On October 24, 1989, in the second issue of this newspaper, playwright and academic Francisco Nieva made a series of predictions about the Europeans of the future in a column. Spain had been a member of what was known as the European Communities for almost four years, and the continent was about to experience the transformative wave that led to the demolition, not the fall, of the Berlin Wall. But Nieva foresaw, with the birth of a new newspaper, some of the dynamics that today, 35 years later, remain the most important. Both for the EU and, above all, for Spain and the Spaniards' integration into it.
Looking at the news on the International pages back then is unsettling. Ceasefire in Lebanon, disputes over abortion in the United States, rise of nationalism in Hungary, Soviet violations of armament agreements and invasions of countries, not to mention interviews with Israeli leaders convinced that "the hour of truth" had arrived and that negotiation with "the Arabs" was inevitable for peace. As if a third of a century had not passed, except for something very striking.
With Europe on the brink of erupting again (in Berlin, Prague, or Budapest, and not much later in Yugoslavia), for weeks and months, the only references to the community institutions in those late 1989 pages are fleeting, incidental, completely secondary. No decisions, positions, propositions. Today, that is unthinkable. The EU, Europe, Brussels, fills the pages in all sections. International and Economy, of course, but also National, with a separation that becomes increasingly fine and impossible to trace. Everything goes through there, and there is nothing purely national, from vaccines to military aid to shared debt.
However, even without explicit reference, the axis of everything that was and is, what moves Europe, its institutions, the questions and answers, doubts, and limits, are now the same as those anticipated by those foundational pages. 35 years ago, the involuntary protagonists were the countries in the Soviet orbit looking West for hope and extending a hand. Today, they are those who then did not quite make it, from Georgia to Moldova, obviously including Ukraine.
The history of EL MUNDO is, in a way, the story of how the EU and its members, who have bent almost during their lifetime, have digested a slow but steady integration, how capitals have resisted, sometimes like a cat on its back, yielding competences. And how their leaders, short-sighted, wait for the crises, increasingly harsh, more existential, more contagious, to do the dirty work for them. With comings and goings, enlargement after enlargement, until the shock of Brexit.
The history of these three and a half decades is also the bittersweet integration of Spain. A full member, a leader in European sentiment, the fourth economy in the eurozone, a proud consensus builder, a heavyweight on paper, but also a complexed partner. A country that has played below its level, fearful for 20 years of raising its voice, banging on the table, blocking or vetoing if necessary. A country that has a pretty clear idea of how it fits into the package but has renounced shaping the continent with truly ambitious ideas, proposals, and leaders. A Europhile and Eurobeat country, naive, systematically hiding behind consensus due to the little interest of its leaders, the outdated hierarchy of the administration, and self-inflicted damage from the pathological fear of any diplomat or official to lift a finger without the explicit permission of seven superiors.
Spain moves on the board not as if it were 1989, but perhaps 2005, or 2015. Thinking it is immune to trends sweeping across the continent, unaware that within it grows a growing anti-EU and euro sentiment, skeptical, even isolationist, willing to break the last real and deep consensus in national politics. And it does not realize this because it has renounced debate, ideas, because it does not pay the necessary attention or allocate the required resources to what is the top foreign priority. And because it still thinks, with Ortega, that we are the problem and the solution will always come from afar.
"In the immediate future, Europe will be a unity, and national cultures will undergo a decantation, but there will be an exacerbation of signs of difference," Nieva predicted with extraordinary precision. "Europe will not have a homogeneous and guiding political idea against the excesses of capitalism, and it is likely that a humanistic movement will emerge in search of a European raison d'être, for the conquest of an authoritative judgment, for a prestigious arbitral role. It would be a good pacifying entertainment," he added.
The recent years have seen economic, political, cultural, identity, housing, health, energy, and climate crises accumulate.
This is still the Europe that the Spanish see, with a "prestigious arbitral role." For the Catalan issue, in 2017, with Carles Puigdemont's escape and the complaints about the lack of democracy, or in 2024, with the compatibility or not of the Amnesty Law with the community legal system. The European Commission as a mediator and arbitrator in the reform of the Judiciary, overseeing two childish parties incapable of finding a solution and oblivious to the role for the national image. Europe as an ATM, police, judge.
The Europe of 2024 operates differently, and its actors behave very differently. In a brilliant essay, Ivan Krastev, perhaps the most insightful analyst of the EU in the last decade, explains that one of the continent's biggest problems is that the three major visions that have shaped the so-called European project are collapsing or have already collapsed. From the giant steps to bring millions of people closer to the resurgence of nationalism and skeptical, even Europhobic forces, from Italy to the Netherlands, passing through Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, or Austria.
The first worldview was that of 1945, the horror of World War II. The Europe we know today was born there, out of despair and fear. From the battlefields, the millions of dead, but also hope, reconciliation. A few countries and leaders managed to bring together those who not only had just killed each other but had been doing so for centuries, with the promise, the dream, of peace. The blind spots of that idea became visible for the first time in the 1990s when Yugoslavia plunged into chaos, but the core held.
However, there are several generations that no longer find this sufficient. Krastev argues that Francis Fukuyama was right when he spoke of the end of history, not in the sense that everything was already written, but that the past no longer matters much for the present. For those who have never experienced a war up close, and for whom the war in Ukraine sounds like it's happening on another planet even though it's just a few kilometers away, the argument no longer holds. For those in constant communication but only with their peers and not with previous generations, the 1945 vision is no longer enough. The survivors have been dying, and for the millions of people who have arrived on the continent in recent years, many fleeing their own wars and nightmares, the framework of a century ago is simply incomprehensible and outdated.
The Bulgarian thinker adds that this is compounded by the collapse of the 1968 vision, the one of human rights and, in particular, the Europe of minority rights. If the post-1968 Europe had to be defined with one word, it would be inclusion. However, the accumulation of crises has taken a toll on the European mentality, on the middle classes, on the majorities, "those who have everything and therefore fear everything, who constitute the main force in European politics." Financial, economic, debt, credit, housing, employment crises. Political crises due to refugees, populism, nationalism. Cultural, identity, sexual, trust crises among neighbors closing their borders. The health crisis of the pandemic, the energy crisis following the Russian invasion. The climate crisis.
The main non-military war today is cultural, and the crisis of 2015, generated by millions of asylum applications, has caused a fracture that Europeans are not fully aware of yet. The economic crisis of 2008 took down practically all continental governments and leaders, but the 2015 crisis and its aftermath have had a much more powerful transformative effect on societies, political systems, and power balances.
"The refugee crisis marked the end of post-1968 Europe and the failure of a certain idea of post-1989 Europe, as we are witnessing the collapse of a consensus that was once unifying," summarized Krastev six years ago.
Just as 9/11 forced Americans to change how they viewed the world, the migration crisis has forced Europeans to question many things, something that in Spain, until very recently, was overlooked but is now a priority on the parties' agenda.
The motto of the 27 is "United in diversity," but this decade has made it very clear that there are very different Europes regarding ethnic and cultural diversity and migration issues. In the early 20th century, Central and Eastern Europe was the most diverse part of the continent; now it is extremely homogeneous, especially, but not only, from an ethnic perspective.