immigrants] is better than in other countries.’
It helped that immigrants tended to be spread across the country,
rather than concentrated in ghettos. Though opinion poll evidence was
mixed, in general it tended to show a majority saying that immigration
was positive for the country. Many Spaniards remained welcoming.
One day in September 2021, I stumbled across a demonstration of
about 300 people outside the interior ministry calling for a change in
the rules to allow young migrants to be given work permits when they
turn 18 and leave reception centres. ‘These youths shouldn’t have to be
wandering the streets for three years until they get papers,’ said Emilia
Lozano, a retired department store worker who had organised accom-
modation and training for some of them. A couple of months later the
demonstrators got their way as the government changed the rules.
The second generation of immigrants from the Maghreb was
starting to come of age. The terrorist atrocities in Catalonia in August
2017, in which fifteen people died, were committed by young men of
Moroccan extraction who had grown up in Ripoll, at the foot of the
Pyrenees. They were apparently well integrated. They spoke Catalan,
had jobs and played in a local football team. But they were recruited by
a jihadist preacher. That was a warning, even if they were exceptions. A
comprehensive study published in 2014 found ‘no indicators of cultural
rejection or of reactive identities among immigrants or their children’.18
More recent research has detected that the children of immigrants face
a higher risk of dropping out of school. There are as yet few role models
of successful immigrants in senior jobs in business or politics. And
compare Spain’s national football team with France’s, for example.
With luck, this may be just a question of time.
The country’s demographic problem means it will have to rely on
further inflows of immigrants. Without other changes, to meet its
pension bill it will need an extra 6 million to 7 million workers by
2040, according to Escrivá, whose ministry handled both pensions and

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migration. Some are finding their way to the depopulating interior,

where small towns and villages want immigrants to keep their schools,
shops and bars open.

They came from the Spain of almost deserted medieval villages the
colour of the harsh surrounding land, of lonely sierras, of forests of oak
and elm, of the endless meseta and of declining towns. On a rainy Sunday
in March 2019 some 50,000 of them marched down the Castellana
boulevard in Madrid in what they called ‘the rebellion of emptied Spain’.
Their placards and banners displayed the poetry of Spanish place names
and some prosaic demands. Villamayor del Rio wanted a pharmacy,
Orihuela del Tremedal needed faster internet, Aranda del Duero
demanded better infrastructure, ‘Almanza resists’ while ‘Fuente de Béjar
exists’, as did Arévalo de la Sierra and El Royo. ‘We feel a bit abandoned,
we need doctors,’ explained Paula Siles, a social care assistant from Las
Parras de Castellote (population fifty-seven, down from eighty-six in
2004) in the Maestrazgo mountains of Teruel.
The history of the past century or more in many parts of the world
has been one of migration from the countryside to the cities. In Spain
this happened later, and more abruptly, than in many other countries
in Europe. It began in the 1920s and then gathered force in the two
decades from 1940 to 1960, when millions crowded into the centres of
industry and economic growth in Barcelona, the Basque Country and
Madrid. That human movement, the sum of countless individual deci-
sions, has left a country whose population is geographically unbal-
anced. Large parts of rural Spain, in a vast arc to the north of Madrid
stretching from the Portuguese border to the mountains of the
Maestrazgo near the Mediterranean, are among the least populated
parts of Europe, comparable only to Lapland and the Scottish
Highlands. More than 90% of the country’s population is crammed
into 30% of the land. Some 4.6 million people are spread out across
the remaining 70%, which has a population density of barely fourteen

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inhabitants per square kilometre. It is the Spain that flashes by from

the motorway or the windows of high-speed trains.
This process has become self-reinforcing. As the population falls,
schools, health centres, bank branches, shops and bars close and public
transport withers, and so more people leave in search of services. In
1900, the province of Teruel had 246,000 people; today it has 134,000,
or nine people per square kilometre. According to INE, out of a total
of 8,131 municipalities, 5,002 had fewer than 1,000 people in 2019,
while 1,360 had fewer than 100 people, up from 851 in 1996. Of
these, more than half are situated in an upland swathe of the interior
north-east of the country, including most or all of the provinces of
Cuenca, Guadalajara, Soria and Teruel. Those who remain in such
places are mainly old people, especially men. Julio Llamazares, a writer
originally from León, once called the Castilla y León region ‘the biggest
geriatric home in the country’.19 For a month or so in the summer,
many of these villages fill up with the children and grandchildren of
the residents or former residents. Many buy second homes in the
pueblo, which holds a grip on the imagination but little connection to
everyday life. Some provincial towns are losing people too. Over the
past thirty years the population of León, a historic city, has fallen from
147,000 to 124,000.
The depopulation of much of interior Spain has become a political
issue, as the march testified. In 2016 Sergio del Molino, a journalist
from Zaragoza, published a book on the question called La España
Vacía (Empty Spain). The term stuck. Activists quickly turned it into
‘La España vaciada’, arguing that it was ‘emptied out’ or hollowed out
by capitalism, Franco and government policies over decades.
This is too simplistic. Some parts of the countryside, and of interior
Spain, are thriving, their population higher today than in the 1980s.
And trying to halt the migratory flow would be as futile as Don
Quixote’s battle with windmills in now fairly empty La Mancha: the
main cause of rural depopulation is the attraction of cities, which offer

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opportunity, services and cultural life that small towns and villages
cannot. ‘There was never a black hand which decided to empty out half
of Spain,’ according to Luis Antonio Saez of the University of Zaragoza.20
Extensive cereal farming on arid land in Castile never offered much
of a living. Franco’s technocrats attempted to set up development poles
for industries, such as car plants in Valladolid and Vigo, which might
otherwise have gone to Catalonia or the Basque Country. They also
flooded fertile valleys for hydro-electric dams, just as Iberdrola and
Endesa are today planting massive windfarms on ridges across the
country. But what else was an energy-poor country to do?
That said, policy decisions have sometimes had an effect in driving
depopulation. The only historic kingdom not to gain its own regional
government, León was a casualty of the territorial carve-up during the
transition. It was lumped in with Old Castile while, absurdly, La Rioja
and Santander (Cantabria) became regions in their own right. León,
according to Llamazares, has since become a victim of centralisation in
miniature, losing out to Valladolid, the capital of Castile and León.
Second, railway investment has been concentrated in the high-speed
train network leading to a kind of railway apartheid. Only two trains a
day, taking three hours, connect Soria, a provincial capital, to Madrid
230 kilometres away. Teruel was even worse served: the sole daily train
to the capital took four and a half hours. Some smaller towns have lost
their train services altogether. Third, the government’s decision to end
coal-powered electricity generation, and thus coal mining, on sound
environmental grounds led to the loss of several thousand jobs in
Asturias, León and Teruel. And many in the rest of Spain believe that
Madrid has benefited disproportionately from public policies over the
past three decades.
The sense of grievance is widespread, catalysed in pressure groups
set up over the past quarter of a century. One of the oldest established
of these groups is Teruel Existe (Teruel Exists), which began protesting
about the neglect of the province in the late 1990s. Two decades later

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it moved into electoral politics: ‘We realised that the only things we got
were nice words and pats on the back. If we wanted real political influ-
ence we had to be where decisions are taken,’ said one of its leaders,
Tomas Guitarte. In the election of November 2019 he won one of the
province’s three seats in the Congress of Deputies. The group also
elected two senators. In the Congress Guitarte voted to invest Sánchez’s
coalition government. In return he extracted an agreement ‘for
re-population and territorial rebalancing’ that involved promises of
investment in infrastructure, transfers of government bodies to rural
Spain and the creation of a junior ministerial post to supervise this.
‘We achieved more in two years than in the previous twenty,’ said
Guitarte.21
The electoral success of Teruel Existe encouraged imitators. In a
regional election in Castile and León in early 2022 Soria Ya won three
of the province’s five seats. A national umbrella group for the España
Vaciada lobby is preparing to run candidates in half a dozen regions in
the next general election. They want the government to spend an extra
1% of GDP or €11 billion a year to expand services in rural areas, and
for depopulation to be included in the constitution as a factor in the
complicated formula that governs regional financing. Because rural
provinces are over-represented under the electoral law, one forecast was
that España Vaciada could win up to twenty-five seats. Even if that
proves an exaggeration, the political arithmetic of a fragmented parlia-
ment could give the rural lobby huge influence over future budgets.
That is likely to distort public spending to the detriment of the broader
national interest. España Vaciada emphasised infrastructure, although
there is evidence that investment in education gives a higher return.22
But the contrast with France’s gilets jaunes movement was illuminating:
instead of blocking roundabouts and trashing the Castellana, the
equivalent of the Champs-Élysées, España Vaciada used the political
system to express its complaints. And it had a point: the two main
parties long treated interior Spain as a vote farm, parachuting in

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candidates from the centre who didn’t necessarily have much connec-
tion to the areas they represented.
In interior Spain, ‘the truth is that neither was the past so ideal nor
is the future so dark’, according to Ignacio Urquizu, a sociologist and
former Socialist deputy who in 2019 was elected as mayor of his home
town of Alcañiz in Teruel. He thought that the rate of depopulation
could be halved with the right local policies.23 Some small towns and
villages have succeeded in attracting new residents, including immi-
grants. Rural Spain includes areas of economic dynamism, such as the
wine-producing areas along the Duero, Ebro and Sil valleys. Rural
tourism is growing: Castile and León has lost 2,000 bars since 2010
but gained rural hotels. More than transport infrastructure, two other
things are sometimes missing: entrepreneurship and a high-speed
internet connection, which are key to the vitality of the interior. The
pandemic saw significant numbers of urban professionals move to
rural Spain, with the aim of teleworking or setting up their own busi-
nesses. Rajoy’s government began a €525 million project, continued by
Sánchez, to bring high-speed internet connections to all municipalities
or 95% of the population by 2021.24 Almost half of rural homes were
connected to the fibre-optic network by 2019, compared with only
17.5% in the EU as a whole. ‘In Candelaria, Carboneras, Aguilar
del Campóo or Villaconejos there’s more of a fibre-optic network than
in any [other] European capital,’ boasted José María Álvarez Pallete,
the boss of Telefónica.25 A broader reform that gave more powers
and resources to mayors would also be useful for interior Spain.
In Spanish literature and cinema, rural dwellers have often been
depicted as paletos – country bumpkins, thicker than city slickers. In a
hilarious satirical novel, Un Hipster en la España Vacía (A Hipster in
Empty Spain), and its sequel, Daniel Gascón, a writer born in Zaragoza,
dispelled that stereotype, contrasting the common sense and connec-
tions to the modern world of the people of a fictional small town in
Teruel with the pretentious and patronising postmodernism of the

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urban cultural elite. Interior Spain deserves to be treated with realism

rather than romanticism.

The largest saltwater lagoon in the western Mediterranean, the Mar

Menor in the Murcia region was until the 1960s a natural paradise of
crystalline water, submerged meadows, seahorses and abundant fish
and molluscs. Then uncontrolled tourist development began with
hotels and blocks of flats sprouting on its sand spit and shores. In the
1970s one of the dictatorship’s biggest hydrological projects was
completed, a 300 kilometre canal that takes up to 60% of the headwa-
ters of the Tagus in central Spain to the River Segura in Murcia. This
has irrigated some 60,000 hectares, turning the area around the Mar
Menor into a giant fruit and vegetable garden, growing lettuces,
melons, broccoli and peppers. The area supplies around 20% of Spain’s
horticultural exports and, by one estimate, 100,000 farm jobs.26
Now the Mar Menor is dying. In 2016 the lagoon turned into a
green soup, clogged with algae. In 2019, and then again in 2021,
several tonnes of dead fish washed up on its shores. ‘It’s the symptom
of an environmental catastrophe,’ declared Noelia Arroyo, the PP
mayor of the nearby city of Cartagena, calling it ‘a national emer-
gency’.27 Some 50,000 marched in protest in Cartagena and a local
campaign to try and save the lagoon gathered strength. The problem,
scientists said, is that nutrient-rich fertiliser run-off from the farms
leaches into the Mar Menor, stimulating the growth of algae that block
sunlight and deprive the water of oxygen and thus of marine life. The
PP regional government has tended to side with the farmers, while the
national government looked the other way. In 2021 at last that changed.
Teresa Ribera, the environment minister, met Murcia’s president,
Fernando López Miras, and they agreed on measures to help save the
lagoon. The regional government agreed to restrict fertiliser use close to
the Mar Menor. Ribera complained that it had failed to act against
farmers who have irrigated some 8,000 hectares without licence.

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Whether or not enforcement follows, it may to be too late: the under-

ground aquifer is now contaminated with nitrates which find their way
into the lagoon. But the politicians felt under public pressure to be
seen to be acting. And that is fairly new in a country which in some
ways was a pioneer in environmental protection, but has hitherto
lacked much modern environmental consciousness.
Spain has great environmental diversity but also suffers environ-
mental stress. Large parts of the country lack sufficient water. ‘Spain is
a vast stretch of sterile terrain surrounded by a narrow strip of fertile
land,’ according to Ramón y Cajal.28 The solution, many thought, was
water diversion schemes such as the Tagus-Segura, and the planting of
trees to stabilise the headwaters of rivers. Both the Restoration regime
and the Second Republic approved hydraulic plans for large-scale irri-
gation, and the Republic approved a reforestation scheme. Franco
continued these, with the building of large reservoirs for irrigation and
power, and the reforestation of 3 million hectares. Under the influence
of the Romantic movement’s attachment to wild, mountainous land-
scape, and following the example of the United States, the Restoration
regime created two national parks in 1918, in Covadonga in the Picos
de Europa mountains in Asturias and Ordesa in the Pyrenees in Aragon.
Spain was only the third European country to do so, after Sweden and
Switzerland. Further parks followed in the 1950s and 1960s, protecting
the volcanoes of the Canary Islands and Doñana, the large wetland at
the mouth of the Guadalquivir river in Andalucía. Today over a quarter
of Spain’s land area is protected, either as national or regional parks or
sites of special interest. The original concern with landscape has yielded
to one of biodiversity and ecology.29 But it took a long time before
efforts were made to protect the coastline. By one count 28% of Spain’s
coasts have been built upon. Nowadays developers face opposition. In
an emblematic case, the courts ruled that a giant hotel built in Cabo de
Gata national park in Almería should be demolished, although that
had yet to happen at the time of writing.

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Modelling suggests that the western Mediterranean is likely to face

a bigger change in its climate than the rest of Europe. Spain already
suffers aridity, with around a fifth of its land classified by researchers as
desertified.30 Forest fires and floods are frequent problems. The summer
of 2022 was the hottest since records began in 1961, with temperatures
above 40°C for weeks on end in much of the country in what seemed
like a foretaste of an uncomfortable future. Sánchez’s government
approved a climate change law which promoted green energy. But
policy remains patchy. The government lifted tolls on more than 1,000
kilometres of motorway as contracts ran out. But it postponed a deci-
sion to implement a national motorway toll because of the opposition
of truckers, Podemos and Basque and Catalan nationalists. Although
concern about climate change is growing, it lags behind that in
other European countries. A Eurobarometer poll in 2021 found that
only 3% of Spanish respondents thought climate change to be a top
problem, compared with a European average of 13%. It was striking
that Spain lacked a Green Party, though Más País, a splinter from
Podemos aspired to be one (see next chapter). It did, however, have an
animal-rights party, which came close to reaching the national Congress
and could claim to have had an impact on public attitudes.

Only about a fifth of the seats in the great bull ring of Las Ventas in
Madrid had been sold on a warm Saturday evening of lowering cloud
in June 2017. A water seller outside said the crowd was normal for an
ordinary corrida outside the fashionable San Isidro festival in the spring
and with ‘run of the mill’ bullfighters. ‘It’s sad for those of us who love
it and live from it that it doesn’t attract more people.’ The crowd was
mainly working-class Spaniards, with a scattering of Asian tourists. The
corrida began with a trumpet blast and the entry of two middle-aged
men on white horses and dressed in black sixteenth-century tunics
with a long red feather in their black hats. The three toreros and their
retinue followed them, in tight uniforms of green and pink with

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lashings of gold braid and flashing sequins, and their magenta and gold
capes. The band played a paso doble and then another trumpet blast
announced the first bull. Frisky and aggressive, it crashed its horns
against the wooden fence that protects the banderilleros. After the
preliminary skirmishes, the matador stood, puffed up, in front of the
bull, which was weakened, bemused and panting. He jabbed his sword
into the animal’s broad neck. It staggered around and then slowly
subsided. The second torero was artless, his bull losing ruby blood
from the hole in its back made by the picador. Several times he inserted
his sword, only for the infuriated bull contemptuously to toss it off.
The crowd whistled and slow-handclapped. The torero looked nervous.
The whole exercise had become an embarrassing exercise in seemingly
pointless cruelty. At last he killed the beast, at the seventh attempt, and
slunk away before a silent crowd. His successor in the ring immediately
imposed himself. He swaggered on tiptoe towards his bull, engaging it
with veronicas as if asking it to dance. The bull repeatedly rushed past
him, its horns almost brushing his arched body, man and bull moving
as if magnetically attracted to each other in a dance of death, the man
knowing any slip or lapse of concentration could be fatal, the bull
complicit in its own impending demise. The bullfighter went in for the
kill and at the second attempt the bull crumpled against the fence. He
turned away. But then the bull staggered up, its life force resisting to
the end, a murmur going through the crowd. And then the bull
subsided again and the rain fell harder. It was an average and represen-
tative bullfight, without the glamour of famous names and top-notch
bulls, a mixture of macho valour, dramatic art, fumbling and cruel
butchery.
Until recently bullfighting almost defined Spain in foreign eyes. Some
foreigners, like Hemingway, were entranced by it; others appalled. What
is less well known abroad is that Spaniards, too, have long been divided
about bullfighting. The anti-taurine tradition is as strong as the taurine
one. Emilia Pardo Bazán, the nineteenth-century writer, called it ‘the

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national dementia’ rather than ‘the national fiesta’. That has become the
majority view. In one poll, in 2014, 90% said they didn’t attend corridas.
In another, in 2019, 56% said they were against bullfighting and only
25% were in favour. But for its devotees, bullfighting is an art, not a
sport, and it is covered in the cultural pages of the newspapers.
In this century professional bullfighting has steadily declined. In
2007 there were bullfighting festivals in 902 Spanish towns. By 2019
that number had fallen to 377. The pandemic dealt a heavy economic
blow to the industry and some breeders of fighting bulls seemed likely
to go out of business. At local level, however, bull-baiting events of
various kinds are still common at village and small-town festivals in the
summer. That is true, too, of Catalonia, despite a vote in the Catalan
parliament to ban bullfighting in 2010, a decision taken more for
nationalist than animal-rights reasons. Bullfighters have faced aggres-
sive abuse on social media and one or two have been physically attacked
by animal rightists. Other Spaniards still revere them: I was once having
lunch in a bar in Seville when Julián López, El Juli, the most famous of
contemporary Spanish bullfighters walked in. He was greeted with
adoration.
Rajoy’s government declared bullfighting to be part of Spain’s
cultural patrimony. But the corrida’s committed defenders are not
confined to the PP and Vox. Bullfighting ‘is culture, it’s tradition, it’s
participation, it’s conservation, it’s ecosystem, it’s [the] economy and of
course it’s passion’, wrote Emiliano García-Page, the Socialist regional
president of Castile-La Mancha.31 The unofficial leader of Tendido 7,
the section of Las Ventas where the most knowledgeable and critical
fans gather, is Faustino Herranza, known as El Rosco. He claimed to
have gone to every corrida at the San Isidro festival for more than forty
years. He had been a deputy mayor for Izquierda Unida in a town in
the Sierra de Guadarrama and voted for Podemos.32
While bullfighting is unlikely to disappear altogether, its time as a
mass activity seems sure to draw to a close. Rosa Montero, a novelist

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who is the daughter of a torero, has written that her father taught her
to love animals; that toreros and aficionados are not murderers and
psychopaths but, she argued, they belong ‘to a world that is now obso-
lete’ with a level of violence that was disturbing.33
As Spain became an urban country and many young people grew
up with little knowledge of the countryside, attitudes to animals were
changing in other ways too. In 2021 the national government banned
the hunting of wolves north of the River Duero, the only part of the
country where it was still allowed. The decision faced objections from
the regional governments in Castile and León, Galicia, Asturias and
Cantabria, and from farmers. There were between 2,000 and 2,500
wolves in more than 300 packs in Spain, mostly in these northern
areas, and farmers regularly lose livestock to them. ‘The wolf has been
a cursed species for centuries. . . . It has gone from being a symbol of
cruelty in rural societies to one of conservation,’ Juan Carlos Blanco, a
biologist, told El País.34
Spaniards now see animals as pets, not as threats or to provide sport.
Hunting, too, is in decline. The agriculture ministry issued 769,000
licences in 2018, almost 300,000 less than in 2005. But the number of
pets grew by a staggering 40% in the five years to 2018, most of them
dogs. There were more pets than children under 15, a sign perhaps of
the growing loneliness of Spanish city life.35

Spain has become a country of smaller families and more individu-

alism. In 2020 almost 5 million Spaniards lived on their own, forming
a quarter of all households, according to INE. Yet the family remains
the bedrock of Spanish society, and one of the secrets of its success.
Grandparents share parenting duties, especially picking up children
from school. At weekend lunch times, restaurants are full of large
family parties, often comprising three generations. The relative lack of
state childcare facilities means that women continued to play a prin-
cipal role as carers. This is ‘an ambivalent society’, according to Ángeles

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González-Fernández, a historian at the University of Seville. ‘Post-

modern, yes, but at the same time traditionally Spanish.’36
It is a society that lives much of its life outdoors, in the street. That
is facilitated by the weather. It is also because many people live in fairly
small flats. The bar has traditionally been at the centre of Spanish life,
as if it functioned as the living room. In many ways it still is, though
their numbers are slowly falling: in 2017 there were 184,430, down
almost 10% since 2010. On the other hand, the number of restaurants
is rising each year.
In all, 65% of Spaniards live in flats, the highest figure in the euro-
zone after Latvia, and 45% in large blocks of more than ten flats. Spain
has very high rates of owner-occupation, but housing has become an
issue of growing importance since the 2008–13 slump. One of the
strands in the formation of Podemos was groups of activists who
mobilised against evictions for non-payment of mortgages. The rise of
short-term holiday lets in cities like Barcelona and Madrid was a factor
in a steep rise in rents. In the big cities, many of the poor live in over-
crowded rented housing, with six or seven crammed into flats of 60 or
70 square metres, with cubicle-like bedrooms. All this highlighted the
lack of public housing.
Despite their reputation for proud, rebellious individualism,
Spaniards are good at following norms. To many people’s surprise, a ban
on smoking in bars and other public places introduced in 2011 was
widely respected. The country has managed to reduce the numbers killed
each year in road accidents from 5,940 in 1989 to 1,004 in 2021. The
introduction of penalty points which could lead to the loss of driving
licences by Rubalcaba was a crucial step in this. During the pandemic,
Spaniards were early and conscientious adopters of face masks.
Spaniards are good at demonstrating, and do so often. Except during
the slump, and sometimes in Catalonia and in the past in the Basque
Country, the demos are nearly always peaceful and orderly. But organised
civil society is relatively weak. The political parties carry out many tasks

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that in other countries would fall to think-tanks, NGOs or civic groups.

That is partly because there are few tax incentives for charitable dona-
tions, as opposed to that for the Church. ‘For a strong civil society, you
need money,’ Eduardo Serra, a former chairman of the Prado, told me.
Like France, but unlike Italy, some Spaniards are attracted to a version
of the American dream. The democratic period has seen the spread of
American-style car-dependent suburbs around Madrid, for example.
But many younger Spaniards are bike- or scooter-riding urbanites. The
two visions of the city clashed when the PP regained the Madrid city
council in 2019 after a period of left-wing rule. It tried to scrap a scheme
barring most cars from the city centre, but was thwarted by protests, and
the courts and later reinstated it under a different name.
The quality of life is generally high. Spaniards are healthier, better
fed and taller than in the past: their average height has increased from
1.69 metres in 1977 to 1.73 metres in 2017.37 Men born in 1996 aver-
aged 1.76 metres, 14 centimetres more than those born a century
before, while women measured 1.63 metres on average, 12 centimetres
more. A Spaniard born today can expect to live for eighty-three years,
the second-longest lifespan in the OECD after Japan, which it is set to
overtake it by 2040, according to a study by the University of
Washington in the United States.38 The Mediterranean diet is now
more myth than reality. But Spaniards do eat a lot of fresh food, and
they care a lot about the provenance and quality of the ingredients of
their diet. A generally good health service helps. But so does the strength
of family networks, which is surely a factor in the fact that most
Spaniards tell pollsters that they are happy, even younger people. The
poll of 18–34-year-olds for El País newspaper published in July 2021
found that 85% declared themselves ‘satisfied’ with their life: they
know that, unlike their parents or grandparents, they are growing up in
a free, democratic society, and the extended family offers a support
network. In many ways Spanish society has become more tolerant and
relaxed about differences. But this does not apply to politics.

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 CHAPTER 9

THE ‘CASTE’ AND ITS FLAWED

CHALLENGERS

T heir cries were ‘No nos representan’ (‘They don’t represent us’) and ‘Real
democracy now!’ After a demonstration on 15 May 2011, thousands
of mainly young, middle-class Spaniards set up an improvised camp in the
Puerta del Sol, in the heart of Madrid. They called it a ‘citizens’ assembly’.
It was in protest at austerity, the sense of entitlement among politicians and
bankers, and what they saw as the unfairness of a country that bailed out
the savings banks while cutting spending on schools and hospitals. They
stayed there for weeks. Amplified through social media, the protests spread
across the country. The protesters would soon be dubbed los indignados
(the indignant ones), and 15 May 2011 – or 15M in the Spanish shorthand
habit for referring to important dates – would come to be seen as a turning
point in contemporary Spanish history. The indignados initially enjoyed
broad public support, with polls showing 70% to 80% agreeing with
them.1 It ‘was a great outburst of dismissal’, said Carolina Bescansa, a soci-
ologist who took part. ‘The consensus was on what we didn’t want. We
didn’t want more cuts, we didn’t want corruption, and we didn’t want that
way of doing politics behind the backs of citizens.’2
Just six months after 15M and with the Zapatero government deeply
unpopular, the PP won an absolute majority at a general election.

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 THE ‘CASTE’ AND ITS FLAWED CHALLENGERS

Superficially it was as if nothing much had changed politically. In fact,

the indignados crystallised smouldering discontent, and in due course
their legacy would include a redrawing of the political map. Out of that
discontent would emerge two new national political parties, Podemos
on the left and Ciudadanos on the centre-right. In a general election in
2015 these two grabbed 34% of the vote between them. A stable polit-
ical system based on the Socialists and the PP fragmented. The result
was three further general elections in the next four years, none of which
produced a majority government.
A small group of youngish professors or postgraduates of the
Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of Madrid’s Complutense
University, one of whom was Bescansa, saw in the indignados the
potential for radical change in Spain. Pablo Iglesias, aged 32 in 2011,
had studied the Italian far left and taken part in anti-globalisation
protests across Europe. Juan Carlos Monedero had worked for the
government of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s leftist populist strongman.
Iñigo Errejón, aged 27, had studied Bolivia under Evo Morales, its
leftist leader, and also worked in Venezuela. All three were influenced
by the work of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist philosopher
who developed the concept of cultural hegemony, that to be successful
the left had to implant its ideas and values in society as a whole and
not just rely on the economic struggles of the working class. While
Iglesias was in many ways a Leninist, Errejón was a fan of Ernesto
Laclau, an Argentine Gramscian who argued for a leftist populism
which he saw in Peronism in his own country. From the contemporary
Latin American left, and from the example of Chávez in particular,
the group took the importance of charismatic leadership and of
inserting (or disguising) socialist ideas in a broader national-populist
framework. Iglesias stressed, too, the importance of communication
and of television in particular. The three of them founded two weekly
television programmes, one that went out on a small local channel
in Vallecas, a working-class district of Madrid, and the other on

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HispanTV, a channel which was reported to have been set up by the

Iranian government.3 Iglesias quickly became a media pundit, debating
in the tertulias (chat shows) that proliferate on mainstream Spanish
television and radio. With his trademark ponytail, he became nation-
ally known.
The Complutense group saw the emergence of the indignados as a
point of rupture, as evidence that Spain was not just suffering political,
economic and social crises but an overarching ‘crisis of the regime’ and
was ‘on the verge of a second transition’, as Iglesias put it.4 Bescansa
conducted polls which seemed to suggest that the political consensus
underlying Spanish democracy had greatly weakened because this
was no longer identified with wellbeing. The group thought this weak-
ness opened up the possibility of the overthrow of the transition settle-
ment from the left by those who could connect with the new public
mood, as had happened in several Latin American countries. At
first Iglesias and Errejón worked as advisers to Izquierda Unida, an
electoral alliance dating from 1986 and based on the Communist
Party. Then, at an event in January 2014 in a theatre in Lavapies in
Madrid, they launched Podemos, meaning ‘(Yes) we can’. Within four
months, and with Iglesias’s face on the ballot slip, the new party won
1.3 million votes (8% of the total) in a European election. By late
2014, less than a year after its birth, it had 28% support in the opinion
polls and was in first place.
Podemos claimed to embody a new kind of politics that rejected the
divide between left and right in favour of one that pitted, in Laclau’s
formulation, los de abajo (those at the bottom) against los de arriba
(those at the top). It flirted with direct democracy, setting up ‘circles’ of
supporters rather than a conventional party organisation. In its most
effective slogan, it denounced the ‘caste’ – a small self-serving elite of
politicians, bankers and businesspeople which was held to exploit and
oppress ‘the people’ at the bottom. The term ‘the caste’ was borrowed
from Italy’s populist Five Star Movement.5 While many voters at first

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welcomed Podemos as a cry of anger and for renewal, its political

project represented a wholesale rejection of the liberal democracy
forged in the transition. It was the hard left in soft, populist focus.
Iglesias stressed that what interested him was capturing the power of
the state, implicitly in a permanent way as Chávez had done, not just
winning an election. ‘You don’t conquer heaven by consensus,’ he said
at Podemos’s first Congress in 2014. ‘You storm it.’
Iglesias set out his critique of Spanish democracy in a book published
in 2015.6 He stated that he was ‘eager to settle scores with the reverence
for the transition evinced by most of the political forces in Spain’.
What characterised the transition, he went on, ‘was its unrelenting
tutelary oversight by economic and political elites symbolically subject
to the crown’. He saw the monarchy as ‘a crucial element for Francoist
institutional continuity’. The system was operated by and for ‘the caste’
– ‘the thieves who erect political frameworks for stealing democracy
from the people’. The constitutional reform of 2010 that gave priority
to debt payments was ‘a coup’. Podemos was Eurosceptic. Iglesias
warned against ‘Spain’s wholesale conversion into a colony of German
Europe; a country stripped of sovereignty’ – a statement that might
have come from Nigel Farage and British Brexiteers or Victor Orban in
Hungary. Corruption was ‘a form of government’ and ‘an intrinsic
feature of our political regime and ruling political caste’. The corrupt
and the powerful enjoyed impunity. ‘It has always been exceptional in
this country for politicians or bankers to end up with firm prison
sentences.’
So here was a third rejection of the transition settlement, along with
those of ETA and the more extreme strand in Basque nationalism, and
of Catalan separatism. Though Iglesias claimed to identify uniquely
Spanish failings, derived from the original sin of the transition, much
of his argument was part of the European Zeitgeist in 2015, as Brexit
gathered force and populists of left or right gained strength from
Greece to Italy to Poland. Iglesias’s critique contained some falsehood

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and much exaggeration. But there was enough truth in it to resonate

with a significant minority of Spaniards. Podemos quickly became ‘the
political force of the losers from the crisis’, as Ignacio Urquizu, a soci-
ologist and a Socialist MP, wrote.7
Another critique came from Ciudadanos, but a moderate one
aimed at reforming, not casting aside, the transition settlement.
Founded by fifteen intellectuals and journalists in Barcelona in 2005 as
a regional party, Ciutadans as it was called in Catalan was originally
broadly liberal or social democratic in outlook. The founders were
dismayed by the swerve of the Catalan Socialist party, with which
several of them identified, towards Catalan nationalism, and by Pasqual
Maragall’s coalition with Esquerra. None of the founders wanted the
job of leader of the new group, for which Albert Rivera, a fast-talking
young Barcelona lawyer, volunteered and was accepted. Ciutadans
won three seats in the Catalan parliament in 2006. A decade after
its founding Rivera saw an opportunity to recreate Ciutadans as
Ciudadanos, a national party, exploiting the discredit of the PP and the
credit his group had gained in the rest of Spain for opposing the sepa-
ratists in Catalonia. It burst into national politics in the 2015 election,
winning 14% of the vote and forty seats. Opposition to peripheral
nationalisms and the defence of the unity of Spain was a central plank
in the Ciudadanos platform, which meant that some of its opponents
branded it as a Spanish nationalist party. It also believed in free markets,
in modernising reforms of the state, the labour market and education
and in a crackdown against corruption and wasteful duplication of
spending by the central government and the regions. In contrast to the
PP, it espoused individual freedoms and rights such as gay marriage
and abortion. Rivera, who became increasingly histrionic, talked of
emulating Emmanuel Macron’s success in overcoming traditional
parties of right and left in France. ‘We have to move away from the
old left–right axis,’ he told me in 2018. ‘The big battle of the twenty-
first century is between liberalism and the open society, and

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populism-nationalism and the closed society.’ Yet he would fail to put

this into practice.

Spanish democracy, like many others, does have structural flaws which
have become more apparent over the past decade, although they are
not necessarily those stated by Iglesias, as the rest of this chapter will
explain. It is not that Spain is not democratic, as the wilder Catalan
separatists and Iglesias (at first) claimed. Think-tank rankings and
academic studies show that it enjoys a full democracy, on a par with
others in Western Europe.8 But like all democracies, Spain’s has imper-
fections. They have less to do with the transition settlement than with
the way the political system has evolved over the past forty years. Three
problems stand out: the role and character of the political parties; the
public administration; and the judiciary.
Mindful of the lessons of the Second Republic, the architects of
the transition placed political stability above all other considerations,
including the accountability of government. As the system evolved, it
concentrated power in the hands of the parties and especially of the
party leaders in what has increasingly come to be seen as a partidocracia
(partydocracy) that serves the interests of the politicians rather than
them serving those of the citizens. For a start, Spain has far more politi-
cians than it needs as Miriam González, a Spanish lawyer who has
worked mainly in Brussels and London, has pointed out. There are no
official figures but she estimates there are between 300,000 and 400,000
of them. That means Spain has more politicians than federal Germany
and, in proportion to population, twice as many as in France or Italy.9
This surfeit is partly because when the regional governments were set
up, it was decided that each would have a legislative assembly. It was also
because regionalisation was not accompanied by rationalisation of the
previous structure of local government. Uniquely in Europe, Spain has
four levels of government. At the bottom, there are over 8,000 munici-
palities. Even Brazil, with more than four times as many people as Spain,

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and where creating new municipalities has been a growth industry, gets
by with 5,570. The provincial diputaciones or assemblies should have
been abolished when the Comunidades Autónomas or regions were
created by the constitution. But they survive in those regions that
comprise more than one province. These assemblies have up to fifty-one
members and provide services to municipalities. At all levels, Spanish
politicians tend to have a larger court of advisers and hangers-on on the
public payroll than in many other European democracies.
Second, the political parties have spread their tentacles laterally,
into other supposedly independent institutions, ranging from the civil
service to the judiciary and to universities. The leverage of politicians
over the public administrations has been a prime facilitator of corrup-
tion. Up to 20,000 public service jobs, including many senior ones, are
cargos de libre designación, a term which interestingly has no vernacular
equivalent in English but means that they are discretionary political
appointments, whose occupants can be hired and fired at will by their
political masters. That is far more than in any other Western European
country. They are the modern equivalents of the pretendientes, the
swarms of would-be office holders whose hopes were raised by every
change of government in the nineteenth century.
When Rajoy and the PP were ejected from office in 2018, some
6,000 people lost their jobs, including 437 presidential advisers,
according to Miriam González.10 When the Socialists were turfed out
of the regional government in Andalucía in the same year, 660 people
were immediately fired. When Sánchez became prime minister in
2018, he placed Socialist loyalists at the head of RTVE, the state broad-
caster; the CIS, the state social research company which carries out
opinion polls; and even the Paradores, the chain of mainly historic
hotels. These bodies are all supposed to represent the broad public
interest. The case of the CIS was particularly scandalous. Having been
previously respected by academics, its opinion polls proceeded to show
a bias towards the left.

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Franco bequeathed an archaic and under-resourced public adminis-

tration. But it included a small nationally appointed corps of profes-
sional senior civil servants, which dated from before the Civil War and
whose function was to check the arbitrary power of caciques over local
government. As Antonio Muñoz Molina, a novelist whose first job was
in the small cultural office of Granada city council, has recalled, in each
municipality members of this national corps held three crucial posts:
they were responsible for certifying the legality of the mayor’s actions,
for approving spending and for controlling the purse strings. They had
job security and couldn’t be hired or fired by the mayor.11 Once democ-
racy became established, and just as Spain began to get richer, they
were gradually pushed aside and replaced with cargos de libre desig-
nación. These political appointees have little incentive to act as a check
on the politicians who control their livelihood. And since they are not
appointed transparently, or on grounds of merit, their quality is vari-
able, at best.
Or take universities. Carlos III University and King Juan Carlos
University, both in Madrid and both founded in the 1990s, were iden-
tified with the Socialists and the PP respectively. King Juan Carlos
University was embroiled in scandal when several PP politicians,
including Pablo Casado, were alleged to have obtained Master’s degrees
from the university’s Institute of Public Law despite doing very little of
the required academic work. Casado admitted he had been credited
with eighteen of twenty-two assignments but insisted he had done
nothing wrong. The case of Cristina Cifuentes, the PP president of the
Madrid regional government from 2015 to 2018, was particularly
telling. She had vowed ‘zero tolerance’ of corruption and had facili-
tated a judicial investigation of her predecessor for alleged kickbacks.
Once in office she was charged with forging documents to obtain a
similar degree from the Institute of Public Law. She was eventually
absolved but an aide and a university teacher were convicted of the
forgery.12 Subsequently someone – it was thought to be someone from

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within the government or the PP – leaked old footage from a security

camera in a supermarket that showed her being interrogated for alleg-
edly having stolen two jars of cold cream years earlier.13 Cifuentes said
this had been an ‘involuntary mistake’ but resigned from her post. This
revelation looked political and seemed to send a message about her
attempt to wage a campaign of zero tolerance of corruption.14
This appeared to be an example of the way that some politicians
crossed boundaries and abused the powers of the state, such as the
security services, for their partisan interest. Jorge Fernández, the inte-
rior minister in Rajoy’s first government, faced trial for having alleg-
edly set police to spy on Luis Bárcenas, the PP’s rogue treasurer.
Bárcenas had €22 million in a Swiss bank account, the apparent fruit
of illicit contributions from construction and other companies, and
claimed to have made secret top-up payments to party leaders,
including Rajoy (who denied this). He was sentenced by the Supreme
Court to thirty-three years in prison in 2018 for the receipt of bribes,
illicit enrichment and money laundering.15
In Spain, as elsewhere, many politicians are honest and motivated
by a vocation for public service. But not all of them. In all, more than
900 PP politicians faced corruption charges, Sánchez claimed when he
proposed the censure motion against Rajoy (although he provided no
details).16 Most cases involved regional or local government. A former
regional president of Madrid faced charges relating to alleged irregu-
larities in the award of contracts, several of them relating to a wild
spree of business deals involving the capital’s staid water utility.17 Three
of the past four presidents of the PP in Valencia faced charges relating
to public contracts. All denied wrongdoing. But the PP did not have a
monopoly of corruption cases. A former Socialist president of Andalucía
and four of his councillors received prison sentences for maladminis-
tration and misuse of public funds over a scandal involving the abuse
of a €680 million fund for redundant workers to make payments to
political clients.18 In some cases corruption was linked to the rising cost

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of political campaigns. Spaniards are relatively reluctant to join or

donate to political parties, which are more reliant on public financing
than in many other countries. But the system facilitated corruption,
and not just because of the cargos de libre designación. Until the law on
public contracting was tightened in 2017, it allowed low-ball bids and
large cost overruns. There was no law to protect whistleblowers. Some
suffered the loss of their job and persecution.19
Public concern over, and awareness of, corruption soared in the
aftermath of the financial crisis. A Eurobarometer poll in 2018 found
that 94% of respondents in Spain thought corruption was widespread
in their country, compared with an EU average of 71%. But only 5%
said they had had experienced or witnessed an act of corruption in the
previous twelve months, in line with the EU average. Spain is not Italy:
corruption is not systemic, and it tends eventually to be punished by
the courts.

There was another dimension to the slogan No nos representan. In this

century the Spanish political class has become increasingly discon-
nected from the public, operating in a self-referential cocoon that has
little bearing on the concerns of citizens. That is how the public
perceives them. The electoral system contributes to the disconnection.
Elections are conducted on the basis of a ‘closed list’, in which voters
choose a party rather than a particular candidate. It is the party leaders
who decide where on the list a given candidate is placed, and therefore
their prospects of election. This means that there is no particular link
between representative and the represented.
Though their salaries were relatively low, politicians enjoyed protec-
tion and perks. More of them enjoy official cars and security details
than in many European countries. Muñoz Molina, who headed the
New York office of the Cervantes Institute in the 1990s, recounted the
promotional trips that regional presidents and mayors began to make
to the city as Spain got richer. They hired expensive PR people and

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expensive venues and arrived with large entourages from home. Most
of the others who attended would be from the small group of resident
Spaniards in the city, rather than the American public or investors.
‘The noise they made in New York was mainly heard in their places of
origin,’ inside their bubble.20
Indefensibly, thousands of politicians enjoy aforamiento – the right
to be tried only by the Supreme Court or regional Superior Courts.
When he negotiated a stillborn agreement with Ciudadanos, Sánchez
promised to reform the constitution to abolish aforamiento. It hasn’t
happened. Miriam González argues that it is the politicians who boss
around the businesspeople, through obsessive economic regulation,
rather than the other way round. In other words, rather than a small
caste, it is a cast of hundreds of thousands of politicians who run Spain.
There are few mechanisms of accountability, apart from elections
and, to an extent, the media. Newspapers, both printed and digital, in
Spain are highly partisan, as they are, for example, in Britain. After the
financial crisis they became even more dependent on advertising by
governments, at all levels. Although some newspapers have conducted
important investigations, they also practise a degree of self-censorship.
Nobody ever touches Spain’s largest private companies, a former
minister once told me, partly because of their advertising budgets and
power of patronage. In the broadcast media, with a few honourable
exceptions, endless tertulias of opinionated punditry outweigh analysis
of facts. Parliamentary committees are toothless and formulaic.
Ministers rarely feel the need to resign when they make mistakes. Spain
only approved a Freedom of Information Law in 2013 and its opera-
tion has been flawed. In 2021 AccessInfo Europe, an NGO, criticised
what it saw as the lack of independence from the government of the
Transparency Council, the body charged with handling requests for
information. In one of the few holdovers from Franco, the official
secrets law dates from 1969, though it was amended in 1978. It doesn’t
set a time limit for documents automatically to become public.

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Historians have repeatedly called for a new law. While governments

have paid lip service to this, it hasn’t happened.21
What has made all this worse is that the parties themselves have
become less internally democratic. When Felipe González was prime
minister he often had to battle to get his way in the executive of the
Socialist party. His deputy, Alfonso Guerra, was his chief rival in the
party. Now leaders tend to dominate their parties. Both Sánchez and
Rajoy brought in rule changes that make it harder for party commit-
tees to eject leaders. The adoption of primaries to choose party leaders
has introduced presidential-style leadership into a parliamentary
system. Leaders now owe their jobs to rank-and-file members rather
than to mid-level party officials who are more likely to understand the
broader interests of voters.
After Sánchez regained the leadership of the Socialist party through
a primary in 2018 he ruthlessly purged those who had sided with his
rivals. Casado was similarly harsh in culling congressional lists for the
2019 general election. Rivera and Iglesias, too, were intolerant of
dissent. There were very few free-thinkers left in national politics. One
was Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, an outspoken aristocratic historian
who combined libertarianism with an afrancesado hostility to regional
differences. Surprisingly Casado appointed her as PP parliamentary
spokesperson, a job which required tact. She lasted thirteen months
before being sacked. Unusually she chose to remain in politics, on the
back benches. ‘In Spain we are not used to the exercise of freedom
inside the parties,’ she said. ‘We confuse disagreement with dissent and
freedom with indiscipline.’22 Almost the only other critical voices
within parties tended to be regional presidents (dubbed ‘barons’) who
had their own local political followings. Otherwise, the parties were
top-down entities.
Sánchez’s leadership was particularly presidential in style. He
brought his election guru, Iván Redondo, into the Moncloa, making
him chief of staff with power over the official machine. Redondo had

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previously worked for PP politicians and was disliked and mistrusted

by many Socialists but he had stuck with Sánchez during the bitter
battles over the party leadership in 2017 and 2018 and the prime
minister valued loyalty above all other qualities. But Redondo made
mistakes. He was influential in Sánchez’s decision to repeat the 2019
election. And his fingerprints were all over a hapless Socialist campaign
that saw the party placed third in a Madrid regional election in 2021.
In a reshuffle a couple of months later, Sánchez sacked Redondo and
brought into government Socialist politicians who had opposed him in
the 2018 primary. It was a visible attempt to unite the party.

‘Synthetic diagnosis of Spain: we have a 21st-century society, but a

20th-century economy and a 19th-century public administration,’ was
a pithy summary by Victor Lapuente, a Spanish political scientist at
the University of Gothenburg.23 Apart from the political capture of its
upper reaches, the civil service suffered from rigidity and an archaic
focus on procedure rather than outcome. The civil service was not
especially large, although the regional governments had too many
appendages (such as public companies or foundations) whose chief
purpose was to provide employment. There were around 3.3 million
employees in all three levels of the public administration, of whom
almost half worked for the regional governments. The problem was the
poor quality of administration. Because of the freeze on recruitment
following the financial crisis, the average age of civil servants was 58,
with many due to retire over the next decade.24 Many of these workers
were on temporary contracts, which have been abused by the regions,
and have not enjoyed much in-service training to keep them up to
date. Permanent staff were recruited through public examinations
(known as oposiciones), which gave priority to memorisation rather
than problem-solving. They cannot be moved to other jobs without
their consent. For users of public services it often appeared as if
the bureaucrats were the helpless slaves of dysfunctional computer

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systems. As one computer scientist put it, if Larra lived today rather
than ‘Vuelva usted mañana’ he would call his skit ‘Error 404’.25
The limitations of the system were exposed by the pandemic. At the
start, the health ministry struggled to procure protective equipment. It
turned out that after decades of decentralisation the ministry had been
reduced to a handful of elderly penpushers with no experience of
purchasing. Both the ministry and the regional governments struggled
with contact-tracing; an app for that purpose was trialled and aban-
doned. Their difficulty in logging basic information was illustrated by
the high level of ‘excess deaths’ during the early months of the pandemic
(i.e. the difference between reported pandemic deaths and the abnormal
increase in the mortality rate as reported by public registries). Many
other European governments faced similar difficulties, and Spanish
hospital staff offered dedicated care in extraordinarily testing circum-
stances. And after a slow start because of the mistakes of the European
Commission, Spain’s vaccination campaign was impressive. It was the
first large country to jab 70% of its population. But Spaniards’ faith in
their health system, previously often described as one of the best in the
world, was shaken, temporarily at least.
Similarly, the difficulty the social security administration experi-
enced in implanting the minimum-income scheme revealed the limita-
tions of another ageing and rigid branch of the state. The lethargy of
the bureaucracy showed, too, in its notorious slowness in approving
applications for Spanish nationality. In 2015 the Congress approved a
law which gave descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled in 1492 the
right to acquire nationality. Pierre Assouline Zerbib, a French writer
born in Casablanca, applied. It took five years for his application to be
processed. He discovered that a fax (yes!) approving the issue of his
passport had taken a year to get from the Ministry of Justice in Madrid
to the Spanish consulate in Paris.26
The underlying problem, as Lapuente highlighted, was that demo-
cratic governments failed to reform the public administration to bring

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it into the twenty-first century. Apart from the archaic recruitment

policy, there was a lack of professional senior managers in the public
sector. And there were few procedures for information-sharing and
cooperation between the staff of different public entities.27 The govern-
ment promised billions of EU money for a digital upgrade of the public
administration, and also promised its reform. But providing new
computers may prove to be easier than changing entrenched working
practices.
Another problem with the working of the Spanish state was the
lack of evaluation of the effectiveness of public policies, a regular criti-
cism in the European Commission’s reports. After much prodding
from Brussels, in 2013 Rajoy’s government agreed to set up AIREF,
an independent fiscal watchdog modelled on the Congressional Budget
Office in the United States and Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility.
It proceeded to embark on Spain’s first-ever spending reviews, which
turned up much waste. In repeated letters to The Lancet, dozens
of Spanish and other public health experts called for a lesson-learning
public inquiry into the management of the pandemic, a call to
which the government turned a deaf ear. Sánchez set up an annual
exercise involving outside academics to assess to what extent the
government was implementing its programme but this was formulaic
and superficial.

The judiciary’s image, too, has been damaged by the suspicion of polit-
ical capture. The constitution insists on a strict separation of powers.
Initially twelve of the twenty members of the General Council of the
Judiciary, which makes judicial appointments and oversees the system,
were chosen by the judges themselves and eight by the Congress of
Deputies. But a Socialist government in the 1980s pushed through a
change under which all twenty members are chosen by a qualified
majority of the Congress (meaning by agreement between the two
main parties). It justified this by arguing that in those days the majority

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of the judges were still those appointed by Franco, and had a conserva-
tive bias. But over time this change politicised the process. Each region
has a high court; each of their chambers has three judges, one chosen
by the regional parliament and the others by the national judicial
council.28
The PP claimed to favour a reform under which judges should
choose the General Council, whose members serve for a five-year term.
But when Rajoy enjoyed an absolute majority he did nothing to imple-
ment this. Instead, he negotiated an agreement with Alfredo Pérez
Rubalcaba, the Socialist leader from 2011 to 2014, over appointments
to the council. In 2018 the government and the PP came close to an
agreement on renewing the council, which collapsed when a PP senator
boasted on WhatsApp that in the carve-up his party had managed to
achieve ‘behind-the-scenes control’ of the second, penal, chamber of
the Supreme Court.29 Thereafter, the PP refused for more than three
years to agree to renew the membership of the council. This rendered
hypocritical the PP’s constant claim to be the pre-eminent defender of
the constitution. In frustration the government talked of introducing a
law that would require only a simple majority of parliament to approve
membership of the council. This brought a sharp rebuke from the
European Commission, which was grappling with the political capture
of the courts by governments in Hungary and Poland, and Sánchez
dropped the idea. The commission has urged Spain to ensure that at
least half the members of the council are judges elected by their peers
in line with a recommendation by the Council of Europe.
In a manner that is typical of Spain, judges have organised them-
selves in four separate associations, of which one leans left, another
leans right and two are non-political. But they tend to agree on many
things. In practice, most judges and prosecutors are fiercely indepen-
dent – as the corruption convictions showed. In 2020 the judiciary
carried out a poll of 1,000 judges which found that 99% of them said
they felt complete independence in doing their job. But that is not

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how many Spaniards see them. A Eurobarometer poll found that 58%
of respondents in Spain thought the judiciary was not very indepen-
dent, and only 20% were satisfied with the way it works. In national
polls, it is consistently the worst evaluated public service. Critics noted
that the president of the Constitutional Tribunal between 2013 and
2017 was previously a member of the PP, for example. The public
prosecutor is appointed by the government, and can be sacked by it.
There was criticism when Sánchez appointed Dolores Delgado to the
job after she had been his justice minister. Spanish law allows third
parties to attach themselves to criminal prosecutions under a proce-
dure known as acusación popular (popular prosecution). That has
sometimes increased the pressure on prosecutors in corruption cases,
but it also contributed to the image of politicisation, as when Vox acted
as the ‘popular prosecutor’ in the Catalan separatist trial (although its
intervention was juridically irrelevant).30
Rather than a lack of independence, the judiciary’s biggest problem
was gross understaffing. In a jointly authored article in El País in 2016,
the presidents of all four judges’ associations pointed out that there
were only 12.5 judges per 100,000 people. That was well below the EU
average of 21.6, although similar to the ratio in France and Italy. But
Spaniards are more litigious: there were 182 legal cases per 100,000
people in 2015 compared with 100 in Italy. There were too many judi-
cial districts, which meant that there were eight separate digital
networks within the judiciary.31 The result was that justice moved
slowly, and that was often a matter of public frustration. Corruption
cases involving PP politicians were still working their way through the
courts a decade or more after the events concerned, for example.
The judiciary does tend to have a conservative stance. This is no
longer a legacy of Franco: no currently serving judge was appointed by
the dictatorship. A new penal code was approved in 1995. The civil
code dates from 1889 but has undergone several reforms since 1978.
Rather, judiciaries in most countries tend to be conservative by nature;

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after all, their prime task is to apply the legal status quo and defend
public order. Apart from the case of the Catalan separatist leaders,
sometimes clumsy verdicts by the courts have led to controversies in
two areas in particular: freedom of expression and sexual violence. A
partial reform of the penal code in 2015 increased the penalties for
‘hate speech’ or glorification of terrorism and removed the requirement
to show that there was a specific threat against an individual. These are
sensitive issues for Spaniards, who are still scarred by ETA’s terrorism
and by jihadist attacks. Nevertheless, the reform was illiberal. In its first
three years more than 50 people were convicted. Those convictions
were the work of a minority of ultra-conservative judges rather than a
concerted attack on freedom of expression. And some similar cases
ended in acquittals.
In one case a rapper known as Valtònyc was sentenced to forty-two
months for glorifying terrorism in YouTube posts. He fled to Brussels
where a Belgian court refused to extradite him. Willy Toledo, an actor
and provocateur, was acquitted of blasphemy after writing a Facebook
post ‘shitting on God and the Virgin’ in support of three women
charged over parading a giant plastic vagina in place of the Virgin Mary
during the Holy Week procession in Seville (they were eventually
acquitted as well). Perhaps the most notorious case involved the jailing
for nine months of a rapper known as Pablo Hasél for repeated incite-
ments to violence in YouTube posts and tweets. They included messages
saying ‘it would be deserved if the car of Patxi López [a Basque Socialist
leader] exploded’ and ‘someone should put an icepick in José Bono’s
head’ (Bono was a former Socialist minister). In parallel Hasél was
fined, but not jailed, for insulting the monarchy. The sentence was
careful and selective, if debatable. It prompted six nights of violent
rioting in Barcelona by a mixture of anarchists and separatists.
Another notorious case concerned a gang rape during the San
Fermín bull-running festival in Pamplona. A court in Navarre convicted
the six accused men, dubbed la manada (meaning herd or pack), only

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of sexual abuse, imposing a nine-year sentence and freeing them

pending appeal. That prompted a public outcry. The Supreme Court
later corrected the verdict, stiffening the charge and imposing an
immediate fifteen-year sentence. Partly as a result of this case, the
government eventually changed the law on rape and sexual consent, at
the instigation of Irene Montero, the Podemos minister for equality.
In other contexts Spanish courts often show great respect for indi-
vidual rights and liberties. During the pandemic some regional courts
struck down restrictive measures such as curfews or bans on move-
ment. In a divided and hotly disputed verdict the Constitutional
Tribunal ruled that the government erred in invoking a ‘state of alarm’
to impose a nine-week total lockdown at the start of the pandemic,
rather than a tougher ‘state of exception’. The ruling had no immediate
practical effect but it did mean that public health law would have to be
reviewed in preparation for any future epidemic.

A decade after the indignados, Spain is in many ways a different country.

Their legacy is palpable but far from straightforward. Some of the
sources of their anger were addressed, at least partially. The law was
reformed so that banks no longer treated their mortgage-holders so
abusively. ‘Corruption still exists but there’s no longer impunity,’ as
Bescansa noted in 2021.32 Six years on from publication of Iglesias’s
book, nearly all the individuals he cited as corrupt and unpunished are,
or have been, in jail. According to the Financial Times, of the forty-
seven bankers sentenced to prison terms worldwide by 2018 as a result
of the financial crisis eleven were in Spain, the second-biggest number
after Iceland (twenty-five).33 They included Miguel Blesa, Bankia’s
former chairman, who committed suicide shortly before he was due to
begin his sentence, and Rodrigo Rato, the economy minister in Aznar’s
governments and a former managing director of the IMF, who succeeded
Blesa at Bankia. According to one count, ninety politicians or former
officials were in jail in 2017.34 Perhaps this was because of a change of

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attitude by the courts and prosecutors, as Bescansa implied. Or perhaps

because, while Spanish justice grinds slowly, it grinds inexorably.
But No nos representan remained in some ways an unanswered criti-
cism. Many Spaniards continued to see the political system as distant
from their concerns. A Eurobarometer poll in late 2020 found that 53%
of respondents in Spain were dissatisfied with their democracy. That
compared with an EU average of 41%, though it showed a similar level
of discontent as in France or Greece. Though satisfaction with democ-
racy had increased since 2014 it remained well below its level of 2008,
before the financial crisis. Eurobarometer also found that Spaniards had
significantly less trust in their government (both national and regional),
their parliament and their political parties than the average European.
Political renewal proved elusive. The best chances were squandered.
Both Podemos and Ciudadanos would come to display many of the
vices of the ‘old politics’ they claimed to despise. Ten years after 15 May,
both Rivera and Iglesias had resigned as party leaders. After the 2015
election Pedro Sánchez, who had become the Socialist leader the previous
year, at first tried to reach an agreement with Podemos to form a govern-
ment. With 159 of the 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies between
them, and the prospect of Catalan and Basque nationalist support, on
paper this was plausible. But since Podemos had come so close to over-
taking the Socialists, for Sánchez it was a dangerous rival more than an
ally. And Iglesias, with sixty-nine seats, overplayed his hand: he wanted
control of the defence, interior and justice ministries, the sources of hard
power, which only served to alarm everyone else about his intentions.35
When these talks failed, the Socialists (with ninety seats) turned to
Ciudadanos (forty). They agreed on a coherent and broad programme of
reforms (including the abolition of the diputaciones). But neither
Podemos nor the PP would back their potential coalition. After a repeat
election in June 2016, at which Podemos failed to gain seats and the
Socialists (down five) and Ciudadanos (down eight) lost ground, Rajoy
would eventually limp on for another two years.

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A better chance came in the election of April 2019. Its result offered
Spain a matchless opportunity to get the strong, reforming coalition
government it needed. Between them the Socialists (123 seats) and
Ciudadanos (57) had an absolute majority. But by then Rivera had
become set on trying to replace the PP as the leading force on the
centre-right, just as the PP had done to Suárez’s UCD in the 1980s. He
never forgave Sánchez for outwitting him in the censure motion against
Rajoy. At the start of the campaign for the election he flatly ruled out
ever allying with Sánchez. Sánchez himself wasn’t keen and by then he
and Rivera detested each other.36 But for a would-be centre party,
Rivera’s refusal to look to both sides for allies was incomprehensible
and would be near fatal. With reason, voters blamed him more than
anyone else for the lack of a government and for being obliged to
trudge to the polls again in November 2019 for the fourth general elec-
tion in as many years. Ciudadanos was all but wiped out, reduced to
ten seats. It lost 60% of the 4.2 million votes it had gained in April.
Rivera resigned from all his political roles. His replacement, Inés
Arrimadas, the young victor of the Catalan election of 2017, was less
petulant and more centrist, but had been dealt a very weak hand.
Rivera’s mistake gifted Pablo Iglesias the chance for Podemos to
enter government in coalition with Sánchez. But Podemos was no
longer the broad, collegial, idealistic project of its early days. Iglesias
had forced out those who challenged his leadership or his political line.
They included Errejón, whom Monedero accused in the best Stalinist
fashion of ‘building a party within a party’. Errejón wanted a collective
leadership, for Podemos to take more account of parliamentary politics,
and to continue to appeal to Spaniards who didn’t traditionally back
the left. Iglesias wanted an all-powerful leader (himself ), and for
Podemos to keep one foot in the political battles of the streets. Errejón
lost the power battle at a second party Congress held at Vista Alegre, a
former bullring in Madrid, in early 2017. The delegates chanted ‘Unity,
unity’, but what happened was a split. ‘We risk committing some of the

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 THE ‘CASTE’ AND ITS FLAWED CHALLENGERS

mistakes of the traditional left in Spain,’ Errejón had warned on the eve
of the Congress. ‘The culture of the internal enemy and of the steam-
roller is damaging Podemos.’37 Having been demoted at the Congress,
Errejón eventually resigned to form his own regional party in Madrid.
Bescansa left, too. Iglesias installed Irene Montero, his romantic partner,
as his deputy, a move that smacked of a patrimonial approach to power.
Instead of building a national party organisation, Podemos had
chosen to form loose affiliations with local hard-left movements in, for
example, Andalucía, Catalonia, Galicia and Valencia. This had allowed it
to grow rapidly though it became a liability when these groups peeled
away or withered. Only a small number of the Podemos mayors elected
across the country in 2015 were re-elected four years later. Those who
were included Ada Colau, a housing activist who became mayor of
Barcelona. She claimed to be creating a new model of urban manage-
ment, reducing car usage, increasing public housing, banning new hotels
in the city centre and controlling illegal holiday apartments. She set up
a mediation team which she said had stopped 10,000 evictions. She was
a good talker, and shrewdly kept her political base happy. But her critics
accused her of neglecting basic tasks, such as security and street cleaning.
By 2021 much of the centre of Barcelona had a scruffy, neglected air.
Iglesias turned Podemos into a copy of Izquierda Unida with which
he allied from 2016 on, a merger which Errejón had opposed. Its
support declined, though it seemed to have a solid floor of 10–12% or
so. Iglesias’s credibility was damaged when in 2018 he and Montero
bought a €600,000 chalet with a swimming pool in Galapagar, an
affluent suburb of Madrid. To many it seemed that he had joined the
caste. Entering government did not seem to boost Podemos’s support.
It claimed credit for the increase in the minimum wage and for the
socially progressive outlook of the government, though the Socialists
disputed that. With the exception of Yolanda Díaz at the Labour
Ministry, its ministers were unimpressive and had small jobs, carved
out of bigger ministries.

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Iglesias was palpably happier as an agitator than as an administrator.

The Podemos ministers often pushed their own political line, rather
than the government’s, publicly criticising the monarchy and NATO.
To Socialist outrage, Iglesias compared Puigdemont to the Republican
exiles after the Civil War. This constant rhetorical activism partly
stemmed from an understandable concern that Podemos should not
lose its identity and public profile, as tends to happen to the smaller
partner in coalitions. But it created a permanent sense of instability at
the heart of Sánchez’s government. More than a cohesive coalition in
the mould of northern Europe, it often seemed like a loose alliance. It
transpired that Sánchez lacked the authority to sack Podemos minis-
ters. Iglesias seemed increasingly ill at ease personally, his smile often
turning into a snarl. He and Montero faced daily, noisy protests by a
small group of far-right demonstrators near their chalet, a form of
aggression which might have attracted more sympathy for them had
Iglesias not in the past praised similar protests against bankers and the
shouting down of political opponents at the Complutense.
In March 2021 Inés Arrimadas, in a bungled attempt to show that
Ciudadanos was a hinge party in the centre, concocted with the Moncloa
a plan to bring down the PP regional government in Murcia with which
it was in coalition. What followed was an example of chaos theory, in
which this seemingly minor movement rippled across Spanish politics.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the young president of the Madrid region, from the
PP’s conservative wing, instantly ended her coalition with Ciudadanos
and called a snap election. Iglesias announced that he was stepping down
as deputy prime minister to stand in the Madrid election. With no sense
of irony, he called on Más Madrid, Errejón’s party, to back him. But Más
Madrid had its own candidate, Mónica García, a hospital anaesthetist.
She elegantly slapped down Iglesias, saying ‘Women are tired of doing
the dirty work only to be told to step aside at historic moments.’38 Iglesias
had posed as a feminist, changing the formal name of his party from
Unidos Podemos to Unidas Podemos (feminine). But few were taken in

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by this move by one of the most macho of Spanish politicians. ‘We

shouldn’t add . . . more testosterone,’ García said pointedly. Errejón had
his revenge for the Vista Alegre congress. Iglesias proclaimed portent-
ously that the Madrid election was a contest between ‘democracy and
fascism’. But the voters preferred Díaz Ayuso’s call for ‘freedom’ to keep
the bars open during the pandemic and to keep taxes low, and García’s
commitment to more spending on health care. The PP won by a land-
slide (with 45% of the vote), while Más Madrid (17%) beat not just
Podemos (in fifth place with 7%) but the Socialists. To nobody’s surprise
Iglesias announced his retirement from politics, though he was soon
back as a television pundit. His departure didn’t solve Podemos’s prob-
lems. Yolanda Díaz, a Communist who sometimes seemed to belong in
the Socialist party, wanted to create a broad left-wing movement. She
clashed with what remained of the Podemos party apparatus. As for
Ciudadanos, it was annihilated in Madrid and looked to be on the way
to extinction and/or absorption by the PP at national level.

The two traditional parties were battered and diminished. Their

combined vote had plunged from 84% in 2008 to 49% in November
2019. But they had survived and still, in essence, ran the political
system. That pointed to the partydocracy’s structural strength, helped
by an electoral system that is the most majoritarian among those
European countries that use proportional representation. The prov-
inces are its constituencies, with a minimum of three seats per prov-
ince. That means that less populated provinces, mainly in Castile, are
over-represented, which favours the PP. In provinces with six to nine
seats, the two main parties benefit, while the rest are approximately
proportional. This system penalised national parties that won less than
15% of the vote and whose support was evenly spread, such as
Ciudadanos (especially) and to an extent Podemos.
But their survival was also testament to the traditional parties’
ability to adapt. One legacy of 15M to Spanish politics was a cult of

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youth, though with that came inexperience. Turning 50 in February

2022, Sánchez was the oldest of the party leaders who fought the 2019
elections. He led a weakened party but he had seen off any such threat
of a sorpasso by Podemos as might have existed and could claim to have
prevented the near obliteration suffered by the Socialists’ counterparts
in Greece and France. This was not inevitable. Rubalcaba, his prede-
cessor, was in many ways a more substantial politician. A traditional
social democrat, he was doomed by the opprobrium the Socialists
received over Zapatero’s U-turn and embrace of austerity, forced on the
government by the European authorities and the financial markets.
‘We’ve lost credibility with part of our electorate, as happened to all
parties in power in Europe,’ Rubalcaba told me in 2012. ‘It’s a double
reproach: for taking un-socialist, disliked measures and because they
didn’t work.’ He counselled patience, saying it would be ‘very dangerous’
to go further to the left.
Yet that was the course that Sánchez adopted, at least superficially. He
only achieved his domination of the party after a bitter internal battle
that almost tore it apart. He was a little-known diputado from Madrid
when he was chosen as secretary general by a narrow margin at a congress
in 2014, after Rubalcaba resigned following defeat in a European elec-
tion. Sánchez won mainly because Susana Díaz, the powerful president
of Andalucía, traditionally an important repository of Socialist votes,
swung her weight behind him because she wanted a placeholder until
she could take over. But Sánchez had other ideas. In some ways a wooden
and limited politician, he is also bold, imperturbable and extraordinarily
resilient. In the general elections of 2015 and 2016 he suffered even
worse defeats than Rubalcaba; he claimed them as victories because
Podemos had not overhauled the Socialists. But Susana Díaz and many
of the Socialist barons concluded that he should be replaced.
When asked to abstain to allow Rajoy to govern, Sánchez had tweeted
‘No is No. What part of No don’t you understand?’ As Spain drifted,
without a government for ten months, Sánchez told Rubalcaba and

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other Socialist leaders that in the end the party would abstain. But then
he changed his mind. He discovered that ‘No is No’ was popular among
the party rank and file, who saw it as the recovery of the party’s dignity.
‘Society had podemizado and the Socialist party had podemizado,’ Óscar
López, who is close to Sánchez, told Antonio Caño, Rubalcaba’s biogra-
pher.39 Díaz and the Socialist barons thought the party had a responsi-
bility to abstain for the sake of Spanish democracy. They spied in
Sánchez’s intransigence an opportunity to oust him, which they did at a
fratricidal party meeting in October 2016. They miscalculated: Sánchez
rallied the rank and file against the party establishment and won his job
back in a primary in May 2017. The experience clearly scarred him.
Sánchez was not ideological. His political beliefs were those of a conven-
tional European social democrat. As leader, his politics were determined by
his circumstances, more than is usually the case. That led him to draw close
to Podemos and accept the support of nationalists, an option that
Rubalcaba had dubbed a ‘Frankenstein government’. It was an option that,
for example, Germany’s social democrats, who had had plenty of time to
learn that communism is a prison, ruled out. His critics, inside as well as
outside the Socialist party, claimed that Sánchez lacked principles, that his
word could not be trusted, that he was a mere tactician determined to cling
to power at any price. There was evidence for such charges. Yet he could
claim to have read the post-15M political mood in Spain more accurately
than they. When I interviewed him in November 2018, before he had
entered a formal coalition with Podemos, he defended agreements with it
saying: ‘This shows that our political system is able to include forces that
might have placed themselves at the margins of the system . . . but which
are evolving.’ The point was, he said, that ‘Spain is experiencing a change
in its political system.’ Three years later he could claim to have tamed
Podemos, and helped to turn it into a party of the institutions, or at least
some of them. But there were costs to the alliance with Podemos. The
government spent so much time and political energy consulting internally
on decisions that it sometimes seemed to forget to consult externally.

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Perhaps the only significant democratic red line Sánchez crossed

was to have allowed negotiations for the support on the budget and
other votes of EH Bildu, ETA’s successor party (see chapter 6). And he
placed short-term political expediency above the defence of the demo-
cratic state in his mishandling of the claim, published in the New Yorker
in April 2022 and made by Citizen Lab, a watchdog, that the Spanish
government had between 2017 and 2020 spied on the mobile phones
of sixty-five people linked to Catalan separatism.40 The Lab said that in
sixty-three cases it had detected the use of Pegasus, surveillance soft-
ware made by an Israeli company which sells it only to governments.
The Catalan and Basque nationalist parties and Podemos expressed
outrage. Esquerra threatened to break off all cooperation with the
government, which meant that it might find it hard to win parliamen-
tary votes. Sánchez responded defensively, seeming to give credibility
to the Citizen Lab report. He sent Félix Bolaños, the minister of the
presidency, to meet the Generalitat in Barcelona and to promise several
investigations.41 In a bizarre turn, Bolaños then announced that the
phones of Sánchez and the defence and interior ministers had suffered
an ‘illicit and external’ interception in May and June 2021.
The head of the intelligence service, Paz Esteban, appeared before a
closed congressional committee to say that it had monitored the phones
of eighteen (not sixty-five) Catalan leaders and activists, including Pere
Aragonès, the Generalitat’s president, at the time of the violent protests in
Catalonia against the sentencing of the separatist leaders in 2019. It had
done so with judicial orders and had done nothing illegal, she was reported
to say. It was left to Margarita Robles, the defence minister, to point out
that the intelligence service was only doing its job: ‘What should a state,
a government, do when someone violates the constitution, when someone
declares independence, cuts the public highway, when they carry out
public disorders?’42 Nevertheless, the government made Esteban the sacri-
ficial victim of whole affair, sacking her without any stated cause. That
undermined Robles, who had been one of the government’s most popular

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ministers. A group of Spanish academics questioned the accuracy and

impartiality of the Citizen Lab report, in which a tech entrepreneur who
sympathised with Catalan separatism was closely involved.43 Citizen Lab
insisted its investigation was independent.44
The flip side of Sánchez’s imperturbability was a public perception
of lack of empathy. For the first two months of the pandemic and lock-
down he appeared on television every weekend, giving statements and
answering questions. But when the first wave of the pandemic ebbed,
and the PP refused to support a continuation of the state of emergency,
he seemed to throw in the towel, handing over responsibility to the
regions. He became the good-news prime minister: he popped up to
talk of European aid and vaccination, but was nowhere to be seen
when successive waves of Covid-19 hit the country.
As for the PP, it suffered, with a lag, the same kind of loss of direc-
tion that had dogged Rubalcaba. The corruption scandals damaged its
credibility. After Rajoy resigned, the party elected as its leader Pablo
Casado, aged just 37 at the time, in a primary. He was an accomplished
orator but inexperienced as a strategist. His party had been a broad
church under Aznar and Rajoy, uniting economic libertarians,
Christian democrats and Catholic Spanish nationalists. Yet that coali-
tion had splintered with the rise of Ciudadanos and then Vox. Like
Sánchez, Casado was faced with trying to ensure his party remained
pre-eminent in its half of the political spectrum while needing some-
times to cooperate with a more radical rival (Vox, in his case) in regional
governments. His answer was to engage in frenetic opposition to every-
thing the government did, sensible or not, while swerving between
trying to copy Vox and trying to appeal to the centre. That reflected
different currents within the PP. It governed in Andalucía (after 2018),
Castile and León, and Galicia under moderate leaders (in the first two
in coalitions with Ciudadanos). In Madrid, Díaz Ayuso represented
the party’s right wing. She had broad appeal in Castile, but not neces-
sarily in coastal Spain.

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Casado insisted that his party’s corruption was in the past. To try to
draw a symbolic line, he announced that it would leave its headquarters
in Calle Génova in Madrid, following accusations that it had been
refurbished with illicit donations. The PP was well placed to absorb the
rump of Ciudadanos. But Vox was a bigger problem for it. When
Santiago Abascal, Vox’s leader, filed a censure motion against Sánchez in
October 2020, Casado used the debate to launch a scorching attack on
the hard-right party. By splitting the right, ‘you offer the left a guarantee
of perpetual victory’, he said. He accused Abascal of dividing Spaniards.
‘We don’t want to be like you,’ he went on. ‘It’s come to this. Either Vox,
or Spain.’45 The PP did not apply that policy at regional level.
A senior PP official argued that to recapture its lost voters the party
had to show itself to be a plausible alternative government to Sánchez
and the Socialists. Yet Casado offered sound and fury rather than
statesmanship. He never grew into his job. In early 2022 his leadership
imploded. First he ill-advisedly pushed the PP regional president in
Castile and León into calling an early election in which the big winner
was Vox. And then his simmering feud with Díaz Ayuso, his protégé
turned rival, exploded into open civil war which could have only one
winner. The party’s regional leaders turned against Casado, forcing him
to resign, proving that hard though it is to unseat Spanish party leaders,
it is not impossible. Of the four young national leaders who had fought
the 2019 general elections, only Sánchez remained.
At an extraordinary party Congress Alberto Núñez Feijóo took over
as the PP president by acclamation, resigning from his job in Galicia and
moving to the Senate. ‘Nobody should count on me to take part in this
infantile entertainment into which Spanish politics has degenerated,’ he
said.46 He quickly sketched out a more mature, moderate stance, focusing
his critique of the government on the economy and defending ‘the polit-
ical, cultural and linguistic identity of the regions’.47 He offered the best
hope of the PP staving off a sorpasso by Vox. Vox’s support edged up
in the opinion polls to 18% by the end of 2021. It offered PP-led

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governments in Andalucía, Madrid and Murcia, and initially of the

Madrid city council, confidence and supply agreements to sustain them
in office. In return it didn’t extract more than the odd gesture, such as
the cutting of €600,000 earmarked for helping immigrants in Andalucía
and the blocking of a declaration against gender violence in Madrid, for
example.48 But in Castile and León it insisted on entering the regional
government. However, Vox’s leaders were generally unimpressive and it
faced problems in building a national organisation, with splinters and
splits in some provinces. Feijóo’s arrival as the PP’s national leader quickly
gave his party a boost in the opinion polls and support for Vox began to
fall. In June 2022 the PP won a sweeping victory and an absolute
majority in an election in Andalucía under its moderate leader there,
Juanma Moreno. It seemed likely that the next general election, due by
November 2023 at the latest, would see a recovery in the combined vote
share of the two traditional parties, the Socialists and the PP.

The most visible legacies of 15M were political polarisation

and crispación, or permanent confrontation. Crispación began in
the 1990s with José María Aznar and gathered force under Zapatero
(see chapter 1). But even then, behind the scenes there was cross-party
communication and, on big issues such as fighting terrorism, agree-
ment. This approach was personified by Rubalcaba, the last holdover
from Felipe González’s cabinet still in frontline politics. As leader, he
met Rajoy almost once a month to discuss the Catalan crisis, and
co-managed with the prime minister the abdication of King Juan Carlos
in 2014.49 Despite their political disagreements, they had a cordial
personal relationship.
Those days have gone. Sánchez’s slogan in 2016 of ‘No is No’ set a
new tone. Sánchez did collaborate with Rajoy over Catalonia in 2017.
But he and Casado went for months on end without talking to each
other. They were unable to forge agreements on issues over which
national accord should have been easy, if not automatic. Each of them

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sought political advantage from the pandemic, for example. A nadir in

this unbridled confrontation came when Sánchez’s government
included a tirade against the PP, suitable for a party election pamphlet,
in the preamble to the text of a law published in the official gazette.50
Another was the PP’s irresponsible blocking of the renewal of the
membership of the General Council of the Judiciary. European diplo-
mats expressed surprise at the PP’s disloyal opposition in Brussels. This
went beyond normal politicking in the European Parliament and
extended to lobbying the European Commission against government
policies. But crispación was not a tool restricted to the two main parties:
polarisation of debate and the denigrating of opponents were the stock
in trade of both Podemos and Vox.
The left–right divide is more pronounced in Spain than in many
other countries. Although the data is limited, there is some polling
evidence that what political scientists call ‘affective polarisation’ – the
tendency of voters of one party to distrust and reject the attitudes of
those of another – has been growing. This applies particularly to ques-
tions of identity and national unity, and to a lesser extent the level of
taxes and immigration.51 The average Spanish voter is slightly to the
left of centre, further left than in other European countries. That is a
reaction to the Franco dictatorship, but it also shows a preference for
the welfare state. This helps to explain why the Socialists have governed
for twice as long as the PP. It also explains why, until 2015, when the
PP was in opposition it resorted more to crispación than the Socialists
did when they were.52 When power changed it was not generally
because voters switched sides but because disillusioned voters of the
party in office stayed at home.
The emergence of a multi-party system might have been expected to
blunt crispación and promote cooperation. But it has done the oppo-
site. There are now two multi-party blocks where there were two parties.
That has led to a centrifugal political dynamic, in which the Socialists
compete as well as collaborate with Podemos and the PP with Vox, so

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both worry that conciliatory stances will have an electoral cost. There is
a generational factor, too. Many of today’s leaders entered politics in
their parties’ youth movements, which tend to be ideologically uncom-
promising. Casado’s PP never forgave Sánchez for winning power in
the censure motion with the votes of Catalan and Basque separatists
and of Podemos, which it saw as an anti-system party. Certainly, those
were steps that some of Sánchez’s Socialist predecessors would not have
taken. But political circumstances have changed: Sánchez has been in a
parliamentary minority throughout his premiership. For their part, the
Socialists see the PP’s reliance on the votes of Vox in regional govern-
ments and, foreseeably, in a future national government, as similarly
illegitimate. Crispación meant that the politicians often seemed to be
talking at each other in an echo chamber, rather than to the country.
The leaders jousted in parliamentary debates in which their MPs loudly
and obediently clapped them. While there were occasional flights of
parliamentary oratory, the spectacle was often unseemly. The polls show
that most Spaniards thought confrontation had gone too far and the
quality of their political leadership was declining.
At times in the decade since 15M, Spain’s politics seemed to
resemble Gramsci’s observation regarding the collapse of the liberal
order in inter-war Italy: ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the
old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great
variety of morbid symptoms appear.’ The question was whether Spain’s
crisis, to use Gramsci’s term, can be resolved through a partial renewal
of the old. Sánchez at least was able to offer a certain short-term stability
while steering Spain through the pandemic and implementing some
social improvements for the poorer half of the country. But putting the
country back on a clear path of sustainable economic growth and prog-
ress required more far-reaching reforms and agreements. And trapped
as they were in their bubble, the politicians seemed oblivious to changes
in the outside world that threatened Spain.

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THE NARCISSISM OF SMALL

DIFFERENCES

T hey came in their hundreds, swimming around the border fence

or walking across the beach at low tide under the permissive eyes
of Moroccan border guards who would normally have stopped them.
In thirty-six hours in May 2021 some 8,000 would-be migrants
descended on the Spanish city of Ceuta, an enclave of 85,000 people
on the African shore of the Strait of Gibraltar. About 1,500 of them
were unaccompanied minors who were not easy to deport legally.
Clearly rattled by Morocco’s sudden weaponisation of migration, the
government deployed 3,000 troops with armoured cars from the
garrison in Ceuta and sent 200 police reinforcements. Sánchez flew to
the city, vowing to defend its ‘territorial integrity’ as the authorities
grappled with a humanitarian headache.
Morocco’s King Muhammed VI had opened the border because he
was furious that Spain had secretly admitted Brahim Gali, the leader
of Polisario, a group which has fought for the independence of
Western Sahara, for medical treatment for Covid-19. Western Sahara
was a Spanish colony until Franco’s death. When Spain relinquished
the territory, King Hassan II, Muhammed’s father, annexed it by
mobilising 350,000 civilians in a ‘Green March’ of occupation.

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Polisario, which is sponsored by Algeria, holds sway over some

squalid refugee camps and around 20% of the territory in the desert
interior. Spain, in common with the EU, does not recognise Moroccan
sovereignty over Western Sahara and supports the UN’s call for a refer-
endum on its future. It is a conflict that has festered, seemingly unre-
solvable, for decades. But shortly before the end of his term, Donald
Trump reversed US policy on the issue and, without consultation,
recognised Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara in return for
Morocco’s recognition of Israel. This empowered Muhammed, who
began to push for Europe to follow suit.
The Ceuta incident highlighted three things about Spanish foreign
policy. First, that EU membership continues to be its cornerstone.
Sánchez quickly garnered high-level support in Brussels. ‘Spanish
borders are European borders,’ declared the EU’s Home Affairs
Commissioner. Ursula Von der Leyen, the commission president, said
pointedly that the issue of migration would be ‘crucial’ in the EU’s
future relationship with Morocco. The EU is its biggest aid donor and
an important trade partner. The kingdom grumbled that Spain was
‘Europeanising a bilateral issue’, but backed down, closing the border
again. Second, Morocco’s intelligence services had clearly done a better
job than Spain’s, having quickly found out about Gali’s presence in a
hospital in Logroño. Spanish officials admitted to having been taken
by surprise when the migrant surge happened. A blame game ensued
about who decided to let Gali in. It ended with Arancha González
Laya, the foreign minister, losing her job.
The third and most important lesson concerned the existential
importance of the Maghreb for Spain, though it was less talked about
as a foreign policy priority than Europe and Latin America. Spain faced
a difficult balancing act in the Maghreb. Morocco is a vital but awkward
neighbour. It is a rising power in North Africa. It was Spain’s ninth
largest export market. More importantly Spain was home to over
750,000 people of Moroccan origin and, despite everything, officials

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considered it to be a crucial partner in controlling unauthorised migra-

tion. And Morocco claimed Ceuta and Melilla, the other Spanish
enclave, as its own. But on the other hand Algeria, Morocco’s foe, had
traditionally supplied up to half of Spain’s imports of natural gas. This
came into sharp focus when, months after the Ceuta incident, Algeria
broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco. It then opted not to
renew an expiring agreement under which it pumped gas to Spain and
Morocco through a pipeline that runs across Moroccan territory. This
pipeline took almost half of Algeria’s gas exports to Spain. Algeria
promised to expand the capacity of the undersea pipeline to Almería
that took the remainder, and to make up the shortfall with shipments
of liquid natural gas. But this increased the cost at a time when energy
prices were soaring. And then Sánchez abruptly changed Spain’s posi-
tion on the Sahara, praising Morocco’s plan for the territory to become
autonomous but under its sovereignty. In an attempt to placate Algeria,
which withdrew its ambassador, the government deported there several
political exiles. But Algeria reduced its gas shipments to Spain and
blocked Spanish exports. All this was a harsh lesson in Realpolitik and
Spain’s relative lack of weight in the world.
Democracy transformed Spain’s international profile. It developed
three foreign policy priorities: enthusiastic membership of the European
Community; less enthusiastic membership of NATO; and attempting
to act as a bridge between Europe, the United States and Latin America.
At first this worked well. Felipe González was a big player in the
European Community, taken seriously by Helmut Kohl, François
Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher. And González was also influential
in Latin America, as a counsellor in the region’s democratisation and a
cheerleader for corporate Spain as it began to invest there. Aznar’s
Atlanticism may have failed but it was an attempt to project Spain on
the world stage. Loss of influence began under Zapatero. His decision
to withdraw Spanish forces from Iraq, abruptly and without consulta-
tion, was popular at home but damaged Spain’s image as a reliable ally

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for the United States. Influence continued to decline under Rajoy, who
showed little interest in foreign policy. When Sánchez came into office
some commentators enthused that Spain would at last become a player
in Europe again. He was the first Spanish prime minister of the current
democratic period to speak fluent English and he was a convinced pro-
European. He was more active than Rajoy but in the event Spain
continued to be a rule-taker more than a rule maker in the EU. In
2020 the European Council approved a Franco-German initiative for
pandemic aid grants financed by mutualised perpetual debt rather than
Spain’s proposal for common Eurobonds.
There were some structural factors at play. The economic slump
forced big cuts in foreign aid. Spain’s need for European aid twice in a
decade, minority governments and the Catalan conflict all weakened
Spain’s hand. It didn’t help that the diplomatic service was old-
fashioned, corporatist and politicised. José Manuel García-Margallo,
Rajoy’s first foreign minister, said he regretted not having modernised
the service, which he said corresponded to the world of fifty years
before. Arancha González, who had been a senior international trade
official at the UN and the World Trade Organisation, did try to shake
up the service, introducing boards for appointments. She was neither a
diplomat nor a member of the Socialist party and faced resistance. ‘The
system expelled her as a foreign body,’ an academic told me.
Spain’s position in Latin America has also weakened. Felipe González
launched annual summits with Latin American leaders, formalised in
the Iberoamerican community. Attendance dropped off and the summits
became biennial. Officials pointed out that in a fractured Latin America
it was the one venue which all countries attended, but that smacked
of a lowest common denominator. Few Latin Americans considered
themselves to be ‘Iberoamericans’. Spain tended to take Latin America
for granted, and assumed it understood it and could speak for it.
Neither was true. To make matters worse, foreign policy towards the
region has become politicised, in two ways. Under Sánchez, Spain has

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had twin policies towards Latin America: an official one follows the EU
and US position of support for democracy and freedoms, while a parallel
one undertaken by Podemos and, less comprehensibly, Zapatero,
espoused sympathy for the populist and authoritarian left in the region.
Zapatero’s actions as a self-appointed mediator in Venezuela were highly
controversial: he secured the release of dozens of prisoners but the regime
promptly arrested others. The opposition saw him as a stooge for Nicolás
Maduro’s dictatorship. Spain’s failure to stand fairly and squarely for
liberal democracy damaged its reputation in the region. On the other
hand, Venezuela has become a domestic political issue in Spain, as Cuba
long has been. Many of the leaders of the more intransigent wing of the
Venezuelan opposition now live in Madrid where they have influence
over the PP and Vox.
Spain did have international assets. Madrid became a more and
more important crossroads for Latin Americans, in cultural and people-
to-people terms. The Spanish language remained a powerful cultural
tool. Spain had soft power, which it could make more of: a poll taken
each year by the Elcano Royal Institute, a think-tank, regularly showed
that foreigners had a higher opinion of the country than Spaniards
themselves. And Spain could point to some modest diplomatic
successes. Notwithstanding the Ceuta incident, its migration-linked
cooperation programmes with African countries were well-conceived.
The Sánchez government’s approach to post-Brexit Gibraltar was
mature. García-Margallo had peremptorily demanded co-sovereignty
leading to full sovereignty. This was not just unacceptable to
Gibraltarians but also short-sighted. It would set a precedent that
would have haunted Spain in relation to Ceuta and Melilla. Gibraltar’s
economy depends on some 10,000 workers who cross the border each
day. In turn, those jobs are important for what is one of the poorest
parts of Spain in the Campo de Gibraltar opposite the Rock. Sánchez’s
team negotiated a pragmatic agreement with the UK under which
Gibraltar would form part of the Schengen zone of passport-free travel.

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Its external border – the port and airport – would be policed by

Frontex, the EU’s border force, in deference to Gibraltarian sensitivity
over the deployment of Spanish police. Both sides hoped the agree-
ment would become a treaty between the EU and the UK.
Spain’s loss of international influence came as its international inte-
gration was ever greater, as an open economy dependent on energy
imports and whose large companies derived much of their revenues
abroad. ‘We depend on the outside world a lot more than the outside
world depends on us,’ wrote Emilio Lamo de Espinoza, the founding
director of the Elcano Royal Institute, an international affairs think-
tank in Madrid. ‘This is perhaps the fundamental contradiction of
Spain’s current situation: being a country enormously dependent on
the outside world, it has neither the resources nor the capacity to
manage this condition adequately.’1 The contradiction was sharpened
by Spain’s internal problems. In an unprecedented joint article
published in 2012, all the living foreign ministers of Spanish democ-
racy stated that they were ‘convinced that to be influential beyond our
borders we need to be strong internally . . . projecting an image of a
vigorous, politically stable, legally secure and open country’.2 And not
only was that not the case, but the Spanish public did not seem to see
it as a problem.

The Atocha station in Madrid is a daily marvel. With meticulous punc-

tuality a fleet of sleek AVEs, as the high-speed trains are called, streak
off at up to 300 kilometres per hour to a dozen different destinations
in southern and eastern Spain. This spectacle has recently begun to be
matched at Chamartín station, on the other side of Madrid, where
AVEs leave for Galicia and the north. There are plenty of criticisms
that can be made of Spain’s bet on high-speed rail. It has led to a two-
speed railway system, many of the lines may not repay the investment
for decades and there is some evidence that Madrid has benefited more
than the provincial capitals. Yet there can be no doubt that the AVEs,

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along with an extensive motorway network, have shrunk the country

in terms of journey times and joined up the nation for the first time.
They symbolise much that is good about modern Spain.
Yet, paradoxically, as Spain has become both more integrated inter-
nally and more connected to the world, in some ways Spaniards are
more strongly attached than ever to their terruño (local patch). Foreign
observers have long remarked on this characteristic. In his Handbook
for Travellers in Spain, first published in 1845, Richard Ford declared:
‘Spain is today, as it always has been, a collection of small bodies tied
to a string of sand which lacking union lacks strength.’ He noted that
‘from the earliest period down to the present, all observers have been
struck with this localism, as a salient feature in the Iberian character’.3
This localism continues, and if anything has become stronger today
than forty years ago. It is expressed in a fierce attachment to cultural
traditions, to the town fiesta and to local food and wine. It is one of the
appealing features of Spain, it gives it social cohesion and perhaps these
strong local identities have made the changes brought by globalisation
easier to bear. They go beyond Catalonia and the Basque Country. In
the past forty years, under the aegis of the estado autonómico and the
devolution of powers, places such as Andalucía, and even Madrid,
which never had strong regional political identities in the past, have
acquired them. But localism can also weaken the nation state.
The preceding chapters have argued that contemporary Spain is not
burdened by an atavistic exceptionalism nor by Franco’s ghost. But like
all countries it has its specificities, mainly derived from history and
geography. As we have seen, a legacy of the relative weakness of the
state in the nineteenth century in a country of many geographical
obstacles was the survival of regional identities which evolved into rival
nationalisms. They were strong enough to resist but not to impose
themselves. They cannot simply be ignored or repressed, as Franco
tried to do. But nor do they justify breaking up what is on the whole a
successful country.

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Seen in the context of the past two centuries, the transition settle-
ment was a historic success. If there was a ghost guiding it, surely it was
that of Manuel Azaña and his vision of a liberal Spain that embraced
its diversity, a patria of citizenship and the rule of law. Under its
auspices, the centuries-long hold of national Catholicism over political
life and public morality was at last broken, Spain joined the Western
European mainstream and society modernised at the speed of a flood
from a breached dam. After more than forty years it needs reform, but
not replacement as Podemos, Catalan and Basque separatism and Vox
all argue.
The estado autonómico, the heart of the transition settlement and
Spain’s contemporary democracy, was a bold attempt to reconcile
diversity and unity, to respect regional languages, cultures and differ-
ences while asserting a common national culture that unites all
Spaniards. It can claim to have been broadly successful. By bringing
public services closer to the people, it improved them. It encouraged a
healthy competitive rivalry and experimentation: Castile and León, for
example, a largely rural region with an income per person slightly
below the national average, has some of the best educational results in
Spain. Regional inequalities fell, at least at first. Andalucía remains one
of Spain’s poorer regions but it is nothing like as poor as it was. Income
per head has overhauled that of Italy’s mezzogiorno. Fernán-Núñez now
has a health clinic, and access to a district hospital in Montilla, 15
kilometres away, both run by the regional government. Some of these
positive outcomes were due in part to Spain’s entry into the EU and
its structural and cohesion funds for poorer regions. But polls tend to
show that Spaniards rate their regional government more highly than
the national one.
The system has defects, too. Some are obvious. They include the
unnecessary proliferation of regulation and the wasteful reproduction
of the paraphernalia of quasi-independence, from public television
stations to contemporary art museums. There are too many regions. In

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many of them there is insufficient political competition, which has

engendered a rebirth of the cacique. And the system gives mayors of big
cities too few powers. Other drawbacks are more insidious. The biggest
is the open-ended constitutional framework of the estado autonómico,
which lacks a clearly defined division of powers between centre and
region. That has led to a permanent tug of war over powers, and meant
that the Constitutional Tribunal has become an overworked and, to
some, discredited referee. Because of the way the political system has
evolved, open-endedness has become centrifugal. In twenty of the
forty years since the 1982 election, the governing party has lacked a
majority in Congress. It has relied on Basque and Catalan nationalist
parties in a trade of parliamentary votes for the transfer of powers.
Some of those parties now want to destroy the Spanish nation state. In
throwing in its lot with peripheral nationalisms the left – the Socialists
and especially Podemos – has turned its back on its long history of
commitment to universal rights, and the pre-eminence of social class
over national feeling. For many of their nationalist allies, home rule –
the constitution’s autonomía – is an intermediate stop, not a
destination.
The estado autonómico’s boost to localism has also generated a
narrowness of mind, a blinkered parochialism. Regional governments
often seem to be creating self-contained worlds. When in summer
2019 the Madrid regional government began hiring music teachers for
the first time since before the slump, it in effect made it impossible for
musicians from other parts of Spain to apply. Or take languages.
Regional governments in Valencia and the Balearics are promoting the
local variant of Catalan. In Asturias some want to give official status to
bable, a local tongue derived from Latin. In each case there is an argu-
ment for protecting a linguistic culture. But divisive policies, such as
attaching linguistic requirements for public sector jobs, tend to follow.
The impulse is often to stress what divides rather than what unites,
what Sigmund Freud called ‘the narcissism of small differences’. This is

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 THE NARCISSISM OF SMALL DIFFERENCES

most obviously so with Basque and Catalan nationalists, but it applies

more widely in Spain today. The country risks becoming ‘a kingdom of
taifas’, Felipe González often warned, referring to the mosaic of small
warlord states that emerged in Muslim Spain following the collapse of
the Ummayad caliphate in 1009.4 This fissiparous tendency ignores the
many things that all Spaniards have in common, as women or men,
parents and children, workers, professionals, consumers, ecologists,
cyclists, football fans and basketball players, eaters of tortillas, toma-
toes, squid, fish or steaks. And the focus on the local and regional has
come at the cost of Spain’s national and international interests.
Some on the right believe the answer is re-centralisation, as Vox
would like. It is surely not coincidental that today, as in the time of José
Ortega y Gasset’s España Invertebrada, many of the most vocal
centralisers are Basque and Catalan journalists and intellectuals. But
their unitarianism flies in the face of both history and social realities.
The right should understand that federalism, which it instinctively
rejects, is the answer to many of its anxieties. Formal federalism would
involve a clear demarcation of powers and clear rules for dispute-
resolution. It would involve reforming the Senate, a toothless and
rather functionless body which serves chiefly as a parking place for
second-tier politicians, to turn it into a chamber that represented the
regions, along the lines of Germany’s Bundesrat. Federalism might also
bring about a change in the underlying philosophy of how to govern
Spain, from being a radial country centred on the hub of Madrid to a
networked one with competing power centres, in which for example
Barcelona might feel more like Munich than Marseilles and state agen-
cies were spread around the country rather than clustering in Madrid.
That would not placate hardcore separatists but it would satisfy many
Catalans who became disillusioned with regional autonomy. In twenty-
first-century Europe it really shouldn’t be impossible to reconcile
regional diversity, sub-national identities and national unity. But once
national identity and nationalism become dominant strands of the

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political system, it is hard to reverse that. If the current fissiparous

trend continues, Spain risks gradually coming apart, for lack of glue. It
is time to value the whole as well as, and not instead of, the parts. The
country needs to find ways of making itself more attractive to the
3 million or so Catalans and Basques who say they want to leave it,
without hurting the interests of the other 43 million Spaniards.

For several generations, the answer was held to lie in Ortega y Gasset’s
observation that ‘Spain is the problem, Europe is the solution.’ That has
become a cliché, its shelf life long over, along with much of Ortega’s
thinking, marked as it was by the pessimism of the 1898 Generation of
intellectuals. Spain has become a far better place since then. Entry to
Europe provided Spain with a shared national project during the transi-
tion. The EU has helped Spain a lot, in many ways. It has, of course, been
a source of development aid, the EU structural funds helping to pay
for infrastructure and improvements in the poorer parts of the country.
Not surprisingly, Spaniards are among the most enthusiastic Europhiles
in the EU, though that may owe something to their mistrust of their own
governments and institutions. Perhaps more importantly the European
Commission has acted as a kind of superego, in Freudian terms,
preventing unbridled populism and restraining separatism. Pressure from
Brussels was important in pushing Spanish governments to undertake
economic reforms both during the financial crisis and the pandemic.
The difficulty with Ortega’s dictum is what happens when you have
joined Europe and there are still problems at home. In other words,
Europe is not the solution to all of Spain’s problems. And Europe’s
future in a rapidly changing world is far from assured. Some Spaniards
argue that having achieved democracy, considerable prosperity and
integration into Europe, Spain needs a new grand national project.
That, too, reflects Ortega’s influence. ‘Only great enterprises awake the
deepest vital instincts of great human masses,’ he wrote.5 Like Ortega,
many Spanish intellectuals tend to be obsessed with what Spaniards

270
 THE NARCISSISM OF SMALL DIFFERENCES

are, with problems of essence, rather than what they do and with their
need for a better quality of government at all levels.
Spain cannot rely on either Europe, or on some nebulous national
project, to paper over national discord. The political crisis of paralysis,
polarisation and fragmentation which manifested itself in 2016 may
have been temporarily stilled by Sánchez, but in many ways it continues.
‘Ultimately, the spirit of 15M [the indignados] continues to float in the
atmosphere,’ as Ignacio Urquizu puts it.6 The country’s main problem
today is the inability of the politicians to reach even minimal agree-
ments across what has become a bitter partisan divide. That makes even
the smallest constitutional reform almost unthinkable, let alone a leap
forward requiring multiple trade-offs such as formal federalism. It even
makes it hard to imagine serious moves towards the better government
the country needs. Lasting improvements in education and training,
and necessary rationalisations of public spending, with less directed to
pensioners and more to young people, are unlikely without broad cross-
party pacts. Some pundits called for a grand coalition to carry out
reforms, but that carried the risk of strengthening the extremes. More
useful, and more possible, would be a few cross-party agreements on
the main reforms. These were the dilemmas Spain seemed likely to face
in the coming years in a political system featuring a partial restoration
of the two-party system, the continuing presence of Basque and Catalan
nationalists, and the existence of two disruptive parties at the extremes
in Podemos and Vox.
The narcissism of small differences expressed by nationalisms and
localisms within Spain is mirrored in crispación, the need to fetishise
political disagreements even where they scarcely exist. The divide
between left and right has proved harder to bridge in Spain than
in France, with the triumph of Macron, in Germany, with its grand
coalitions, or in Italy, with its protean governments. Spanish politi-
cians may have started to learn the art of coalition building at national
level but so far this has simply deepened the trenches that separate left

271
 SPAIN

and right. Some argue that this ideological trench, and not the
issues of historical memory, may be the most pernicious legacy of
the Civil War. But rather than a hangover from the last century, this
looks more like a consequence of 15M, of the financial crisis and the
indignados.
More than a decade after discontent surfaced with the irruption
of the indignados, the populist challenges to Spain’s constitutional
settlement – Podemos, Catalan separatism and Vox – seemed no
longer to be advancing, for the time being at least. ETA’s abandoning
of violence appeared to be definitive. All this pointed to the resilience
of Spanish democracy. But to survive is not necessarily to thrive.
Alliances of short-term expediency provide no long-term foundation
for the country’s progress. ‘No is No’ continues to haunt Spanish
politics.

The pandemic, the slowness of economic recovery and the return of

inflation all took their toll on the government’s support. Opinion polls
pointed to the possibility that at the next general election Spain would
move back to the right. But which right? Throughout 2020 and 2021
Vox steadily crept up in the polls, thanks largely to Casado’s ineffectual
leadership of the PP. That was a problem for the country not just the
PP. Many on the left argued that Vox was a far more potent threat
to democracy than Podemos. That was debatable. Certainly, Vox was
hostile to some elements of liberal democracy, such as minority rights,
and said it wanted to ban peaceful peripheral nationalist parties. But in
the view of one study it is of the radical rather than extreme right:
‘discursively, it doesn’t attack democracy’.7 Podemos’s initial disdain for
an independent judiciary and its alliances with Latin American dicta-
torships similarly questioned its commitment to liberal democracy. To
seek power, Pablo Iglesias reconciled himself to the constitution, and
the same might well become true of Vox. But Podemos was tamed by
being the minority partner in a minority government, with less than a

272
 THE NARCISSISM OF SMALL DIFFERENCES

third as many parliamentary seats as the Socialists. A majority govern-

ment in which Vox had almost as many seats as the PP would be deeply
disturbing for democrats. In those circumstances many would call for
a cordon sanitaire around Vox, an agreement not to ally with it. Unlike
some other mainstream conservative parties in Europe the PP has not
adopted that position, at least in regional government. But neither did
Sánchez place a cordon sanitaire around Podemos as Olaf Scholz did
with Die Linke, Germany’s hard-left party. For a cordon sanitaire against
Vox to be credible and effective the implication would be that if the PP
were the most-voted party and the left lacked a parliamentary majority,
then the Socialists would have to back a PP government.8 In this
context Núñez Feijóo’s arrival at the head of the PP looked providen-
tial. It gave the PP a poll boost and held out the possibility that support
for Vox would start to decline, or at least stop growing.
Another uncertainty concerned the future of the monarchy. For
many on the right and in the centre it was a crucial bulwark of the
constitution and against extremism. Juan Carlos’s misdeeds inflicted
lasting damage to the institution, especially to its reputation among
young people. Will this prove to be terminal? Much will depend on
how effective Leonor, King Felipe’s elder daughter, proves to be as a
representative of the monarchy. Its second weapon is inertia, and that
may be decisive in its survival.
Spanish society is resilient and overwhelmingly moderate.
Fortunately, the polarisation among the politicians was on the whole
not reflected in everyday life. For many Spaniards life is good. But the
country may be becoming over-reliant on these qualities. In a scathing
opinion article in 2021 Antonio Caño, the former editor of El País,
wrote that ‘for lack of other motives, partying and sun are becoming
the only symbols of identity and the only escape valves from an
appalling reality’.9 Many would say this was hyperbolic, and others
might argue that partying and sun have much going for them. But
Caño had a point.

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 SPAIN

Exactly a century ago the inability of the Restoration politicians to

reach agreements on reforms opened the way to the dictatorship of
Primo de Rivera. There is no reason for history to repeat itself, but that
ought to serve as a warning to Spain’s political class. National character
is a suspect notion, given human diversity the world over. But history,
geography and customs do shape attitudes and behaviours. Rightly or
wrongly, Spaniards are known for pride, stubbornness and unwilling-
ness to compromise (a word that doesn’t have an equivalent in Spanish).
But they have many qualities. In normal everyday interactions, they
are unfailingly patient, humane and kind. Those qualities have long
been noted by outsiders. César Vallejo, a great Peruvian modernist
poet, wrote of a visit to Madrid in the 1920s that ‘the permanent values
of humanity take preference over the smoke of the locomotive, the
banking hall, the klaxon of the motor car and the fixed wing of the
aircraft’. In many ways that remains the case today. Spaniards have
been remarkably patient over the past decade. But unless their demands
for change are addressed, at some point their patience may snap.

274
 NOTES

Prologue
1. On Las Meninas, see Michael Jacobs, Everything is Happening: Journey into a painting,
Granta, London, 2015.
2. José Varela Ortega, España: Un relato de grandeza y de odio, Espasa, Barcelona, 2019, p. 25.
3. Jason Webster, Violencia: A new history of Spain – past, present and the future of the West,
Constable, London, 2019, Introduction.
4. ‘Orientalism’, according to Said, an intellectual of Palestinian origin, is a system of repre-
sentation which deploys imaginative projection and patronising tropes to deny the value
and logic of other societies, seen as inferior.
5. Tom Burns Marañón, Hispanomanía, con un Prólogo para Franceses, Galaxia Gutenburg,
Barcelona, 2014, p. 59. All translations from Spanish sources are mine.
6. Franz Borkenau, The Spanish Cockpit: An eyewitness account of the Spanish Civil War,
Phoenix Press, London, 2000, pp. 299–300.
7. Burns (2014), pp. 106 and 109.
8. Wade Davis, Magdalena: River of dreams, Bodley Head, London, 2020, p. xiii.

1 The unravelling
1. https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/12/05/opinion/1544031394_526596.html
2. The death toll is a matter of some dispute and much exaggeration. Enrique Moradiellos,
in a recent Spanish account, provides the following casualty figures for the Civil War:
150,000 to 200,000 killed in military action (including bombardments), of whom 60%
were on the Republican side; 155,000 dead in repression during the war, of whom around
100,000 were killed in the nationalist zone. In addition Spain suffered up to 380,000
‘excess deaths’ between 1936 and 1939, compared with the preceding years, because of
hunger and disease. Enrique Moradiellos, Historia Minima de la Guerra Civil Espanola,
Turner/El Colegio de México, Mexico, 2016, p. 275. The estimate of 20,000 for those
executed in post-war repression is from Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust, W.W. Norton,
New York, 2012, p. xi.
3. Juan Carlos was the grandson of Alfonso XIII, the Bourbon monarch ousted by the decla-
ration of the Republic in 1930.

275
 NOTES to pp. 16–39
4. Charles Powell, España en Democracia, 1975–2000, Plaza y Janés, Barcelona, 2001,
pp. 209–16.
5. OECD, Economic Surveys: Spain, May 2021, p. 37. www.oecd.org/economy/surveys/
Spain-2021-OECD-economic-survey-overview.pdf
6. On the transition see Javier Tussell, Spain: From dictatorship to democracy, Blackwell, Oxford,
2007; Powell (2001) and Charles Powell, ‘Revisiting Spain’s transition to democracy’, in
Senén Florensa (ed.), The Arab Transitions in a Changing World: Building democracies in light
of international experiences, IEMed, Barcelona, 2016.
7. William Chislett, Spain: What everyone should know, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2013.
8. Ibid., p. 156.
9. William Chislett, Spain and the United States: The quest for mutual rediscovery, Real
Instituto Elcano, Madrid, 2005.
10. See Oscar Calvo-Gonzalez, Unexpected Prosperity: How Spain escaped the middle-income
trap, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021.
11. See, for example: www.eldiario.es/politica/frob-cajas-crisis-bancos-bankia-cclm-can-pp-
psoe-upn-iu-banco-de-valencia-banca-civica_1_5690328.html
12. www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-corruption-idUSL243227820061214
13. Interview with the author, November 2020.
14. www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39068843
15. www.economist.com/leaders/2015/12/16/feliz-navidad-espana
16. See: Spain, Annex to the EU Anti-Corruption Report, Brussels, 2 March 2014.
17. https://elpais.com/politica/2016/01/27/actualidad/1453925502_689607.html
18. www.poderjudicial.es/cgpj/es/Poder-Judicial/Audiencia-Nacional/Noticias-Judiciales/
La-Audiencia-Nacional-condena-a-penas-de-hasta-51-anos-de-prision-a-29-de-los-
37-acusados-en-el--caso-Gurtel-
19. In October 2020 the Supreme Court reviewed the case. It upheld the individual sentences,
varying them only slightly. It found that the PP had benefited from €245,000 in illegal
financing for campaigns in two Madrid suburbs. But it said that the PP could not be held to
be institutionally corrupt since it was not a party to the case. Rajoy took this as vindication.
See: www.elmundo.es/espana/2020/10/15/5f87f14321efa0ed538b467a.html
20. www.lavanguardia.com/comer/al-dia/20180601/443979431132/comida-rajoy-restau-
rante-madrid-mocion-de-censura.html
21. Bárcenas, the PP’s former treasurer, claimed that Rajoy figured on a list of under-the-
counter payments he said he made to party leaders, but Rajoy denied this and there was no
independent corroboration.
22. https://elpais.com/ideas/2020-08-08/recuerda-que-eres-mortal.html
23. www.elmundo.es/espana/2020/07/11/5f0a07fbfdddffe9b38b46e0.html
24. www.elmundo.es/espana/2020/03/18/5e7261affc6c83774d8b4628.html
25. See para 9 of the sentence: www.poderjudicial.es/cgpj/es/Poder-Judicial/Tribunal-
Supremo/Noticias-Judiciales/El-Tribunal-Supremo-condena-a-Inaki-Urdangarin-a-5-
anos-y-10-meses-de-prision-por-malversacion--prevaricacion--fraude--dos-delitos-
fiscales-y-trafico-de-influencias-en-el--caso-Noos-#:~:text=El%20Tribunal%20
Supremo%20condena%20a,influencias%20en%20el%20%E2%80%9Ccaso%20
N%C3%B3os%E2%80%9D
26. www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53415781
27. www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/world/europe/switzerland-money-laundering-case-juan-
carlos.html
28. www.reuters.com/world/europe/spanish-prosecutor-drops-fraud-case-against-former-king-
juan-carlos-2022-03-02/
29. www.economist.com/europe/2020/07/23/spains-king-felipe-is-distancing-himself-from-
his-father
30. www.elmundo.es/espana/2021/02/26/6038d5c8fdddffb7608b4647.html
31. https://letraslibres.com/revista/a-nice-young-fellow/

276
 NOTES to pp. 39–68
2 A Catalan autumn
1. Enric Ucelay-Da Cal, Breve historia del separatismo catalan, Ediciones B, Barcelona, 2018,
p. 16.
2. https://elpais.com/ccaa/2016/12/24/catalunya/1482594032_989718.html
3. In March 2022 the European Parliament ordered an investigation into Russian involve-
ment in the Catalan procés. It had emerged that Puigdemont met Russian emissaries in
October 2017, though he insisted he turned down offers of help from them.
4. Lola García, El Naufragio: La deconstrucción del sueño independentista, Ediciones Península,
Barcelona, 2018, p. 174.
5. www.elmundo.es/internacional/2017/03/30/58dcff9b46163f6c328b4627.html
6. www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-politics-catalonia-eu-idUSKBN1CO31E
7. García (2018), pp. 215–16.
8. https://elpais.com/espana/2020-07-30/los-129-dias-de-mediacion-baldia-entre-rajoy-y-
puigdemont.html
9. www.casareal.es/sitios/listasaux/Documents/Mensaje20171003/20171003_Mensaje_de_
Su_Majestad_el_Rey.pdf
10. www.elconfidencial.com/espana/cataluna/2019-10-18/rosa-foc-tactica-violentos-
incendiar-barcelona-717_2288576/
11. Daniel Gascón, El Golpe posmoderno, Debate, Barcelona, 2018.
12. Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió, Baròmetre d’Opinió Política. 2a Onada 2022, Gencat. https://
ceo.gencat.cat/ca/barometre/detall/index.html?id=8428

3 The invention of Catalonia

1. Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió, Generalitat de Catalunya, Baròmetre d’Opinió Política, 3a
Onada 2020.
2. This phrase was coined by Aureli Maria Escarré, the abbot of the Benedictine monastery
of Montserrat, who played an important role in reconstructing Catalan nationalism
during the Franco dictatorship
3. García (2018), p. 147.
4. Francesc-Marc Álvaro, Ensayo General de una Revuelta: Las claves del proceso catalán,
Galaxia Gutenberg, Barcelona, 2019, p. 43.
5. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/06/carles-puigdemont-catalonia-
democracy-spain-catalans.
6. https://cronicaglobal.elespanol.com/politica/todos-alcaldes-franquistas-absorbio-
ciu_143348_102.html
7. Álvaro (2019), p. 52.
8. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing traditions’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The
Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983, p. 6.
9. Norman Davis, Vanished Kingdoms: The history of half-forgotten Europe, Allen Lane,
London, 2011, chapter 4.
10. Jordi Canal, Historia Minima de Cataluña, Turner/El Colegio de México, Mexico, 2015,
p. 36.
11. The term ‘composite monarchy’ was popularised by J.H. Elliott.
12. J.H. Elliott, Scots and Catalans, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2018,
p. 64.
13. Raymond Carr, Spain 1808–1939, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1966, p. 30.
14. Robert Hughes, Barcelona, Harvill Press, London, 2001, chapter 7.
15. Quoted in Gascón (2018), p. 97.
16. Hughes (2001), p. 298.
17. Carr (1966), p. 538.
18. Ibid., pp. 546–7.

277
 NOTES to pp. 68–87
19. Manuel Chaves Nogales, Qué Pasa en Cataluña?, Editorial Almuzara, Madrid, 2013,
p. 99.
20. www.economist.com/europe/2017/11/02/the-man-who-wasnt-there
21. Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth: The social and political background to the Spanish
Civil War, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008, p. 282.
22. Quoted in Jordi Amat, ‘Fascistas, sí; fascismo, no’, La Vanguardia 11 August 2017.
23. Ucelay-Da Cal (2018), pp. 146–51.
24. All quotes from Chaves Nogales (2013).
25. Canal (2015), pp. 203–4.
26. Jordi Amat, Largo Proceso, Amargo Sueño: Cultura y política en la Cataluña contemporanea,
Tusquets Editores, Barcelona, 2018, p. 105.
27. On the rebuilding of Catalanism and the role of Pujol, see Amat (2018).
28. It collapsed in 1982, amid allegations of mismanagement and fraud. A criminal investiga-
tion ended with charges against Pujol and the bank’s other directors being dropped.
29. Amat (2018), pp. 345–6.
30. Quoted in Hughes (2001), p. 25.
31. Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, The Story of Spanish, St Martin’s Press, New York,
2013, chapter 5.
32. Generalitat de Catalunya, Statistical Institute of Catalonia, Language Uses of the Population,
2019. www.idescat.cat/indicadors/?id=aec&n=15781&lang=en
33. www.europapress.es/sociedad/educacion-00468/noticia-tc-recuerda-castellano-no-puede-
dejar-ser-tambien-lengua-aprendizaje-ensenanza-cataluna-20191007194309.html
34. www.elmundo.es/espana/2020/10/29/5f9af79ffc6c83bb758b45d9.html
35. https://elpais.com/opinion/2021-12-16/inmersion-linguistica-todo-por-el-pueblo-pero-
sin-el-pueblo.html
36. www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20180907/451686440606/el-48-de-los-libros-
vendidos-en-catalunya-son-en-catalan.html
37. https://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/anuario/anuario_20/
38. www.lavanguardia.com/edicion-impresa/20181003/452162897167/barcelona-capital.
html
39. Author interview, Barcelona, 2012.
40. www.elmundo.es/cataluna/2021/04/25/60844ae0fdddffc6ae8b45ba.html
41. Raphael Minder, The Struggle for Catalonia: Rebel politics in Spain, Hurst, London, 2017,
p. 33.
42. Jordi Amat, La Conjura de los Irresponsables, Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona, 2017,
p17.
43. This paragraph and the next draw on Amat (2017).
44. Jordi Canal, Con permiso de Kafka: El proceso independentista en Catalonia, Ediciones
Península, Barcelona, 2018, p. 142.
45. Gascón (2018), pp. 57–8.
46. Quoted in Álvaro (2019), p. 127 and p. 142.
47. Amat (2017), p. 54.
48. https://confilegal.com/20210616-la-audiencia-nacional-abre-juicio-oral-a-jordi-pujol-
y-sus-siete-hijos-e-impone-una-fianza-de-75-millones-al-primogenito/
49. https://elpais.com/politica/2019/08/15/actualidad/1565879983_942585.html And: https://
elpais.com/espana/2020-07-16/de-la-mata-propone-juzgar-a-jordi-pujol-su-mujer-y-sus-
hijos-por-enriquecerse-mediante-la-corrupcion.html
50. ‘La Audiencia de Barcelona ordena el ingreso en prisión de Oriol Pujol’, Poder Judicial de
España, Archivo de Notas de Prensa, 9 January 2019.
51. García (2018), pp. 136–7.
52. See: www.economist.com/europe/2017/01/07/in-their-search-for-independence-catalans-
can-resemble-brexiteers
53. Álvaro (2019), chapter 8.
54. www.elmundo.es/cataluna/2018/04/17/5ad4e148e5fdea22598b4603.html

278
 NOTES to pp. 87–102
55. Quoted in José Alvárez Junco, Dioses Útiles: Naciones y nacionalismos, Galaxia Gutenberg,
Barcelona, 2016, p. 227.
56. Gascón (2018), chapter 8.
57. www.elperiodico.com/es/politica/20180514/quim-torra-articulos-contra-espanoles-
6817795
58. https://elpais.com/espana/elecciones-catalanas/2021-02-07/breviario-indepe.html
59. Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The illusion of destiny, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth,
2006, pp. xii–xiii.
60. Álvarez Junco (2016), pp. 51–2.

4 Why Spain is not France

1. ‘A Orillas del Duero’, in Campos de Castilla, first published in 1912. Antonio Machado,
Poesia, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 2017, p. 55.
2. Richard Ford, A Hand-book for Travellers in Spain, Centaur Press, London, 1966, vol. 1,
p. 6. Ford’s book was first published in 1845.
3. Juan Pablo Fusi, Historia Minima de España, Turner, Madrid, 2012, chapter 4; Richard
Herr, ‘Flow and ebb, 1700–1833’, in Raymond Carr (ed.), Spain: A History, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 2000.
4. On Goya, see Robert Hughes, Goya, Knopf, New York, 2006.
5. José Álvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa: La idea de España en el siglo XIX, Taurus, Barcelona,
2001, p. 73.
6. Ibid., p. 137.
7. Carr (1966), p. 35.
8. See Nigel Townson (ed.), Is Spain Different? A comparative look at the 19th and 20th centu-
ries, Sussex Academic Press, Eastbourne, 2015.
9. Quoted in Álvarez Junco (2001), p. 533.
10. Adrian Shubert, Espartero el Pacificador, Galaxia Gutenberg, Barcelona, 2018, p. 25.
11. Quoted in frontispiece of Shubert (2018).
12. Gregorio Alonso, ‘The crisis of the old regime: 1808–1833’, in Adrian Shubert and
José Álvarez Junco (eds), The History of Modern Spain: Chronologies, themes, individuals,
Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2018.
13. There were almost a hundred pronunciamientos between 1820 and 1936 according
to Álvarez Junco (2016), p. 163.
14. Javier Barón, Una Pintura para una Nación, Museo del Prado, Madrid, 2019,
Foreword.
15. On the parallels between the two wars see Mark Lawrence, The Spanish Civil Wars:
A comparative history of the First Carlist War and the conflict of the 1930s, Bloomsbury
Academic, London, 2017.
16. Fusi (2012), p. 191.
17. Julio Aróstegui, ‘El carlismo y las guerras civiles’, in Aróstegui, Jordi Canal and
Eduardo G. Calleja, El Carlismo y las Guerras Carlistas, La Esfera de los Libros, Madrid,
2011.
18. See Shubert (2018).
19. Lawrence (2017), p. 32 and p. 66.
20. Quoted in Shubert (2018), p. 154
21. Roger Price, A Concise History of France, 3rd edn, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2014, p. 225.
22. See Aróstegui et al. (2011); and Maria Cruz Romeo Mateo, ‘The civil wars of the
19th century: An exceptional path to modernisation?’, in Townson (ed.) (2015).
23. Although Franco ruled as if he were an absolute monarch.
24. Mark Lawrence, ‘Juan Álvarez Mendizábal’, in Shubert and Álvarez Junco (eds) (2018).
25. On the development of the state, see Diego Palacios Cerezales, ‘The state’, in Shubert and
Álvarez Junco (eds) (2018).

279
 NOTES to pp. 102–119
26. Bravo Murillo’s motto may be the origin of the celebrated slogan attributed to
Porfirio Díaz, Mexico’s dictator from 1884 to 1911, ‘little politics, much administration’.
27. Isabel Burdiel, Isabel II: Una biografía, Taurus, Barcelona, 2019, Introduction.
28. María Sierra, ‘The time of liberalism 1833–74’, in Shubert and Álvarez Junco (eds) (2018),
p. 42.
29. Carr (1966), pp. 492–5.
30. Townson, ‘Introduction’, in Townson (ed.) (2015).
31. Leandro Prados de la Escosura, Spanish Economic Growth, 1850–2015, Palgrave
Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2017, p. 41.
32. Palacios Cerezales (2018), p. 314.
33. This paragraph and the next draw heavily on Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen:
The modernisation of rural France 1870–1914, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1976.
34. Ibid., p. x.
35. Quoted in ibid., p. 95
36. Ibid., p. 336.
37. www.ft.com/content/102f4bb2-d351-11e7-8c9a-d9c0a5c8d5c9
38. https://elpais.com/cultura/2020-10-09/fallece-el-historiador-joseph-perez-premio-
principe-de-asturias-de-ciencias-sociales-de-2014.html
39. https://elpais.com/internacional/2021-04-08/francia-aprueba-una-ley-para-
proteger-las-lenguas-regionales-y-facilitar-su-ensenanza.html
40. https://elpais.com/internacional/2021-05-21/el-constitucional-frances-veta-
parcialmente-la-ley-que-permitia-la-inmersion-linguistica-en-francia.html?rel=lom
41. The rest of this paragraph draws on Palacios Cerezales (2018).
42. Álvarez Junco (2001), p. 541.
43. Ibid., p. 547.
44. Arturo Barea, The Forging of a Rebel: The forge, Pushkin Press, London, 2018, p. 119.
45. Spain retained northern Morocco, Western Sahara and a few small African colonies.
46. Quoted in Carr (1966), p. 473.
47. Mary Vincent, Spain 1833–2002: People and state, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2007, pp. 87–91.
48. For a particularly trenchant demolition of Ortega, see José María Ridao, República
Encantada: Tradición, tolerancia y liberalismo en España, Tusquets Editores, Barcelona,
2021, pp. 193–219.
49. José Ortega y Gasset, España Invertebrada y Otros Ensayos, Alianza Editorial, Madrid,
2014, p. 62.
50. Ibid., p. 76.
51. Álvarez Junco (2001), p. 603.
52. Diario de Sesiones del Congreso de los Diputados, 27 May 1932, pp. 5855–77.
53. Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, ‘Nation and nationalism’, in Shubert and Álvarez Junco
(eds) (2018).
54. Quoted in Weber (1976), p. 96.
55. Núñez Seixas (2018).

5 Let’s talk about Franco

1. https://politica.elpais.com/politimca/2018/06/19/actualidad/1529397533_593099.
html
2. Silva and Sánchez-Albornoz’s comments in conference with foreign correspondents,
October 2018.
3. See Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, Guaridas del Lobo: Memorias de la Europa autoritaria, 1945–
2020, Crítica, Barcelona, 2021.
4. Enrique Moradiellos, Franco: Anatomy of a dictator, I.B. Tauris, London, 2018,
Introduction.
5. For a succinct account of the law, see Chislett (2013), pp. 160–3.

280
 NOTES to pp. 121–142
6. https://elpais.com/espana/2022-01-09/las-huellas-del-horror-franquista-10000-
esqueletos-recuperados-en-20-anos.html
7. https://elpais.com/espana/2020-09-02/la-juez-declara-al-estado-propietario-legitimo-del-
pazo-de-meiras.html
8. See Omar Encarnacion, Democracy without Justice in Spain: The politics of forgetting,
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2014.
9. https://elpais.com/opinion/2021-10-31/datos-necesarios-para-la-memoria-historica.html
10. Moradiellos (2016), chapter 2; quote on p. 42.
11. Paul Preston, Comrades: Portraits from the Spanish Civil War, HarperCollins, London, 1999,
p. 195.
12. Santos Juliá, Vida y Tiempo de Manuel Azaña 1880–1940, Taurus, Barcelona, 2008.
13. Quoted in Carr (1966), p. 607.
14. Lawrence (2017), p. 28.
15. Moradiellos (2016), pp. 63–4.
16. Ibid., p. 63.
17. Anthony Beevor, The Battle for Spain, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 2006, chapters 6
and 7.
18. Moradiellos (2016), p. 21.
19. Paul Preston, A People Betrayed: A history of corruption, political incompetence and
social division in modern Spain, 1876–2018, William Collins, London, 2020, chapter 10.
20. Manuel Chaves Nogales, A Sangre y Fuego: Héroes, bestias y mártires de España,
Libros del Asteroide, Barcelona, 2011, Prólogo.
21. Quoted in Juliá (2008), p. 400.
22. See, for example, Fernando del Rey, Retaguardia Roja: Violencia y revolución en la
guerra civil española, Galaxia Gutenburg, Barcelona, 2019.
23. Moradiellos (2016), pp. 275–6.
24. Juliá (2008), p392.
25. https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/12/22/opinion/1513954465_461537.html
26. Preston (2012), p. 499.
27. See Paul Preston, Franco: A biography, HarperCollins, London, 1993, and Enrique
Moradiellos (2018).
28. As portrayed in Mientras Dure la Guerra (‘While the war lasts’), a 2019 film by
Alejandro Amenábar.
29. Preston (2020), p. 371.
30. Several thousand Republicans who had escaped to France ended up, after the
German invasion, being sent to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Others
joined the French Resistance and were among the first troops to enter Paris in the libera-
tion in 1944.
31. Moradiellos (2018), p. 42.
32. Preston (2020), p. 349.
33. Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), Memorias de la Guerra Civil y el
Franquismo, April 2008, question 12.
34. Javier Cercas, ‘Un pacto sobre el pasado’, El País Semanal, 9 April 2017.
35. To cite a trivial example, I cannot be certain that the snapshots from my own
memory I referred to in the prologue are factually accurate.
36. Quoted in David Rieff, In Praise of Forgetting: Historical memory and its ironies, Yale
University Press, New Haven and London, 2016, p. 22.
37. CIS (2008), question 21.
38. https://elpais.com/cultura/2017/02/09/babelia/1486671469_920588.html
39. https://elpais.com/opinion/2020-10-12/ni-heroes-ni-villanos.html
40. ‘Truth commissions: the agony of silence’, The Economist, 15 May 2021.
41. Interview with the author, November 2018.
42. https://elpais.com/diario/2002/11/21/espana/1037833222_850215.html
43. Rieff (2016), p. 39

281
 NOTES to pp. 142–167
44. Ibid., p. 36
45. www.ft.com/content/b0be351e-d256-4833-aace-8c03386c9ad4
46. www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20201204/49864525002/jemad-miguel-angel-villar-
roya-expresiones-militares-confunden-opinion-publica.html
47. https://elpais.com/internacional/2021-04-29/francia-promete-sanciones-para-los-mili-
tares-que-alertaron-del-desmoronamiento-del-pais.html
48. https://elpais.com/internacional/2021-06-27/la-doble-vida-de-franco-a-y-el-
extremismo-en-el-ejercito-aleman.html
49. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2021/11/17/who-votes-for-the-populist-radical-
right-in-portugal-and-spain/
50. https://elpais.com/espana/2020-11-18/los-presupuestos-protagonizan-la-sesion-de-
control-al-gobierno-en-el-congreso.html

6 The Basque paradox and galeguismo

1. Eduardo Madina and Borja Sémper, Todos los Futuros Perdidos: Conversaciones sobre el final
de ETA, Plaza y Janés, Barcelona, 2021, p. 26.
2. http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/04/10/actualidad/1491779940_303824.html
3. This paragraph draws on Álvarez Junco (2016), pp. 234–52; quote on p. 251.
4. Quoted in Paddy Woodworth, The Basque Country: A cultural history, Signal Books,
Oxford, 2007, p. 13.
5. André Flores-Bello and others, ‘Genetic origins, singularity and heterogeneity of Basques’,
Current Biology, 31(10), 2021, pp. 2167–77.
6. Álvarez Junco (2016), pp. 239–40.
7. Woodworth (2007), p. 27.
8. See John Hooper, The New Spaniards, 2nd edn, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 2006, chapter
17.
9. Mark Kurlansky, The Basque History of the World, Vintage, 2000, chapter 9.
10. Interview with the author, Bilbao, May 2018.
11. Hooper (2006), p. 245.
12. Interview with the author, Bilbao, May 2018.
13. Woodworth (2007), pp. 175–6.
14. https://elpais.com/opinion/2021-06-04/el-legado-de-la-herida-del-terrorismo-en-
espana.html
15. www.elmundo.es/opinion/2021/06/12/60c390a121efa0656d8b465d.html
16. https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2018/04/28/actualidad/1524940722_226849.
html
17. https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2018/02/21/actualidad/1519238990_863473.
html
18. Juan Pablo Fusi and José Antonio Pérez (eds), Euskadi 1960–2011: Dictadura, tran-
sición y democracia, Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid 2017, pp. 30 and 284.
19. Kurlansky (2000).
20. Madina and Sémper (2021).
21. Fernando Aramburu, Patria, Tusquets, Barcelona, 2016.
22. Tobias Buck, After the Fall: Crisis, recovery and the making of a new Spain, Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, London, 2019, chapter 7.
23. Antonio Caño, Rubalcaba: Un político de verdad, Plaza y Janés, Barcelona, 2020,
p. 214.
24. See figure in Woodworth (2007), p. 115.
25. Author interview with Iván Jiménez, Bizkaia Talent, May 2018.
26. Briefing for foreign correspondents, June 2020.
27. Euskobarometro poll, 2019, www.ehu.eus/es/web/euskobarometro/
28. https://elpais.com/espana/2021-10-18/arnaldo-otegi-realiza-una-declaracion-solemne-
con-motivo-de-la-decimo-aniversario-del-fin-de-eta.html

282
 NOTES to pp. 168–193
29. https://elpais.com/espana/2021-10-25/eh-bildu-ensancha-el-tablero-politico-vasco.html
30. Álvarez Junco (2016), pp. 252–70.
31. https://elpais.com/elpais/2020/07/01/eps/1593617739_343431.html

7 The fading of the Spanish dream

1. See, for example: https://elpais.com/economia/2021-02-14/santana-10-anos-de-un-
motor-gripado-en-linares.html
2. Interview with the author, May 2018.
3. William Chislett, ‘Challenges and opportunities for Spain in times of COVID-19’, Real
Instituto Elcano Working Paper, April 2021.
4. www.huffingtonpost.es/entry/quien-es-ana-iris-simon-pedro-sanchez-discurso_es_
60ab516be4b0d56a83eba511
5. Manuel García-Santana et al., ‘Growing like Spain: 1995–2007’, International Economic
Review 61(1), 2020, pp. 383–416.
6. Michael Reid, ‘The strain in Spain: A special report’, The Economist, 28 July 2018.
7. Politikon, El Muro Invisible, Editorial Debate, Barcelona, 2017, chapter 4.
8. https://elpais.com/economia/2021-07-12/pedro-sanchez-presenta-el-plan-estrategico-
para-impulsar-el-coche-electrico-con-los-fondos-europeos.html
9. www.expansion.com/empresas/distribucion/2020/01/29/5e309dec468aebd76f8b462f.
html
10. Miguel Almunia et al., ‘Venting out: Exports during a domestic slump’, National Bureau
of Economic Research Working Paper 25372, December 2018.
11. Peter Eppinger et al., ‘The great trade collapse and the Spanish export miracle’, The
World Economy 41(2), February 2018.
12. www.astimobilerobotics.com/blog/abb-to-acquire-asti-to-drive-next-generation-of-flexible-
automation
13. www.economist.com/europe/2018/08/18/can-other-cities-imitate-bilbaos-cultural-
tourism-success
14. https://elpais.com/economia/2020-11-08/la-banca-cierra-en-12-anos-el-50-de-
oficinas-y-echa-al-40-de-empleados.html
15. www.elmundo.es/opinion/2020/02/10/5e40084efc6c83be6b8b458b.html
16. Klaus Schwab et al., Global Competitiveness Report 2019, World Economic Forum,
Geneva, 2019.
17. www.elmundo.es/economia/actualidad-economica/2021/05/09/6093b16cfc6c83f8
668b4602.html
18. https://elpais.com/economia/2020-08-01/el-verano-mas-negro-del-turismo.html
19. Interview with the author, July 2021.
20. OECD (2021).
21. www.psoe.es/media-content/2019/12/30122019-Coalici%C3%B3n-progresista.
pdf
22. OECD, Economic Surveys: Spain, 2017, Paris, OECD, p. 63.
23. https://elpais.com/espana/2021-07-04/yolanda-diaz-el-gobierno-no-puede-
parecer-mas-cerca-de-la-elite-que-de-la-gente.html
24. According to José Luis Escrivá, the social security minister, www.elmundo.es/opinion/20
20/05/30/5ed11211fc6c83e3588b4584.html
25. Interview with the author, July 2021.
26. OECD (2017), p. 78.
27. https://elpais.com/economia/2019/04/17/actualidad/1555529390_753721.html
28. Ángel de la Fuente and Rafael Doménech, ‘Cross-country data on skills and the quality
of schooling: A selective survey’, BBVA Research Working Paper, November
2021.
29. Buck (2019), pp. 91–2.
30. Interview with the author, May 2018.

283
 NOTES to pp. 193–220
31. https://elpais.com/educacion/2021-02-07/el-curso-de-la-pandemia-elevo-los-aprobados-
a-maximos-historicos.html
32. www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2021
33. www.lamoncloa.gob.es/serviciosdeprensa/notasprensa/inclusion/paginas/2022/101022-
escriva-pensiones.aspx
34. OECD (2021) and OECD, Pensions at a Glance: How does Spain compare? November
2021.
35. Kiko Lorenzo and Raúl Flores, Caritas Madrid, conference with foreign correspondents,
May 2020.
36. Interview with the author, June 2020.
37. Chislett (2021), p. 16.
38. European Commission, Country Report Spain 2019.
39. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/sdg_08_10/default/table?lang=en

8 Scandinavia in the sun?

1. Walters gave this account of the meeting in an interview with ABC, a Spanish newspaper,
published on 15 August 2000.
2. Hooper (2006), p. 126.
3. Data from Instituto de Mujeres, Minsterio de Igualdad.
4. https://elpais.com/sociedad/2021-08-25/conciliacion-la-asignatura-pendiente-lastrada-
por-la-pandemia.html
5. https://elpais.com/sociedad/2019/03/03/actualidad/1551638433_568255.html
6. Heyne and Manucci, Europpblog, LSE, November 2021.
7. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/international/articles-reports/2021/08/31/international-
survey-how-supportive-would-britons-
8. www.elmundo.es/elecciones/elecciones-madrid/2021/04/13/6075d78121efa0e2
778b4628.html
9. Interview with the author, Madrid, April 2021.
10. Mar Griera, Julia Martínez-Ariño and Anna Clot-Garrell, ‘Banal Catholicism, morality
policies and the politics of belonging in Spain’, Religions 12, 2021.
11. Figures in ‘La iglesia católica en España’, Conferencia Episcopal Española, May 2021.
12. Interview with the author, April 2021.
13. https://elpais.com/sociedad/2021-12-19/la-iglesia-espanola-afronta-una-gran-
investigacion-de-la-pederastia-con-251-nuevos-casos-aportados-por-el-pais.html
14. The fertility rate is the average number of children that a woman will give birth to.
15. William Chislett, Forty Years of Democratic Spain, Real Instituto Elcano, Madrid,
2018.
16. Aitana Guia, ‘Migrations’, in Álvarez Junco and Shubert (eds) (2018), chapter 19.
17. Barea (2018), p. 103.
18. Rosa Aparicio and Alejandro Portes, Growing Up in Spain: The integration of the
children of immigrants, La Caixa Foundation, Barcelona, 2014.
19. https://elpais.com/elpais/2020/01/03/opinion/1578068213_476762.html
20. www.elmundo.es/opinion/2021/04/10/606b4dc0fdddffc7998b4645.html
21. https://elpais.com/espana/2021-11-21/el-15-m-rural-desafia-al-psoe-y-al-pp.html
22. Angel de la Fuente and Xavier Vives, ‘Infrastructure and education as instruments
of regional policy: Evidence from Spain’, Economic Policy 10(20), April 1995.
23. Ignacio Urquizu, Otra Pólitica es Posible, Debate, Barcelona, 2021, chapter 5, and
interview with the author, March 2019.
24. www.lavanguardia.com/magazine/experiencias/salvar-meseta-laponia-sur.html
25. www.elmundo.es/economia/2020/06/23/5eef92f3fdddff02588b4579.html
26. https://elpais.com/elpais/2020/02/14/eps/1581678745_698258.html
27. https://elpais.com/clima-y-medio-ambiente/2021-08-21/seis-dias-de-desastre-ecologico-
en-el-mar-menor-con-miles-de-peces-muertos.html

284
 NOTES to pp. 221–236
28. Quoted in Josefina Gómez de Mendoza, ‘The environment’, in Álvarez Junco and Shubert
(eds) (2018), chapter 14.
29. Ibid.
30. www.ft.com/content/0d38e8d3-3f20-4818-8751-740d05f8ac13?shareType=
nongift
31. www.elmundo.es/opinion/columnistas/2022/01/07/61d6c971fdddff3e3d8b4575.
html
32. https://elpais.com/ccaa/2019/05/20/madrid/1558363176_904628.html
33. El País Semanal, 30 October 2016.
34. https://elpais.com/clima-y-medio-ambiente/2021-05-28/el-lobo-de-bestia-feroz-a-
simbolo-de-la-naturaleza-salvaje.html
35. https://elpais.com/politica/2019/05/16/actualidad/1558033959_289970.html
36. Ángeles González-Fernández, ‘Población y sociedad 1960–2010’, in Jordi Canal (ed.),
Historia Contemporánea de España, vol. 2: 1931–2017, Taurus, Barcelona, 2017. Quote on
p. 425.
37. https://elpais.com/politica/2017/06/12/actualidad/1497288605_348268.html
38. https://elpais.com/sociedad/2018/10/16/actualidad/1539678495_813483.html

9 ‘The caste’ and its flawed challengers

1. José Ignacio Torreblanca, Asaltar los Cielos: Podemos o la política después de la crisis, Editorial
Debate, Barcelona, 2015, p. 121.
2. Interview with the author, May 2021.
3. This paragraph and the next draw on Torreblanca (2015). See also ‘Pablo Iglesias habla
sobre su relación con Irán’, YouTube, 2 November 2014, www.youtube.com/
watch?v=jjeVbE3dL4Q
4. Pablo Iglesias, Politics in a Time of Crisis: Podemos and the future of a democratic Europe,
Verso, London, 2015, p. 136.
5. The Five Star Movement copied the term from a book published in 2007 by two Italian
journalists, Sergio Rizzo and Gian Antonio Stella. Miguel de Unamuno, a Spanish writer
of the Generation of 1898, had criticised ‘the ancient historic caste’.
6. Iglesias (2015).
7. Ignacio Urquizu, La Crisis de Representación en España, Catarata, Madrid, 2016, p. 100.
8. See, for example, reports on the state of democracy in the world by the V-Dem Institute
of Gothenburg University or the Economist Intelligence Unit.
9. Miriam González Durántez, Devuélveme el Poder: Por qué urge una reforma liberal en
España, Ediciones Península, Barcelona, 2019, chapter 1.
10. Ibid., p. 29.
11. Antonio Muñoz Molina, Todo lo que era sólido, Seix Barral, Barcelona, 2013, pp. 46–9.
12. www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2021-02-15/cifuentes-caso-master-audiencia-madrid_
2951416/
13. https://elpais.com/politica/2018/04/25/actualidad/1524643078_623889.html
14. ‘Spain: A question of degrees’, The Economist, 22 September 2018. The Institute of
Public Law was shut down after these scandals; its director, Enrique Álvarez Conde, was
charged with fraud but died before coming to trial.
15. https://www.poderjudicial.es/cgpj/es/Poder-Judicial/Tribunal-Supremo/Noticias-
Judiciales/El-Tribunal-Supremo-confirma-penas-de-hasta-51-anos-de-prision-para-los-
procesados-en-el--caso-Gurtel-
16. ‘Discurso de Pedro Sánchez en el debate de la Moción de Censura contra el Gobierno de
Mariano Rajoy’, Congresso de los Diputados, 31 May 2018, p. 6.
17. www.rtve.es/noticias/20210806/juicio-ignacio-gonzalez-adjudicaciones-campo-golf-
canal-isabel-ii/2153481.shtml
18. www.poderjudicial.es/cgpj/es/Poder-Judicial/Sala-de-Prensa/Archivo-de-notas-de-prensa/
La-Audiencia-Provincial-de-Sevilla-notifica-la-sentencia-del-caso-de-los-ERE

285
 NOTES to pp. 237–258
19. Raphael Minder, Esto es España? Una década de corresponsalía, Ediciones Península,
Barcelona, 2020, pp. 317–34.
20. Muñoz Molina (2013), pp. 109–19.
21. https://elpais.com/espana/2021-04-05/el-gobierno-inicia-la-reforma-de-la-ley-fran-
quista-de-secretos-oficiales.html
22. https://elpais.com/espana/2020-08-15/urge-un-gobierno-de-concentracion-moral-y-
constitucional-en-espana.html?rel=mas
23. https://elpais.com/opinion/2021-08-17/las-reformas-son-para-el-verano.html
24. www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20201101/4977267538/funcionarios-empleo-
publico-burocracia-pandemia.html
25. https://elpais.com/opinion/2021-06-04/larra-en-el-ciberespacio.html
26. https://elpais.com/opinion/2021-04-11/mi-espana.html
27. https://elpais.com/opinion/2020-11-23/administracion-digital-secuestrada.html
28. Hooper (2006), p. 336.
29. https://elpais.com/politica/2018/11/20/actualidad/1542742122_009936.html
30. See, for example: www.publico.es/politica/juicio-independencia-rigor-vox-proces-acusar-
organizacion-criminal-no-cuadre-relato-juez-instructor.html
31. https://elpais.com/politica/2016/12/02/actualidad/1480701452_072845.html
32. Interview with the author, May 2021.
33. https://ig.ft.com/jailed-bankers/
34. www.publico.es/politica/90-politicos-funcionarios-prision-espana-delitos-corrup-
cion.html
35. https://elpais.com/politica/2016/01/22/actualidad/1453461680_098827.html
36. Ramon González Férriz, La Ruptura: El fracaso de una (re)generación, Flash e-book,
Penguin Libros, 2021.
37. w w w. e l d i a r i o . e s / p o l i t i c a / i d e o l o g i c o - p o d e m o s - p r e o c u p a d o - m o s t r a r s e -
partidos_128_3591344.html
38. https://elpais.com/espana/2021-03-16/mas-madrid-desbarata-el-intento-de-igle-
sias-de-liderar-el-asalto-de-madrid.html
39. Caño (2020), p. 283 and chapter 9.
40. www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/how-democracies-spy-on-their-citizens
41. www.mpr.gob.es/prencom/notas/Paginas/2022/240422-reunion-generalitat-
catalunya.aspx
42. www.elperiodico.com/es/politica/20220427/catalangate-robles-espionaje-cni-
independentismo-13574015
43. https://paginadelforodeprofesores.wordpress.com/carta-a-citizenlab-sobre-
catalangate/
44. https://elpais.com/espana/2022-05-15/ronald-deibert-fundador-de-citizen-lab-los-
gobiernos-usan-pegasus-porque-tienen-apetito-de-espiar.html
45. www.pp.es/actualidad-noticia/casado-abascal-no-su-mocion-es-no-sanchez-sus-socios-visibles-que-
esta-sombra-que
46. https://elpais.com/espana/2022-04-03/el-nombramiento-de-feijoo-lleva-aires-de-
cambio-de-ciclo-en-la-tensa-relacion-entre-pp-y-psoe.html
47. https://elpais.com/espana/2022-05-06/feijoo-reivindica-en-barcelona-la-identidad-terri-
torial-frente-a-mentalidades-centralistas.html#?rel=mas
48. José Rama, Lisa Zanotti, Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte and Andrés Santana, Vox: The
rise of the Spanish populist radical right, Routledge, Abingdon, 2021, p. 144.
49. Caño (2020), chapters 7 and 8.
50. The law repealed a restriction on coercive picketing during strikes. www.elmundo.
es/espana/2021/04/23/60828fd7fdddff88778b458e.html
51. https://dobetter.esade.edu/es/polarizacion-espana
52. Urquizu (2021), chapter 1.

286
 NOTES to pp. 265–273
10 The narcissism of small differences
1. Emilio Lamo de Espinoza, Entre Águilas y Dragones: El declive de Occidente, Espasa,
Barcelona 2021, p. 330.
2. Ibid., p. 330.
3. Ford (1966), p. 7. Italics in the original.
4. Simon Barton, A History of Spain, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2004, p. 45. Taifa
means ‘party’ or ‘faction’ in Arabic.
5. Ortega y Gasset (2014), p. 154.
6. Urquizu (2021), p. 178.
7. Rama et al. (2021), p. 143.
8. Urquizu (2021), chapter 4.
9. https://elpais.com/opinion/2021-03-15/un-proyecto-fallido.html – not long after this
op-ed was published El País ceased publishing Caño’s articles.

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290
 INDEX

15M 29, 228, 251, 253, 257, 259, 271, 272 Amat, Jordi 81
amnesty 18, 120, 124–5, 140, 158
A anarchism
Abascal, Santiago 146, 147, 148, 209, 256 Andalucía 105
abertzales assassination of prime ministers 105
EH Bildu and 164 Barcelona 43, 52, 57, 68, 73, 245
ETA sympathizers 150 Catalonia 43, 52, 57, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73
Foro Social 168 international networks 114
HB and 162 rise of 104
Hernani 167 strikes 128
literature 161 ANC (Catalan National Assembly) 49, 52
peace 163 Andalucía
violence 150, 151, 159–60 anarchism 105
abortion 202, 204, 209, 232 autonomy 16, 116, 266
Abrera 179 bureaucracy 234
aforamiento 238 Civil War 130
afrancesados 110, 239 contempt from Catalonia 88
After the Fall (Tobias Buck) 192 corruption 195, 236
Aguirre, José Antonio 156 economy 173–4, 175
Alas, Leopoldo 134 education 193, 195
Álava 115, 116, 153, 156, 159 elections 33, 146, 257
Alfonso XII 104 emigration to Catalonia 76
Alfonso XIII 139 landless labourers 105, 126
Algeria 261, 262 national parks 221
Almería 211, 262 Podemos 249
Almodóvar, Pedro 19 poverty 6, 267
Álvarez, Melquiadez 134–5 PP and 255, 256–7
Álvarez de Toledo, Cayetana 239 republic 104
Álvarez Junco, José 37, 89–90, 95, 115 social assistance 198
Álvarez Pallete, José María 219 Vox and 146
Álvaro, Francesc Marc 59–60, 87 animal rights 222–5
Amadeo of Savoy 103 Antequera, Fernando de 64

291
 INDEX
AP (Alianza Popular) 15, 20 Azaña, Manuel
Arabs 62–3, 76, 95, 153, 169–70 army reform 128, 144
Aragon 62, 63, 64, 66, 113, 116, 221 curbing Catholic church 127
Aragonés, Pere 55, 254 loyalty to Republic 132, 133
Aramburu, Fernando 161 on contrasts in Spanish society 126
Arana, Sabino 155–6 on Franco and fascism 137–8
Argentina 124, 136, 229 paz, piedad e perdón 139
army personality 126–7
Civil Guard and 102 Popular Front 129
conservativism 14 Prime Minister of Second Republic 115
democracy and 19 regional diversity 115, 116
discipline 104 vision of liberal Spain 267
discontent 144–5 wanting to leave Spain 134–5
expenses on 111 Aznar, José María
liberalism 114 Atlanticism 20, 262
loss of political veto 144 attempt to unseat Rajoy 26
military service 108–9, 111 crispación 257
organisation 100 economic reforms 20
reforms 127, 128 focus on Madrid 84
regenerationism and 112–13 Iraq 21
republicanisation 128 nationalism and 146
support for Franco 137 need for CiU votes 75–6
Arrimadas, Inés 50, 248, 250 pact with Socialists against HB 163
Arroyo, Noelia 220 PP leader 20
Arzalluz, Xabier 162–3 second term 21
Assault Guards 129 secularism 208
ASTI 180–1, 183 talks with ETA 22, 162
Asturias 7, 71, 113, 129, 153, 217, 221, women in government 204
268 Azpiazu, Pedro 165
austerity
aversion to 25 B
Catalonia 83 bable 268
economic slump and 43, 186 Badajoz 134
education and 192 Badia, Miquel 71
euro and 25 Baeza 173
indignados and 28–9, 43, 228 Bakunin, Mikhail 105
populism and 10 Balearic Islands 53, 62, 80, 186, 268
problem in democracy 10 Báñez, Fátima 182, 195
public dissatisfaction 81, 228 Bank of Spain 24, 25, 27, 177, 182, 197,
Zapatero 252 199
autonomy Bankia 27, 28, 182, 246
Andalucía 16 banks 23, 24–5, 26, 27, 177, 182, 183, 246
Basque Country 15–16, 17, 115, 151, Bannon, Steve 148
156, 163, 167 Barça 57
Canary Islands 16 Barcelona
Catalonia 15–16, 22, 42–3, 45, 69–70, anarchism 43, 52, 57, 68, 245
76, 81, 115, 128, 269 architecture 68
constitutional right 15–17, 267–8 bombardment by Espartero 100
corruption and 28 Catalan language 74
Galicia 15–16, 116, 170, 171 Ciudadanos 29, 232
Vox and 33 Civil War 73, 74
AVE high speed trains 84, 172, 265–6 Companys’ return to 72
Axis 137, 138 cultural vanguard 19, 75
ayuntamiento 24 downgraded against Madrid 84

292
 INDEX
electoral law and 50 immigration 155
ETA bomb attack 158 independence movement 53, 155, 156
failed revolution 41, 43, 47, 48, 49, 52 industry 155, 165, 181, 183
fall of in 1714 43 language 78, 107, 108, 152, 153, 155–6,
federalism and 269 157, 166–7
geographical location 84 legend 152
great European city 58 liberalism 155
history 62–3, 65–8 monarchy and 39
industry 181, 215 motorway toll 222
museums 63 murders of political opponents 151
Olympic Games 76, 81 nation 15
opera 68 nationalism
Palau de la Música 74, 86 acute tensions 40
Podemos and 249 army and 114
Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship 70 autonomy and 17
proclamation of Catalan state in 1931 ETA and 148–9, 151, 157
70–1 ethnically based 87
prosperity 61 Franco and 135
regenerationism 112 fueros 18
relaxation after failed revolution 55 governments and 268, 271
riots against conscriptions 111 history and 153–5
separatism 245 localism and 269
strikes 105 PNV and 155
Tarradellas returning to 16 rejection of transition settlement 231
trade fair 56–7 similarities with Catalan equivalent
train service 83 152
University 194 police 151
Bárcenas, Luis 31–2, 236 prosperity 151
Barea, Arturo 111, 132–3, 212–13 race 152, 155
Baroja, Pio 155 regional financing 83
Basque Country rewriting recent history 152
assassination of Cánovas 105 separatism 113, 267
autonomy 15–16, 17, 115, 151, 154, single market and 184
156, 163, 167 social assistance 198
blood group 152 socialism 155
Carlism 99–100, 115, 156, 157 support of Socialist government 34
Castile and 153–4 taxes 83, 151, 154, 155
Catholicism and 115, 152, 154, 155, tensions 40
157, 209 terrorism 148–9, 159–63, 167
Civil War 130, 156 today 164
constitution approved 17–18 trade unions 156
contacts with Catalan government 48 unemployment 159
cooking 153 Vox 146
culture 153, 164–5 see also ETA
democracy and 14, 151 Basque History of the World, The (Mark
economy 91–2, 155, 159, 165–6, 215 Kurlansky) 160
education 107, 166–7, 195 Bayonne 110, 153
elections 169 Belgium 50, 51, 141, 245
ETA and 151, 159–60, 162, 168 Benidorm 6
Franco and 135, 156–7, 158 Berga 69
French 107, 109, 110, 153, 154 Bescansa, Carolina 228, 229, 230, 246, 249
geography 153 Bilbao
history 152–67 ETA 157
identity 154, 155 Jesuits 113

293
 INDEX
museums 153, 164–5, 181 Calatrava, Santiago 165
PNV headquarters 156 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro 2
political rallies 14 Calviño, Nadia 185, 187, 190
shipbuilding 155 Calvo, Carmen 118, 123, 124, 143
urban renewal 164–5 Calvo Sotelo, José 129
Biscay, Bay of 153 Cambó, Francesc 69, 70, 73
Blanco, Juan Carlos 225 Cameron, David 53, 82
Blanco, Miguel Ángel 162 Campoamor, Clara 127, 132
Blesa, Miguel 246 Canada 53, 80, 193
BNG (Galician Nationalist Bloc) 170, 171, Canal, Jordi 64
172 Canalejas, José 105, 112
Bolaños, Félix 124, 254 Canary Islands 16, 186, 193, 211, 212, 221
Bolivia 229 Caño, Antonino 9–10, 253, 273
Bonaparte, Joseph 94 Cánovas del Castillo, Antonio 104–5
Bonaparte, Napoleon see Napoleon Cant de la Senyera, El 74
Bonaparte Cantabria 153, 217
Bono, José 245 Cantar de mio Cid, El 64
Borges, Jorge Luis 2–3 Capmany, Antonio de 95
Borkenau, Franz 5 Carlism
botiflers 66, 86 absolute monarchy 100–101
Bourbons anti-liberal movement 68, 101
Basque Country 154 army and 101
Catalonia and 43, 66 Basque Country 99, 100, 115, 156, 157
chequered history 37 Catalonia 68, 69, 73, 99
exile 39 Catholicism and 68, 101–2
France 65–6, 98 Civil War 73, 156
reforms 93, 94, 95, 97 First Carlist War 68, 99–100, 134, 154
restoration 104 Franco and 136
rule in Spain 43, 66–7 Navarre 99
bourgeoisie 65, 69, 70, 146, 153, 155, 156 Second Carlist War 68
Boyd, Robert 99 Third Carlist War 68, 104
Brazil 233–4 traditionalism 69
Brenan, Gerard 71–2 Carlos, Don 99
Brexit 10, 30, 53, 82, 87, 231 Carmena, Manuela 123
Britain see United Kingdom 53 Caro-Accino, Raúl 174
Brufau, Antonio 177 Carr, Raymond 70, 106
Brunete, Battle of 130 Carrero-Blanco, Admiral Luis 138, 139, 158
Brussels 48, 87, 242, 245, 258, 261, 270 Carrillo, Santiago 134
Buck, Tobias 192 Cartagena 220
bullfighting 222–5 Casado, Pablo
Bulli, El 58 Basque Country and 169
Burdiel, Isabel 103 conservative hardliner 169, 172
bureaucracy 8, 35, 137, 183–4, 191, 233–5, Covid-19 and 36
240–2 dissenters and 239
Burgos 158 General Council membership 243
Burke, Edmund 26 ineffectual leadership 272
Burns Marañon, Tom 5 scandal about obtaining Master’s degree
235
C PP corruption and 256
Cabrera, General Ramón 69 PP leader 33, 169, 255
caciquismo 105, 106, 113, 172, 235, 268 protest against Socialists repealing labour
Cádiz 97, 98 law reforms 190
café para todos 16–17 resignation 256
cajas 23, 27 Sánchez and 257, 259

294
 INDEX
Casanova, Rafael 65 dialect 61
Castellón 24 education and 70, 74, 77–8, 80
Castile identity and 76, 89
ageing population 216 media 79
Basque Country and 153–4 nationalism and 56, 59
Catalonia and 87 ‘normal language’ 82, 86
economic predominance 91 official 46, 69, 71, 75
education 193, 267 Renaixença 67
Galicia and 170 support for independence and 79
geographical situation 84, 92 left-wing movements 75
history 63–6 literature 76–7
industry 183 media 79–80
interests 61 monarchy and 39
language 46, 66, 67, 74, 76, 77–8, 79, 80 motorway toll 222
Navarre and 155 national day September 11th 66, 143
over-representation in elections 251 nationalism
political power 92 1898 desastre and 112
poverty 92 army and 114
PP and 251, 255, 257 autonomy and 17, 42, 81
weakening 113 campaign for independence
Catalonia 42–4
anarchism 43, 52, 57, 68, 69, 73 Catalan socialists and 29
anti-independence demonstrations 50 Civil War and 72–3
architecture 58, 68 claims to ancient nation 61–4
autonomy 15–16, 17, 22, 41–2, 45, ERC and 44
69–70, 76, 81, 128, 269 Europe and 47–8
bullfighting 224 Franco and 72–3, 135
Carlism 99 governments and 268, 271
Castile and 87 identity and 88
Catholicism and 63, 68, 69, 74, 209 independence referendum and 82
Civil War and 9, 72–4 language and 56, 59, 76–7
clash 8, 10, 32 leader cult 86–7
conflict 5, 34, 36, 40, 41–57, 59, 88–9, mass disobedience 50
263 media and 79–80
economy 84, 85, 91–2 not ethnically based 87
education 57, 61, 70, 74, 75, 77–8, 79, persistent headache for Spain 40
80, 195 political movement 69, 71–2
elections 44, 48, 50, 54–5, 71, 75, 81, populism 86
232, 248 powerful populist movement 10
failed revolution 41–54 rebuilding 74
fascism 71–2 regionalism and 268–9
federalism 56, 69, 70, 71 representation in drawing up
feeling of being Spanish 59 constitution 15
financial crisis 83 right-wing connotation 59
Franco and 9, 60 turning to separatism 9, 29
French invasion 64–5 valid sentiment 90
history 62–87 Orwell and 4–5, 9, 73
identity 60–1, 87–8, 89 ‘perpetual problem’ 115
immigration 76–7, 88 Podemos 45, 88, 249
indignados 43 privileged geographical position 58
industry 76, 183 proclamation of Catalan state in 1931
Islamist terror attacks 214 70–1
language prosperity 58, 67
ban on 70, 74, 157 provinces and 102

295
 INDEX
referendum on independence 9, 30–1, republicanism and 127
32, 42, 44–8, 53–4, 55, 56, 87 revival 114
referendum on new statute 82 sale of Church property 101–2
Renaixença 67, 73, 74, 77, 89, 170 secularism and 96
republicanism 41, 45, 69 separation from state 127
resistance to Napoleon 95 social welfare 208
separatism state religion 97, 104–5
challenge to constitution 30, 272 state spending on 111
Civil War and 72–3 today 207–10
ERC and 34 universities 113
government spying on people linked to Vox and 33, 209
254 Cayuela, Ricardo 79
growing 82 CEDA 128, 129, 134,
identity and 60 Cellar de Can Roca 58
language and 89 Celts 169–70
monarchy and 39 Cercas, Javier 140, 141
nationalism turning to 9, 29, 60, 80, Cercos, Sergi 60
86 Cerdá, Ildefons 68
populism and 10, 33 Cerdanya 65, 80
propaganda 119–20 Cervantes, Miguel de 2
referendum on independence 9, 32 Cervantes Institute 78, 79, 238
right to self-determination 61 Ceuta 17, 260, 261, 262, 264
transition settlement and 267 Charles II 65
trials of leaders 51–2, 245 Charles III 93
Spanish nationalism and 146 Charles IV 93, 94
threat to Spanish unity 113, 144 Charles V 1–2, 3
single market and 184 Charles, Archduke of Austria 65
Socialist Party 29, 44, 54, 69 Chávez, Hugo 229, 230
statute of 1932 71, 75, 115 Chaves Nogales,Manuel 72, 131–2, 133
support for independence declining 55–6 Chega 148
talks with government in Madrid 33 Chile 121, 124, 136
violence after sentences for separatist Chillida, Eduardo 153
leaders 254 Cifuentes, Cristina 235–6
Vox and 33, 146, 148, 244 CIS (Centre for Sociological Investigations)
Catholicism 38, 208, 234–5
Basque Country 115, 152, 154, 155, 157 Citizen Lab 254–5
Carlism and 101–2 CiU (Convergència i Unió) 43, 44, 60, 75,
Catalonia 63, 68, 69, 74 81, 86 see also PdeCat
Civil War and 125 Ciudad Real 24
Counter-Reformation 3 Ciudadanos
ETA 157 centre-right party 29, 248
fading 19, 267 coalition with Socialist Party 34, 247–8
Franco and 4, 135, 137, 138, 208 discontent and 229
Franco’s disinterment and 118 election defeat 54, 248
ideological role 101 election success 50, 232
monarchs 64, 94 former PP voters and 33
national 4, 147, 208 foundation 232
opposition to dictatorship 209 ‘old politics’ and 247
opposition to liberalism 22, 99 pact with Sánchez 191
opposition to social reforms 202, 204 PP and 248, 250, 251, 255, 256
power 202, 267 Rajoy and 30, 195
PP and 255 Rivera as leader 32
privileges of the Church 96 Spanish nationalism 232
reconnection to traditions 112 Civil Guard 19, 102, 144, 157, 161, 162

296
 INDEX
Civil War (1936–9) official languages in Spain 75, 77
anti-fascist struggle 125 Podemos and 272
Basque Country 130, 156 referendum on 17–18
beginning of 72–3, 129–30 reform 231
Brenan’s account of 71 rupture with the past 120
Carlists 101 territorial unity 53
Catalonia 9, 72–4 Vox and 33, 272
cruelty 133–4 Córdoba 6, 11
‘Crusade’ 117, 121 corrida see bullfighting
death toll 13, 133, 275 ch1 n2 corruption
economy and 107 17th century 93
fight for republic 6, 15, 17 19th century 97
Franco’s victory 33, 117 Andalucía 195
ghosts of 9 indignados 28–9
historical memory 18, 22 institutionalised 31, 237
Hitler and Mussolini intervening 130, Italy 28, 237
legacy 125, 272 local politicians 23, 28, 236
military coup 13 Podemos on 231
mythical status 130–1 PP 29, 31–2, 33, 147, 235–6, 244, 276
outsiders’ view of 4–5 n19
perspectives 140–2 Pujol family 85–6
PNV 115 Socialist Party 19
civil wars 13 still existing 246
Claris, Pau 64–5 system facilitating 237
climate change 222 Cortes (parliament) 16, 25, 71, 97, 103,
Colau, Ada 88, 249 105
Coller, Xavier 175 corts 63, 64, 66
Comintern 73, 125, 130 Coruña, A 123, 171, 172, 207
Communist Party Coscubiela, Joan 45
amnesty 18, 140 Costa, Joaquín 113
basis for Izquierda Unida 230 Counter-Reformation 138
Catalonia 75 Covid-19
committee for constitution 15 bureaucracy and 241
federalism 15 economic reforms and 270
growing influence in Republic 130 economy and 9, 35–6, 185–9, 199,
legalisation 14, 144 224
mistrust of Barea and Kulcsar 132 election turnouts and 169
Popular Front 129 EU 36, 263
renaming 30 government’s support and 272
see also Izquierda Unida handling of 35–6, 185–7, 242, 255
Companys, Lluis 71, 72, 73–4, 79 health service and 192
Consell de Cent 63, 65, 66 immigration and 212
Conservatives 105, 114 see also Moderates lockdowns 246, 251, 255
constitution of 1978 politics and 257–8
achievement of democracy 52 poverty and 198
amendment on budget balance 25–6 tourism and 181, 186
autonomy 16, 41, 42, 45, 83–4, 267–8 crispación 21, 257, 258, 259, 271
Catalonian referendum and 9, 30, 42, Cristina, Infanta 38
44–5, 47 Cuba 69, 70, 104, 112, 264
challenges to settlement 272 Cuixart, Jordi 52
drawing of 15, 17 Culla, Joan B 54
federalism and 104, 116, 271 CUP 44, 69
fortieth anniversary 12–13 Cyprus 35
monarchy and 39 Czechoslovakia 53

297
 INDEX
D arts and 153
Dastis, Alfonso 52 ETA and 157, 158
Dato, Eduardo 105 Franco 4, 7–8, 74, 136
Davis, Wade 5–6 historical memory 140, 141–2
de Gaulle, General Charles 142 isolation 203
Delgado, Antonia 174–5 Latin America 272
Delgado, Dolores 244 opposition by Catholic church 209
democracy Primo de Rivera 70, 115, 127, 274
1869 constitution 103 remnants from 123
army and 19 reparations 125
autonomy and 266–7 transition from 13, 15
Basque Country and 14, 151 unfinished business from 120
blows to 9 divorce 127, 202, 204
Catalans calling for 56, 60 Draghi, Mario 26
challenges 42, 45, 47, 104 Dumas, Alexandre 4
change of attitudes 202 Durango 130
coming to Spain 120
conceptions of 31 E
consolidation of 20 EAJ (Eusko Alderdi Jeltzalea) see PNV
critique of 231 Ebro, Battle of the 130
devolution and 16 Echaverría, Joaquín 178
direct 230 Economist, The 8–9, 25
discontent with 148, 247 economy
Franco’s ghost 144 2008 crisis 8, 9, 25–8, 39–40, 83, 148,
historical memory and 139 175–6, 178
law and 32 Andalucía 173–4, 175
liberal 48, 231 autarky 19, 107, 137, 138
participatory 59 autonomy and 17
political prisoners and 52 Basque Country 91–2, 155, 159, 165–6
problems 10, 233 car production 179, 186
quality of 29 Castile 91–2
resilience 272 Catalonia 84, 85, 91–2
secularism 207 Civil War and 107
self-confidence of 21 Covid-19 and 9, 35–6, 182, 185–8, 189,
similarity to other countries 10, 11 199
social 272 exports 84, 92, 128, 179–80
social reforms 204 Galicia 171
Spain lagging behind 96 Great Depression 107, 128
threats to 272 growth 19, 22, 24, 85, 106–7, 126,
transition to 8, 9, 12–13, 14, 40, 50, 138–9, 176–7
124–5 housing boom 23–4, 177, 178
vanquishing terrorism 164 inflation 36, 182, 184, 186, 196, 197,
Vox and 272–3 199
weakening political consensus 230 market 15, 23
democratic memory 123–4, 140, 142, 143 mixed 18
see also historical memory pre-liberal 99–100
demographics 202, 210–11, 214–16, 227 recovery 28, 30, 37, 176, 180–2, 186
Dencàs, Josep 71, 72, 88 reforms 20, 29, 182, 270
devolution 15, 16 regional financing 83
Diada 43, 60, 67, 72 research and development 183
Díaz, Susana 31, 252, 253 Russian invasion of Ukraine and 186
Díaz, Yolanda 189–90, 249, 251 slumps 12, 25–7, 43, 83, 121, 175–6,
Díaz Ayuso, Isabel 207, 250, 251, 255, 256 178, 182, 210, 263, 272
dictatorship small and big businesses 183

298
 INDEX
Spain lagging behind 96 Catalonia 44, 48, 50, 54–5, 71, 77, 81,
tourism 181, 186 232, 248
education ‘closed list’ system 237
Andalucía 193, 195 constitution reforms and 17
Basque Country 107, 166–7, 195 Covid-19 and 169
budget cuts 192 European 230
Catalonia 57, 61, 70, 74, 75, 77–8, 79, following change of government 106
80, 195 Galicia 172
democratic memory 124 Madrid 240, 251
France 107–8, 109 manipulation 105
free 19, 193 universal suffrage 103, 105
Galicia 171 Elliott, Sir John (J.H.) 12, 65
humanist 113 empire 2, 3, 92
lack of 96 Encinar, Jesús 23
lagging behind 110 Enfocats 47
language and 57, 70, 74, 75, 77–8, 80, enlightenment 93, 97, 98, 101, 110
107, 109–10 environmentalism 200, 204, 217, 220–2
laws 78, 193–4 ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya)
Madrid 195 2003 statute 82
ministry 112 abstention in 2019 34
problems 192–3 accusing Puigdemont of betrayal 49
reforms 108 amnesty and 124
regional 17, 42 budget deal with government 144
religion and 209 election victory in 2021 54–5
secular 112, 209 entering Catalan government 81, 232
skills levels 191–2 foundation 71
state taking over from the Church 105 language question 78–9
universal 111 left-wing nationalist Catalan party 44, 69
university 194, 235 outrage at government spying 254
vocational training 194–5 talks with Madrid 55
EEC (European Economic Community) 19, Erra, Ana 46, 56, 59, 61
22–3 Errejón, Iñigo 30, 229, 230, 248–9, 250,
Eguiguren, Jesús 169 251
EH Bildu Escarré, Aureli M. 74
acceptance by Socialist Party 168 Escarrer, Gabriel 188
budget deal with government 144, 149 Escrivá, José Luis 182, 197–9, 214–5
democratic memory 124 España Invertebrada (José Ortega y Gasset)
elections 169 113, 269
ETA and 34, 124, 149, 152 España Vaciada 216, 218
political alliance 152, 164 Espartero, Baldomero 100, 134
Sánchez and 254 Espinosa de los Monteros, Iván 146, 148
El Pardo 118, 139 Esquerra see ERC
El Salvador 124 estado autonómico see federalism
elections Esteban, Paz 254
1936 129 Estelada 43, 55, 57
1977 14, 15, 18, 75 Estelrich, Joan 73
2004 20, 82 ETA
2011 26, 228–9 2004 terror attacks and 20
2015 29, 229, 232, 252 amnesty 18, 158
2016 30, 247, 252 assassination attempt on Aznar 20
2019 33, 34, 148, 185, 240, 248, 251, Barcelona bomb attack 158
252 bombing franquista monuments 157
Andalucía 33, 146, 257 Catholicism 157
Basque Country 169 conversations with victims 168

299
 INDEX
democracy and 14 euro 20, 23, 25, 26, 177
demonstrations against 154 Europe
dictatorship and 157, 158 19th century nationalism 61–2
disbandment 152, 164 Covid-19 35–6
EH Bildu and 34, 124, 149, 152 faults of democracies 10, 40
extradition warrants 51 financial crisis 8
formation 157 freedom and prosperity in 8, 13–14
France and 159, 161–2 handling of Catalan independence
Franco and 158 movement 47–8, 85
GAL and 159 immigration 148
giving up violence 150, 151–2, 272 nationhood 31
harassment 146 right-wing parties 148
Hendaye 107 Spain fitting into 8, 11, 13–14, 19, 22–3
kidnappings 159 Spain lagging behind 96
killing of Carrero-Blanco 139, 158 European Central Bank 25, 26, 35
killings of civil guards 157, 158 European Commission
left-wing opponent of Franco regime 151 bail-out 26
murders of Socialist and PP politicians Catalonian independence and 48
158–9, 163 flexibility of labour markets 188
nationalism 151 mistakes during Covid-19 241
police violence and 159–60 Next Generation recovery scheme 187
rejection of transition settlement 231 reports on effectiveness of Spanish public
talks with governments 22, 162, 163 policies 242
terrorism 14–15, 19, 40, 148–9, 150–1, restraining separatism 270
157, 158–63, 167 rules on fiscal stringency 186
truce 162–3 Spain’s deficit and 25, 27
violence continuing after transition 158 Spain’s membership of General Council
Etxeberria, Koro 167 243, 258
EU (European Union) European Council 48
aid for Spain 263, 270 Euskadi (Basque provinces) 155, 164, 166,
Covid-19 36, 263 167
demographics 210 Euskara 78, 107, 153, 155–6, 157, 166 see
education 192 also Basque Country; languages
Gibraltar and 264 exaltados 101
handling of Catalan independence Extremadura 76, 126
movement 47–8 Ezkerra, Euzkadiko 14
importance of Spanish membership 261,
262 F
income per person 200 Fabra, Pompeu 67
loan for Spain 27 Fainé, Isidre 177
Moroccan sovereignty over Western Falange
Sahara 261 autarky 19
Next Generation recovery scheme 187 death sentence for Peset 135
position on Latin America 264 fascism 19, 73, 118
positive outcome for Spain joining 267, foundation 137
270 murder of García Lorca 134
productivity 177 murders of republicans 129
relationship with Morocco 261 reign of terror 133
Sánchez and 263 Falomir, Miguel 99
Spain’s entry 84 Farage, Nigel 231
Spain’s income almost average in 23 fascism 71, 72, 73, 120, 135, 137
Spain’s recovery example to 28 Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta Guerra
Spain’s view of 184 en España con Buonaparte (Francisco
Vox and 147 de Goya) 94

300
 INDEX
federalism housing market 23
Catalonia and 56, 69, 70 income 106
constitution and 104, 116, 271 languages 107–8, 109–10
estado autonómico 17 modernisation 108
favoured by Socialists and Communists monarchy 98, 101
15 Muslim immigrants 109
Liberals and Republicans 114 Napoleon 94, 95, 96
republic 15, 70, 71, 103, 104, 114 national unity 108
right and 269 number of politicians 233
Felipe VI 38–9, 49–50, 144, 167, 179, 273 Occitanie 109
feminism see women overcoming traditional parties 232
Ferdinand II of Aragon 64 political instability 106
Feria (Ana Iris Simón) 176 political uniformity 90
Fernán-Núñez 6, 11, 267 railway network 108
Fernández, Jorge 236 republicanism 109
Fernández-Lasquetty, Javier 85 republicans in exile 126, 132
Fernando VI 93 revolution 108
Fernando VII 94, 97, 98, 99 right-wing parties 145, 148
Financial Times 23, 192, 194, 246 school reform 108
First World War 107, 125–6 secularism 108–9
Five Star Movement 230, 295 n5 Socialist Party 252
Floridablanca, Count of see Godoy, Manuel; tax revenues 199
Moñino, José Third Republic 108
food 5, 6, 32, 180, 198–9, 227 tourism 186
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway) war against Spain 95
4 Francis, Pope 210
Ford, Richard 4, 93, 266 Franco, Francisco
Forge, The (Arturo Barea) 111 accumulation of wealth 136
Forging of a Rebel, The (Arturo Barea) 132–3 amnesty for followers 18
Foster, Norman 165 army service in Morocco 113, 136
Foucault, Michel 3 autarky 19, 107, 137, 138
Fraga, Manuel 8, 15, 170, 171 Basque Country and 135, 156–7, 158
France Carlists fighting for 101
Algeria war 141 Catalonia and 9, 60, 77, 135
alliance with France against Britain 94 Catholicism and 4, 135, 138, 208
annexations 108 centralised regime 15, 115
army discontent 145 Civil War 5, 6, 13, 72–3, 117, 129, 132
bank branches 182 Communism and 135, 138
Basque Country 107, 109, 153, 154 death 8, 85, 118, 139
border with Spain 154 dictatorship 13, 74
Bretagne 109, 110 disinterment 32–3, 118
bridging political divides 271 easing of prohibitions 75
Catalans in exile 16, 73–4 economic growth under 19, 23, 76,
Catalonia and 62, 64–5, 80, 95 138–9
Ciudadanos and 29 ETA and 158
comparison with Spain 106 fascism and 135, 137
departments 102 freemasonry and 134
discontent with democracy 247 Generalissimo 136
education 107–8, 109 ghost of 9, 144–5
Enlightenment 93 help from Hitler and Mussolini 130
ETA and 159, 161–2 holding on to power 6, 8
French Revolution 62, 97 imposing rules on private life 203
Germany and 108 irrigation 221
homosexuality and 207 lack of democratic legitimacy 133, 141

301
 INDEX
legacy 119–21 history 169–71
liberalism and 135 identity 169, 170
meeting with Hitler 107 immigration 172
military coup 13, 72, 141 industry 171
monarchy and 14, 37, 138, 139 influence in Madrid 171
national Catholicism 4, 147, 208 language 78, 115–16, 169, 170, 171
nationalism 95, 116 motorways 171–2
opinion on 19th century 97 nationalism 170
opposition to 14 Podemos 249
pardons for Republicans 134 poverty 170, 171
politics 136–7 PP and 170, 172, 255
recognition by foreign governments 140 separatism 113, 115–16
reprisals 100, 122, 133, 139 Gamarra, Cuca 148
siege of Madrid 132 Gámez, Manuel 173–4
state control 137 García, Lola 48
succession 201 García, Mónica 250–1
suppressing 1934 rising 129 García Lorca, Federico 134
terrorising bookshop owners 150–1 García Margallo, José Manuel 263, 264
transition after 12–14 García-Page, Emiliano 224
victims 22, 121, 122, 123, 125 Garicano, Luis 192–3
Vox and 147 Garzón, Baltasar 121
franquistas Gascón, Daniel 53, 219
amnesty 18, 120 Gaudí, Anton 68
Communist front against 75 Gautier, Théophile 4
ETA bombing monuments 157 gay marriage 202, 204, 207, 209, 232
murders 134 Gay y Montella, Joaquim 87
officials dying out 124 Gehry, Frank 164
PP 20, 142 Generalitat
press censorship 19 2021 elections 54–5
prohibition of commemorations 121 Catalan language 77–8
repression 18, 133 Catalan regional government 30
transition and 29 celebrations for independence 41
freemasons 135 Civil War 73
Freud, Sigmund 268, 270 corruption 43, 85–6
Frómista 91 education policy 61
fueros 152, 154, 156 history 63
media 80
G meeting with Sánchez about spying
GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación) scandal 254
159–60 more power after Pact of the Majestic
Galán, Ignacio Sánchez 177 75–6
Galego 78, 115–16, 169 see also Galicia; police force 43, 46
languages powers 42–3
Galeguista 170 re-establishment in 1931 71
Gali, Brahim 260, 261 re-establishment in 1977 75
Galicia revenue transfers 83
autonomy 15–16, 116, 170, 171 separatism 47, 52
Celts 169–70 Generation of 1898 112–13, 125, 270, 285 n5
culture 170 Germany
economy 171 anti-fascist memorials 120
education 171 army discontent 145
elections 172 barring referendums on separation 53
emigration to Catalonia 76 Bundesrat 269
high speed trains 172 car production 179

302
 INDEX
comparison with Spain 106 Guernica 130
education 195 Guernica (Pablo Picasso) 99, 120
France and 108 Guerra, Alfonso 21, 239
grand coalitions 271 guerrillas 95, 100, 158
hard-left party Die Linke 273 Gueye, Malick 213
homosexuality and 207 Guggenheim Museum 164–5, 181
income 106 Guipúzcoa 153, 154, 155, 157, 159, 161
interest rates 23 Guitarte, Tomas 218
number of politicians 233
Red Army Fraction 158 H
refusing to extradite Puigdemont 51, 55 Habermas, Jurgen 48
small and big businesses 183 Habsburgs 64, 65, 93
social democrats 253 Handbook for Travellers in Spain (Richard
support for Franco 136 Ford) 4, 266
tax revenues 199 Hasél, Pablo 245
Gestamp 179, 183 Hassan II of Morocco 260
Gibraltar 137, 264–5 Hayes, Carlton 116
Gil Robles, José María 128 HB (Herri Batasuna) 162, 163 see also
Girona 42 Sortu
Gisbert, Antonio 98 Hemingway, Ernest 4, 223
Glorious Revolution 102, 104, 105 Hendaye 107, 168
Godoy, Manuel 94, 97 Herder, Johann Gottfried 68
Golden Age 2, 91 Hernan, Agus 168
Góngora, Luis de 2 Hernández de Cos, Pablo 25, 27, 197, 199
González, Felipe Hernani 161, 167, 168
Catalan referendum and 53 Herranza, Faustino (El Rosco) 224
Catholicism and 209 herriko tabernas 157, 161
election victory 19 High Court 31
entry into NATO 19, 262 Hipster en la España Vacia, Un (Daniel
European Community and 262 Gascón) 219
labour reforms 189 Hispan, Pablo 208
Latin America and 262, 263–4 historical memory 10, 22, 121, 122,
lawyer from Seville 14 139–40, 143–4, 149 see also
moderate social democrat 21 democratic memory
need for CiU votes 75 Hitler, Adolf 13, 107, 130, 135, 138
police violence during term 159 Hobsbawm, Eric 61
relationship with Europe 20 Homage to Catalonia (George Orwell) 4–5
remark about ‘Italian-style parliament’ homosexuality see gay marriage
29–30, 35 housing 23–4, 177, 178, 226
secularism 208 Hungary 148, 231, 243
social reforms 204
Socialist Party executive 239 I
Socialist prime minister 13 identity
talks with ETA 22, 162 Basque Country 154, 155
warning of ‘kingdom of taifas’ 269 Catalonia 60, 76–7, 80, 89
González, Francisco 177 Europe and 19, 31
González, Miriam 233, 234, 238 Galicia 169, 170
González-Fernández, Ángeles 225–6 national 269
González Laya, Arancha 261, 263 racial 126
Goya, Francisco de 21, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99 regional 125
Gramski, Antonio 229, 259 religious 126, 208
Granada 134, 235 Spanish 19, 95, 96, 116, 208
Greece 27, 62, 103, 193, 210, 231, 247, Iglesias, Pablo
252 army and 144

303
 INDEX
buying chalet with swimming pool 249 export 92
coalition with Socialists 34 fishing 7
Complutense University 229 Galicia 171
constitution and 272 growth 76
critique of Spanish democracy 231–2, industrialisation 67, 91–2, 96, 155
233, 246 industrialists 69
dissenters and 239, 248 iron 91
feminism and 250–1 meat 46
foundation of Podemos 230 textile 67, 91
Izquierda Unida 230 Inquisition 3, 97, 155
Leninism 229 Institución Libre de Enseñanza (Free
media and 229–30, 251 Institution of Teaching) 113
Montero and 206, 249 International Brigades 130
Podemos leader 34 IRA 158, 169
resignation 189, 247, 251 Iraq 20, 21, 262
rhetoric 250 Ireland 208
ikurriña 14, 155, 157 Ireland, Northern 59, 143, 158, 160
Illa, Salvador 54 Irun 107, 110, 158
IMF (International Monetary Fund) 27, Isabel II 101, 102–3, 104
246 Isabella I 64, 154
immigration Italy
Basque Country 156 anti-fascist memorials 120
Catalonia 70, 76, 77, 88 Aragon and 62
demographics and 211 caciquismo 106
education and 192 Civil War and 72, 73, 136
emigration and 178, 211 construction industry 23
Europe 148 corruption 28, 237
Galicia 172 Covid-19 185
illegal 33, 146–7, 212 demographics 210
internal migration 70, 76 extradition of Catalan rebels 55
Morocco 260, 261–2 fascism 72
multiculture and 202 immigration and 213
Muslims 109 income per person 200
Sánchez and 260 Liga 10
situation today 212–15 Mussolini’s rise to power 151
unemployment and 175 new ideas and 203
Vox and 33, 146–7, 206, 212 number of politicians 233
waves of 23, 77, 177, 211–12 politics 30, 35
indignados populism 230, 231
austerity and 28–9, 43 poverty in mezzogiorno 267
Catalonia 43 protean governments 271
corruption and 28–9 public debt 25
discontent 229 Red Brigades 158
legacy 246, 271, 272 right-wing parties 148
Madrid 228 separatism 53
point of rupture 230 tax revenues 199
potential for change 229 transformism 106
protests 28–9, 43, 228 Izquierda Unida (United Left) 30, 122, 124,
public support 228 230, 249 see also Communist Party
industry
antiquated 19 J
Basque Country 155, 165 Jaén 24, 173
bureaucrats and 93 Jansen, Marcel 190, 191–2
Catalonia 67 Jerez 92

304
 INDEX
Jesuits 113, 154, 166 Lara Ortega, José Antonio 162, 167
Jews 154, 202, 241 Largo Caballero, Francisco 128–9, 131, 132,
John Paul II, Pope 209 143
Jové, Josep Maria 47 Larra, Mariano José de 184, 241
Juan Carlos 14, 19, 37–9, 139, 201, 257, Larsen, Corinna 37, 38
273, 275 ch1 n3 Las Meninas (Diego Velázquez) 1–3, 26
Juliá, Santos 142 Latierro, Ignacio 150, 168
Judiciary 242–7 Latin America
Juncker, Jean Claude 48 bureaucracy 183
Junco, Álvarez 152 caciquismo 105
Junqueras, Oriol 44, 47, 49, 51, 52, 54–5, contemporary left 229, 230, 264, 272
88 faults in democracy 10
Junts per Catalunya 46, 55, 86 immigrants from 56, 211, 213
military dictatorships 135
K Spaniards emigrating to 211
kale borroka 151 Spanish companies in 183
Kisinger, Henry 139 Spanish foreign policy 261, 262, 263–4
Kohl, Helmut 262 Le Pen, Marine 145, 148
Kulcsar, Ilsa 132 LeGoff, Jacques 140
Kurlansky, Mark 160 Lehman Brothers 25
Leninism 29, 157, 229
L León 7, 154, 170, 193, 216, 217, 267
La Mancha 65, 100, 126, 216 Leonor 273
labour reforms 26, 28, 34–5, 36, 128, 182, Lerma, Duke of 93
188–91 Levante 104
Laclau, Ernesto 229, 230 Leyen, Ursula Von der 261
Lamo de Espinoza, Emilio 265 liberalism
Lancet, The 242 Basque Country 155
languages beginnings of in Spain 96
Asturias (bable) 268 Carlists and 100–1
ban on regional 116 Catholic Church and 68
Basque (Euskara) 78, 107, 108, 152, 153, Ciudadanos 29
155–6, 157, 166–7 coalition with radicals 103
Breton 107, 110 Cortes 97
Castilian (Spanish) 46, 66, 71, 74, 75, democracy and 48
77–9, 86, 116, 155 exile of Spanish liberals in Britain 99
Catalan Franco and 135
ban on 70, 74, 157 Generation of 1898 112–13
dialect 61 government 98, 99
education and 70, 74, 77–8, 80 ideal 104, 114
identity and 76, 89 Moderates and Progressives 101
media 79 urban 98, 99
nationalism and 56, 59 Liberals 105
‘normal language’ 82, 86 Liga (Italy) 10
official 46, 69, 71, 75 Linares 173–4, 175, 178
Renaixença 67 Lindo, Elvira 203, 204, 205, 206
support for independence and 79 Linke, Die 273
education and 57, 70, 74, 75, 77–8, 80, Linz, Juan 96
107, 109–10 Llamazares, Julio 216, 217
French 107–8, 109–10 Lliga de Catalunya 69–70, 73
Galician (Galego) 78, 115–16, 169, 170, Llobregat, L’Hospitalet de 56–7
171 Lloyd George, David 105–6
Spanish 264 Llull, Ramon 77
Lapuente, Victor 240, 241–2 Lope de Vega, Félix 2

305
 INDEX
López, Julián (El Juli) 224 Prado museum 1
López, Óscar 253 regenerationism 112
López, Patxi 245 recession 28
López Miras, Fernando 220 resistance to 1936 coup 129
López Romo, Raúl 167 rising in Asturias against 71
Louis XIII 65 road network 93
Louis XIV 65, 66 size in the 17th century 93
Loyola, Inácio de 154 stock exchange 27
Lozano, Emilia 214 Maduro, Nicolás 264
Luiz, Samuel 207 Malaga 99, 134, 181
Mali 212
M Mallorca 11, 180
Machado, Antonio 92 Mancomunitat 70
Maciá, Francesc 70–1, 87 Maragall, Pasqual 81, 82, 84, 232
Macron, Emmanuel 29, 109, 110, 141, 232, Marañon, Gregorio 135
271 María Cristina 99, 100, 101
Madina, Eduardo 151, 161 Marín, Núria 57
Madrid Márquez, Carlos 174
2004 terror attacks 20, 82, 162 Marsé, Juan 78
architecture 93 Martín-Artajo, Alberto 138
autonomy 266, 268 Martiñez-Ariño, Julia 209
benefiting disproportionally 217 Martorell 76, 179
capital of Spanish empire 92 Marxism 157, 229
Catalan resentment 43, 61, 84, 87 Mas, Artur
Catalonia and 31, 41–2, 44, 51, 53, 115 demands from Madrid 87
Catholicism 207 describing Catalans as ‘more German and
centralism 84 less Roman’ 68, 88
changing of street names from dictator- election defeats 44, 81
ship 123 Moses poses 43, 83, 86
Civil War 130 new statute on Catalonia 82
Complutense University 3, 229–30, 250 predecessor of Puigdemont 43
corruption 236 Pujol scandal and 86
country centred on 269 referendum for Catalan independence 53
direct rule in Catalonia 31, 41–2, 50 September 11th and 66
education 195 Mas-Colell, Andreu 83
elections 240, 251 Más Madrid 250, 251
Franco’s siege 132, 134 Más País 222
Galicia and 171 Matarranz, Juan José 179
geographical location 84 Mauritania 212
gigantic Spanish flag 146 Melilla 17, 262, 264
high speed trains 84, 172, 265 Meloni, Giorgia 148,
indignados 228 Méndez, Lucía 37
industry 93, 181, 183, 215 Mendizábal, Juan Álvarez 101, 114, 127
killing of Carrero-Blanco 139 Mendoza, Eduardo 78
Latin America and 264 Menéndez Pelayo University (Santander) 12
left-wing mayor 123 Merkel, Angela 25, 48
motorways 24, 172 Messi, Lionel 79
movida 19 Miaja, General José 130
museums 120 Millet, Fèlix 86
need for Catalan CiU votes 75 Mitterand, François 262
opera 68 Moderates 101, 104, 110 see also
Perón in exile in 136, Conservatives
Popular Front Government 73 modernisme 68
PP and 255, 256–7 Mola, General Emilio 129, 136

306
 INDEX
Molac, Paul 110 N
Molina, Muñoz 237 Napoleon Bonaparte 94, 95, 96, 97, 108
Molino, Sergio del 216 National Museum of Catalan Art 63
monarchy nationalism
absolute 66, 93, 98, 100–1 Basque Country
collapse in 1931 127 acute tensions 40
constitutional 97, 103 army and 114
drop in popularity 38, 39 autonomy and 17
Franco and 14, 37, 138 ETA and 148–9, 151, 157
future 273 ethnically based 87
insults against 245 Franco and 135
parliamentary 15 fueros 18
Podemos and 231 governments and 268, 271
questioned 9, 40, 231 history and 153–5
restoration 104–5, 106–7, 113, 127, 154, localism and 269
221, 274 PNV and 155
scandals 11, 37–9 rejection of transition settlement 231
Monasterio, Rocío 146 similarities with Catalan equivalent
Moncloa 18, 22, 196, 198, 239, 250 152
Monedero, Juan Carlos 229, 248 Canary Islands 16
Moñino, José 93 Catalonia
Montero, Irene 206, 246, 249, 250 1898 desastre and 112
Montero, María Jesús 185 army and 114
Montero, Rosa 224–5 autonomy and 17, 42, 81
Moradiellos, Enrique 131 campaign for independence 42–4
Morales, Evo 229 Catalan socialists and 29
Moreno, Francisco 79 Civil War and 72–3
Moreno, Juanma 257 claims to ancient nation 61–4
Morocco ERC and 44
colonial war 103, 111, 114, 128, 132 Europe and 47–8
Franco and 114, 128, 136 Franco and 72–3, 135
immigrants 211–12, 260, 261–2 governments and 268, 271
relationship with Algeria 262 identity and 88
relationship with EU 261 independence referendum and 82
rising power in North Africa 261 language and 56, 59, 76–7
Western Sahara and 260–1 leader cult 86–7
Mossos 46, 47, 76 mass disobedience 50
movida, la 19 media and 79–80
Muhammed VI of Morocco 260, 261 not ethnically based 87
Mundo, El 37 persistent headache for Spain 40
Muñoz Molina, Antonio 235 political movement 69, 71–2
Murcia 76, 220, 250, 257 populism 86
Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban 2 powerful populist movement 10
Murillo, Juan Bravo 102 rebuilding 74
Muslims 62, 63, 109, 202 regionalism and 268–9
Mussolini, Benito representation in drawing up constitu-
Catalan fascists fleeing to 72, 73 tion 15
corporatism 137 right-wing connotation 59
fascism 19, 135 turning to separatism 9, 29
Fratelli de Italia 148 valid sentiment 90
intervention in Spain 13 Ciudadanos 29, 232
photo on Franco’s writing table 138 defensive 114
rise to power 151 dominant strand of political system
support for Franco 130 269–70

307
 INDEX
Franco 95, 116 pandemic see Covid-19
Galicia 170 Pardo Bazán, Emilia 123, 223–4
re-emergence of 12 Pascual, Veronica 180–1
rise of 96 PASOK 30
Spanish 29, 60, 62, 125, 135, 145–6, 232 Patria (Fernando Aramburu) 161, 167
Vox and 33 PdeCat (Democratic and Europeanist Party
NATO 19, 144, 250, 262 of Catalonia, formerly CiU) 86
Navarre Peace of Vergara 100, 134, 154
Basque Country and 153–4, 168–9 Peasants into Frenchmen (Eugen Weber) 108
Carlism 99, 101, 156 Peninsular War 94, 97, 178
court cases 245–6 pensions 25, 26, 27, 36, 188, 195–9
education 193, 194 Perea, Jesús 213–14
Franco and 116, 156 Pérez, David 192
history 153–4, 155 Pérez, José Antonio 157, 160
industry 165, 183 Pérez, Joseph 109
taxes 83, 116, 151, 155 Pérez, Rosa 122
Negrín, Juan 73, 132, 141 Perón, Juan 136
New Yorker 254 Peset I Aleixandre, Joan 135
newspapers 238 Philip II 3
Nixon, Richard 139, 201 Philip IV 2, 64
No nos representan 228, 237, 247 Philip V 65, 66, 93
Noah 152 Philippines 2, 69, 112
Nueva Planta 66, 154 Pi y Margall, Francesc 103–4
Núñez Feijóo, Alberto 170–1, 172, 256, Picasso, Pablo 99, 120, 130
273 Picó, Juanjo 209
Núñez Seixas, José Manoel 116, 171, 172 Pinochet, General Augusto 121, 136
PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco) 115,
O 155–6, 157, 162, 163, 164, 166,
Occupy Wall Street 29 169
OECD 183, 187, 191, 193, 197, 227 Podemos
Olivares, Count Duke of 64 2019 budget 185
Omella, Juan José 209 affiliations with local movements 249
Ómnium Cultural 49, 52 amnesty and 124
Opus Dei 19, 138, 194 anti-franquismo 142
Orban, Victor 148, 231 Basque Country 169
Ordoñez, Gregorio 168 Catalonia 45, 88
Ortega, José Varela 3 challenge to constitutional settlement 272
Ortega Smith, Javier 146 coalition with Izquierda Unida 30
Ortega y Gasset, José 113–14, 115, 132, coalition with Socialist Party 34, 250
269, 270 constitution and 272
Ortegi, Arnaldo 163 crispación 258
Ortiz, Letizia 38 direct democracy 230
Ortuzar, Andoni 157, 166 discontent and 229
Orwell, George 4–5, 9, 73, 125 disruptive presence 271
Otegi, Arnaldo 152, 168, 169 entering Congress 29
Oteiza, Jorge 153 equality portfolio 206
Otto Wittelsbach 103 foundation 230
Oviedo 134 gender equality 246
hard left 10, 21, 231
P housing 226
País, El 9–10, 13, 119, 175, 210–11, 225, Latin America and 264
227, 244 leadership struggle 248–9
Palacios, Diego 107 Más País and 222
Pamplona 165, 245 minimum income 198

308
 INDEX
monarchy 231, 250 Catalan separatism and 31, 82, 87
motorway toll 222 Catholicism 255
NATO 250 centralism 84, 248
‘old politics’ and 247 changing street names from dictatorship
outrage at government spying 254 and 123
peripheral nationalisms and 268 Ciudadanos and 248, 250, 251, 255, 256
populism 29, 230–2 corruption 29, 33, 147, 244, 255, 276
problems 251 n19
propaganda 119–20 Covid-19 lockdowns and 255
repeal of labour reform 188–9 crispación 258
republicanism 39, 144 democratic memory and 142
rhetoric 147 economic growth 85
Sánchez and 250, 253, 259, 273 education law 193–4
transition and 29, 267 ETA murders 158–9
Poland 33, 148, 231, 243 Franco’s disinterment and 119
police see Civil Guard franquista origins 20, 142
Polisario 260, 261 Galicia 170, 172, 255
Ponsatí, Clara 51, 55 Judiciary reform 243
Pontevedra 26 labour reform repeal and 190
Pontón, Ana 172 Madrid 255
Popular Front 13, 72–3, 129 merger of AP and UCD 19–20
populism nationalism and 146
anti-globalist 33 opposition to historical memory law 121
Catalonia 31, 86, 87, 89 opposition to social reforms 202, 204,
fault in democracy 10 205
Italy 230 pension reform 196
leftist 229, 231 reactionary image 22
national-Catholic 4 support for amendment on budget
nationalist 10, 33 balance 25
Peronist 29 Venezuelan opposition and 264
three versions of 10 Vox and 33, 146, 148, 255, 256, 259,
Venezuela 229 272, 273
Portugal Prado 1, 21, 95, 98, 164, 227
demographics 210 Prados de la Escosura, Leandro 106–7
dictatorship 135 Prat de la Riba, Enric 69, 70, 76, 88, 89
education 194 Pravda 131
elections following change of government Preston, Paul 126, 136, 137
106 Prieto, Indalecio 131, 141, 143
entry to EEC 19 Prim, Juan 103
Estado Novo 128 Primo de Rivera, José Antonio 118
legitimism 101 Primo de Rivera, General Miguel 70, 115,
motorways connecting with Spain 172 118, 127, 129, 136, 274
nationalist parties 33, 148 procès
Peninsular War 94 Catalan independence movement 43–4,
revolution 120 48
tax revenues 199 comparison to a soufflé 54
War of the Spanish Succession 65 historical connotations 66
PP (Partido Popular) issues 83
absolute majority 21, 26, 228 media and 80
Andalucía 255 peaceful movement 51
Basque Country 169 provoking Spanish nationalism 146
Brussels and 258 radicalisation 49
Castile and 251, 255 Russian involvement 277 ch2 n3
Catalan language and 78 waning support 55–6

309
 INDEX
Progressives 101 alism 146
pronunciamientos 13, 70, 98, 102, 104 re-election 247
provinces 102 reforms 26–8, 34–5, 36, 182, 184, 187,
Puerto Rico 69, 112 191
Puig, Ximo 85 regional financing 83
Puigdemont, Carles resignation 31–2
claim to represent un sol poble 59 social reforms and 204
declaration of Catalan independence 41 spending reviews 242
demands from Madrid 87 women in government 204
democracy at stake 60 Ramón y Cajal, Santiago 113, 221
election to European Parliament 55 Rato, Rodrigo 27, 246
failed revolution 42, 47, 48–9 rauxa 58
flight to Belgium 50, 51 ‘reconquest’ 62, 63
Iglesias and 250 Red Army Fraction 158
personification of resistance 86–7 Red Brigades 158
populism 31 Redondo, Iván 239–40
president of Generalitat 30, 42, 63 referendums
referendum on Catalan independence 30, autonomy 16, 115,
42, 44–6 Catalan independence 9, 30, 32, 42,
Russian support for procès 277 ch2 n3 44–8, 53–4, 55, 56, 87
setting up Junts per Catalunya 86 Catalan statute 82
Pujol, Jordi 74–7, 81, 82, 85–6, 87 constitution 17
Pujol, Oriel 86 NATO 19
Pyrenees way of resolving problems 10
Aragon and 62 Regalos, David 41
Basque Country and 153 regenerationism 112, 113
border between Spain and France 153, Renaixença 67, 73, 74, 77, 89, 170
154 Reñe, Joana 61
Carlism 69 republicanism
Catalonia and 58 Catalan republic 41, 45, 65, 69
Dumas quote 4 Catalonia and 39, 70–1
national parks 221 Civil War 6, 15, 17, 72–3
Treaty of 65 compensation for victims 125
federalism and 15, 70, 71, 103, 104, 114
Q fighters ending up in German concentra-
Quevedo, Francisco de 2 tion camp 281 n30
fighters joining French resistance 281 n30
R First Republic 15, 103–4
Rajoy, Mariano France 109
Basque Country and 184 Franco’s reprisals against 100, 122
bullfighting and 224 Podemos and 39, 144
Catalan conflict and 33, 42, 44, 45–50, Second Republic
53–4, 87, 184, 257 army and 127, 128, 129
education and 195 beginnings 127
election victories 26, 30 Catalonia and 70–1, 72–3, 115
favouring Madrid over Barcelona 85 Civil War 129–33
foreign policy 263 crushed by Franco 6
high-speed trains 219 decentralisation 115
leader of the PP 20 democratic legitimacy 133, 140–1
opposition to Zapatero’s social reforms 22 environment and 221
Pact of the Majestic 75–6 flaws in constitution 17
pension reform 195–7 Franco’s coup 72–3
PP rule changes 239 Great Depression and 128
reaction to Catalan and Basque nation- parties 128–9

310
 INDEX
threats to 127 dissenters and 239
unstable 13 education law 193, 195
Socialist Party and 39 election defeats 252
victims of Franco 121, 123, 125 equality portfolio 206
rexurdimento 170 EU and 263
Ribera, Teresa 220 failure to gain approval for budget 40,
Rieff, David 143 184–5
Riego, Colonel Rafael de 98 fight against homophobic crimes 207
Rivera, Albert 32, 34, 232, 239, 247, 248 Gibraltar and 264
Robles, Margarita 254 government spying scandal 254
Roca Barea, María Elvira 3–4 high-speed trains 219
Rodríguez, Ildefonso 195 historical memory and 140, 141
Rojo, Ricardo 147 immigration and 213, 260, 261
Rojo, General Vicente 130 Judiciary reform 243
Romania 211 labour reforms 191
Romans 68, 88, 94, 152 language policy 78–9
romanticism 4, 5, 9, 61, 67–8, 184, 221 memorial for ETA victims 167
rosa de foc 52 monarchy and 39
Roussillon 65, 80 Morocco and 260–2
Royal Academy 95 moving Franco’s remains 118
RTVE 234 negotiations with Podemos 34–5, 247
Rubalcaba, Alfredo Pérez on PP corruption 236
ETA and 151, 163 ousted as general secretary 30
interior minister 151, 163, 164, 167 pensions 196
meetings with Rajoy 257 Podemos and 250, 253, 273
motoring law 226 prime minister 32–3
Podemos and 253 programme assessment 242
resignation 252 promotion of electric cars 179
Socialist Party leader 34, 243, 252 Redondo and 239–40
Rubió, Sergi 60–1 re-election 253
Russia 35–6, 186 reforms 187
repeal of labour reform 188, 191
S Rivera and 248
Sabatini, Francesco 93 RTVE and 234
Saez, Luis Antonio 217 Socialist leader 29
Sagasta, Praxedes 105, 112 stability 259
Said, Edward 4 swerve to the left 272
Salazar, Antonio 128, 135 video by Simón challenging 176
Salvini, Matteo 10 winning power with help of separatists
San Sebastián 6, 150, 155, 157, 161 259
Sánchez, Jordi 52 women in government 204
Sánchez, Pedro Sánchez-Albornoz, Nicolás 119
acceptance of EH Bildu 168, 254 Sancho Garcés III 154
aforamiento and 238 Sanjurjo, General José 136
attack on PP 258 Santander 12, 91, 181, 217
battle for domination of Socialist Party Santayana, George 143
252 Santiago de Compostela 7, 24, 91, 169
Casado and 257 sardana 67
Catalan conflict and 42, 55, 257 Scholz, Olaf 273
Catholic church and 210 Scotland 50, 51, 62
Ciudadanos and 248 Scott, Sir Walter 68
climate change 222 Second of May 1808, The (Francisco de
comeback 31 Goya) 95, 99
Covid-19 crisis 35–7, 255 Second World War 13, 116, 125, 137–8

311
 INDEX
SEAT 76, 179 education law 193–4
secularism 96, 108–9, 112, 207–9 election defeats 29
Seehofer, Horst 145 election victories 19, 20, 33, 82
Segadors, Els 67 ETA murders 158–9, 163
Sémper, Borja 161, 163 first elections after Franco 15
Sen, Amartya 89 governing twice as long as PP 258
Senegal 212 internal battle for domination 252
seny 58 internal democracy 239
Senyera 42, 43, 56 monarchy and 39
separatism peripheral nationalisms and 268
Basque Country 113, 267 Podemos and 30, 34
Catalonia Popular Front 129
challenge to constitution 30, 272 rallies 14
Civil War and 72–3 split between democrats and revolution-
ERC and 34 aries 131
government spying on people linked to Valley of the Fallen and 119
254 Sofia, Queen 37
growing 82 Solà, Dolors 46
identity and 60 Solbes, Pedro 25
language and 89 Soria 217, 218
monarchy and 39 Sort, Josep 88
nationalism turning to 9, 29, 60, 80, 86 Sortu 163 see also HB
populism and 10, 33 Sorzabal, Iratxe 161, 163
propaganda 119–20 South Africa 124
referendum on independence 9, 32 Spanish America 67, 69, 70, 94, 96, 97, 98,
right to self-determination 61 154
transition settlement and 267 Spanish-American War 69, 70, 112
trials of leaders 51–2, 245 Spanish Labyrinth, The (Gerard Brenan) 71
Spanish nationalism and 146 Stalin, Joseph 13
threat to Spanish unity 113, 144 Stora, Benjamin 141
EU and 48 Suárez, Adolfo 14, 15, 16, 19, 75, 144, 248
Galicia 113 Supreme Court
republicanism and 39 corruption cases 236, 276 n19
Valencia 113 disinterment of Franco 118
Serra, Eduardo 227 gang rape verdict 246
Serrano, José Francisco 210 labour law 190
Setién, José María 157 languages of education 77, 78
Seville 30, 194, 245 politicians and 238, 243
Shubert, Adrian 97 trial of Catalan independence leaders 51,
Siles, Paula 215 53, 55
Silva, Emilio 119 women in 205
Simón, Ana Iris 176 Sweden 204, 207, 221
Sinn Féin 169 Switzerland 50, 92, 221
Soboul, Albert 108 Syriza 30
social reforms 202–7, 209
Socialist Party (PSOE) T
acceptance of EH Bildu 168–9 Talavera de la Reina 178
amnesty and 124, 140 Tarrandellas, Josep 16, 75
Basque Country 169 taxes
Catalan separatism and 31, 42 avoidance 199
Catalonia 29, 44, 54, 69, 75, 77, 79, 81 Basque Country 83, 151, 154, 155
Catholic church and 210 big businesses and 183
coalition with Ciudadanos 34, 247 Catalonia 63, 83, 85
corruption 19 costs for TV3 80

312
 INDEX
cuts 85 amnesty 18, 124–5
donations to Catholic church 208 Catalonia and 9
empty property and 23 completion 20
falling revenues 25 economic reforms 18
Juan Carlos and 39 from Franco regime to democracy 8, 9,
Navarre 83, 151 12, 13–14
Pujol family and 85 liberal democracy 231
reforms 110, 112 monarchy and 37, 38, 40
revenues 25, 112, 155, 185, 186–7, 199 nationalism and 50
revolts against 100 new generations and 80–1
rises 35, 184–5, 200 Podemos on 29, 231
tourism 200 political stability 233
waste of taxpayers’ money 24 problems 16, 21
Telefónica 84 success 267
Tennyson, Alfred Lord 99 Trump, Donald 87, 147, 148, 178, 261
terrorism Tubal 152
Basque Country 40, 148–9, 150–1, 157, Tusk, Donald 48
158–63 TV3 79–80
democracy vanquishing 164
demonstrations against 154 U
ETA 14–15, 19, 40, 148–9, 150–1, 157, Úbeda 173
158–63 UCD (Unión del Centro Democrático) 15,
glorification of 245 20, 248
Islamist 20, 82, 162, 214 Ucelay-Da Cal, Enric 43, 72
memorial for victims 167 UGT 129, 131
Teruel 215, 216, 217–18, 219 Ukraine 35–6, 186
Teruel, Battle of 130 Unamuno, Miguel de 112–13, 155, 285 n5
Thatcher, Margaret 262 unemployment
Thatcherism 26 2008 crisis and 26, 37, 178
Third of May, The (Los Fusilamientos) Andalucía 6, 88, 173, 174, 175
(Francisco de Goya) 95, 99 Basque Country 159
Titian 1, 2 benefit 27, 191
Toledo 62 Covid-19 and 186
Toledo, Willy 245 government measures 191
Torra, Quim 86, 88, 89 Great Depression and 128
Torre, Francisco de la 181 falling 22, 176–7
Torremolinos 6 immigration and 175
Torrijos, General José María 99 long-term 174, 191, 192
tourism 35, 138, 164–5, 181, 200, 220 persistently high 10, 175, 190
trade unions United Kingdom
19th century 103 agreement on Gibraltar 264–5
anarchist and Catholic 68 auxiliaries in Carlist wars 100
Basque Country 156 Brexit 53
committees in big businesses 183 homosexuality and 207
federation 131 income 106
labour rights 188 liberalism 29, 105–6
Rajoy reforms and 28 newspapers 238
strikes 7, 129 public debt 25
suppression of 129 richer than Spain 6, 96
transition 18 Romanticism 68
Trafalgar, Battle of 94 small and big businesses 183
transformation 8 Spanish liberals in exile 99
transition Spanish republicans in exile 132–3
alleged failure 148 stereotypes about Spain 9

313
 INDEX
tax revenues 199 disruptive presence 271
war with France 94 elections 33, 34, 146–7, 148
United Left see Izquierda Unida Franco and 119
United Nations 31, 124, 261 Franco’s disinterment 118–9
United States 10, 20, 21, 53, 69, 138, 143, Galicia 171
221, 262, 263, 264 growth 148
urbanisation 19, 96, 215 immigration and 146–7, 206, 212
Urdangarin, Iñaki 38 minimum income 199
Urkullu, Iñigo 48–9, 166, 167 opposition to social reforms 205, 206
Urquizu, Ignacio 219, 232, 271 populism 10
PP and 33, 146, 148, 255, 256, 259, 272,
V 273
Valencia PP voters turning to 33, 148
bastion of the Republic 122 problems 257
corruption 236 re-centralisation 269
culture 181 rhetoric 147
fall of 135 right-wing party 10, 33, 145
history 63, 64 threat to democracy 272
industry 183 transition and 267
language 80, 109, 268 Venezuelan opposition and 264
Podemos 249
prosperity 62, 92 W
separatism 113, 116 Wagner, Richard 68
third city 84 Walters, General Vernon 201
Valladolid 93, 217 War of Independence see Peninsular War 94
Vallejo, César 274 War of the Spanish Succession 65, 154
Valley of the Fallen 32–3, 117–19, 121, 123 Weber, Eugen 108, 109
Valmy, Battle of 95 Westendorp, Carlos 31
Valtònyc 245 Western Sahara 260, 261, 262
Vanguardia, La 48 women
Velázquez, Diego 1–2, 5 education 205
Venezuela 211, 229, 264 legal equality 204
Verdi, Giuseppe 68 politics 32, 204, 205
Vergara, Peace of 100 position in society 202, 203
Vic 46–7, 56, 59, 65, 71, 89 unemployment 175
Vigo 7, 171, 172, 217 violence against 134, 146, 206
Vila, Alejandro 122 votes 127
Villarejo, José Manuel 177 working 177, 203, 205
Villaroya, Miguel Ángel 145
Vitoria 165, 167 Y
Vivens, Jaume Vicens 58 Yague, Colonel Juan 134
Viver Pi-Sunyer, Carles 81
Vizcaya 153, 155, 157, 159, 165 Z
Vox Zapatero, José Luis Rodríguez
against political correctness and feminism austerity 252
146 Catalonia and 82, 84–5
Andalucía and 146 Catholicism and 209
Basque Country and 146 crispación 257
Catalonia and 33, 146, 148, 244 election victories 20
Catholicism and 147, 209 financial crisis 25–6
challenge to constitutional settlement 272 foreign policy 262–3
constitution and 272 historical memory 121
crispación 258 income per person 200
democracy and 272–3 Latin America and 264

314
 INDEX
leader of Socialist Party 20 Zara 171
pact with PP against HB 163 Zaragoza 62, 128, 158
politics 21–2 Zarzuela palace 39
retirement age 195 Zerbib, Pierre Assouline 241
secularism 208 Zoreda, José Luis 186
social reforms 22, 204 Zugaza, Miguel 164
talks with ETA 22 Zulaika, Joseba 152
unpopular 228 Zurburán, Francisco de 2

315