Otto von Bismarck, German chancellor of the 19th century, is credited with the accurate phrase that “Spain is the strongest country in the world. Century after century trying to destroy herself and she still hasn’t succeeded.”
The British journalist Michael Reid – who was The Economist’s correspondent in Spain for several years – has poured all of his knowledge of the field – and of his readings – into the book España, recently published by Espasa. Faithful to the legend of Anglo-Saxon reporting, he has traveled from end to end of the country and has interviewed everyone, from anonymous people to Felipe González or Carles Puigdemont. We may or may not agree with his opinions, which he does not hide, but, as he has the elegance of separating them from the facts, reading is recommended for the curious of all tendencies.
“Unlike Italy, Spain is not a systemically corrupt country,” he points out, although he does observe impunity in “one-party fiefdoms” in some autonomies. He puts his finger on things that we would prefer not to hear, such as that the pandemic had one of the highest mortality rates in Europe here due to the inefficiency of the administrations. His analysis is also sharp when detailing the causes that led to the revolt of the indignados at the beginning of the 1910s (“Spanish legislation protected, in a particularly unfair way, that those who had to hand over the keys to their property to return it to the bank continued to owing him the unpaid balance of the mortgage), an earthquake that changed the political map and generated other protest movements by imitation – Occupy Wall Street, no less.
Very contrary to the proclamation of independence of Catalonia, he nevertheless defends that this was a disobedience that should have ended with disqualifications and fines, but never with high prison sentences, like those of the two Jordis, which he sees as “particularly disproportionate.”
Nor does he understand that it is difficult for the Spanish State to support something as simple as the pre-eminence of Catalan in the educational model (it cannot think of a better way to generate empathy), nor that at the same time the Generalitat is not somewhat more flexible in terms of the presence of Spanish in the classrooms.
You see, Otto, we’re still there.