Spain is a country with huge problems. But it is not a failed state. You should try Venezuela if you want to get the flavour of failure. In any case, Spain is very corrupt, including Catalonia (where I live), but many other EU countries are corrupt too. I think about France and all the corruption cases about weapons procurement contracts (Taiwan frigates, etc.). We can also think about the US ...

> Spain is a country with huge problems

Any sources or further reading?

Start with The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas. It provides good context on what led the country to civil war in 1936, and many of the problems unfortunately prevail nowadays.

EDIT: I see I'm being downvoted, but I stand by my words. I'll provide more context though. The Spanish Civil War is the pivotal moment in Spanish history in the 20th century and explains a lot of what Spain is nowadays - from the state of autonomías (autonomous regions), to the bitter divide between Left and Right, or the total inability to reach national agreements on education and other strategic matters. Aside from that it's an authoritative and engrossing read.

It's not, really, I've been living through most of Europe and Spain's quality of life is way above average, there's literally no homeless (except for people with mental health issues or foreigners) low/middle class people buy properties, there's development in every industry, etc.

Edit: Downvoter care to explain? Please check this [1] NUTS 2 official data, half of Spain is above half of Germany

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/GDP_per_...

Maybe because those things don't directly have anything to do with country being corrupt, which was the question? There could be some indirect connection, but corruption and quality of life are not exactly the same things.

A corrupt enough country would not be able to protect people as Spain does.

Public services are paid with public money, if there is no money there are no services and as far as I know there is still public health and education and equal opportunitieas for (almost) everybody.

A lot of corruption there anyway.

Sadly anywhere you look.

But if you want something interesting I will name 3 interesting cases that have shown up in the last few years.

ERE case andalucia, essentially EREs are just the spanish name for furlough but it also includes things like early retirement. Well in Andalucia since 2001 until 2009 a case of local politicians managed to corruptly send up to 680 million to themselves and family members. This is the largest corruption case in Spanish history in terms of money.

Equally news worthy, the opposite political party (we mostly have two) had a case themselves where the tresurer Luis Barcenas was found to have 40 million on a Swiss account which he claimed he used to pay political leaders in Spain bonuses and that the money came from big companies that would bride them to give them public contracts. Essentially the american lobbying but in a country were its illegal.

And lastly there is the case of the Cajas. Cajas are a spanish version of savings banks. They are meant to be small, local, have low risk accounts for worker savings etc. Problem was many had politicians in their boards who would make the requirements for credit much lower, so they could finance public pharaonic architecture that would get them reelected. (Due to this Spain has several unused, someone built them and no plane every landed or took off from them). This opened the gates not only for those politicians but for everyone to get credit incredibly easy which is one of the reasons Spain was incredibly hardly hit in 2008, and one of the reasons it's one of the few countries that has not recovered the loans given to banks.

You can also add al the Pujol family scandals too.

Unfortunately, there are corruption cases all over the political spectrum in Spain.

Start with the links at the bottom of OP's article and go from there!

That's such a ridiculous claim that I have to assume you are spaniard. Spain is actually a pretty average EU country by most metrics.

(Not to say that it doesn't have structural problems, but that's hardly exclusive to Spain)

Perhaps it isn't failed, but it is pretty corrupt, and it is not in good condition. I wouldn't call it "such a ridiculous claim", just good, old exaggeration.

Pretty corrupt compaired to what? Are Japan or France failed states? Both slightly lower in this aggregated ranking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#2...

I am spaniard and am painfully aware of Spain's problems. And maybe spaniards being so critical of Spain could be something positive (instead of complacency or nationalism).

But honestly? The negativity is pointless and exhausting. Pointless because these are rarely informed opinions putting data into context. Exhausting, because uplifting news need to have an angle that to make them negative.

PS: And yes, I am not denying that there is a lot of corruption enabled by politicians in Spain. And it's a problem. But that doesn't make Spain a failed state. Or how is all of this true:

- Loss of control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein - Erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions - Inability to provide public services - Inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community

> Loss of control of its territory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_on_the_Referendum_on_Self-...

Most metrics is subjective.

The metrics most spaniards look are -General Unemployment rate -Juvenile unemployment -Minimun Salaries -Buy and Rent prices in principal cities

And in most of these Spain is at the bottom

2020 United Nations World Happiness Report: place 28 (from 156).

please point what level of the spanish state you believe its clear without corruption, i can point cases from bottom (trash collection) to top (chief of state)

You are exaggerating facts to justify your belief of living in a failed state. A failed state doesn't have the rule of law, education and health care that Spain enjoys. And I say this as a Venezuelan expat living in Spain since 2003.

Yeah real failed states don't get millions of tourists.

Any sources to support that "failed state" claim? Every country has corruption yet on the internet I only see spanish people saying their country is awful.

There's a point where the onus is perhaps on the reader of the comment to check about the claim?

It seems to me that many people questioning this in this thread have not read anything about Spain, at all.

I'll bite and give you a few examples of why one could consider Spain a failed state:

- Consistently has one of the highest unemployment rates of the OECD. 10% was normal pre-2008, 15-25% has been the new normal ever since. Rates for young people in the 20-30 age group are typically between 40-50%, leading many to speak of a "lost generation".

- About half of the Catalans want to secede. Basques are right now at an uneasy peace thanks to favorable tax treatments, but before the defeat of terrorist group ETA about a decade ago, more than a thousand people were murdered in the name of Basque secession. Though violence is unlikely to return right now (hopefully), the Basque situation could become similar to Cataluña in a moment's notice. There is also a clear rise of nationalism in other regions where this was barely a problem (eg, Comunitat Valenciana or Baleares)

- The two main national parties have been part of massive corruption scandals, going from the national down to the local level (the article alludes to this). We're talking embezzlement in the billions, Roman-decadence levels of squandering (every town wanted its own airport), and intrigues that could be pulled off out of a cheap LeCarré knock-off.

- Education is quite poor, if not abysmal. Massive dropout rates in secondary education, really bad comparative performance in PISA reports, and barely any university makes it into top-200 institutions worldwide. Politicians keep changing the agenda every four years instead of trying to agree to a national pact to get us out of this hole.

These are just things off the top of my mind, but I could go on for a while.

Maybe the fact that you only see Spanish people talk poorly about the country is a reflection of us being the primary subjects of its blatant problems, and of the fact that few outsiders care?

Agree, I don't know where the people who replied this thread reads about Spain. Most of them suggest it's an average Country by the metrics

Nurses and medics and mos professionals run out of the country when they can

The economy without the ECB aid could have already crashed like 2 o 3 times in the last ten years

Spain judicial system not following the constitutional rulebook when ordering new top judges

Biggest airport 4 days block cause the snow machine workers are not rehired

You clearly have not seen a failed state 1st hand.

Spain is many things, but a failed state it's not.

Let me just mark that I know no spaniard outside government doing paid overtime. Literally. Everyone is doing overtime and it is not paid. That is huge corruption wise, it prevents jobs from being created, money is being stolen from workers and taxes are not paid.

Yes we have crooked politicians and public officials, but everyone is crooked and corrupt in the best case. At worst we are crooked and corrupt throwing our lives and money away.

This gets no reflection on official statistics.

Spain is a developing, quasi-feudalistic country and no amount of european money is going to change that at the root.

This sort of negativity is misleading. Someone who has been to actual failed states will see how Spain turned out pretty successful, and only thinks of itself as inferior because of psychological reasons.

Corruption is of the same nature as in any other developed country, inside trusted circles of crooks. Try bribing any policeman in Spain and see how that goes. We regularly convict criminals for embezzlement and related crimes, including a relative of the last Spanish king (Iñaki Urdangarín).

Structural problems will need to be resolved (employment and entrepreneurship we can never foster enough). But we can't keep kicking ourselves down, that seems to be the national pastime.

Exactly what I am saying. But I am saying, stop blaming others, start changing yourself.

I don't agree with the language you used on your original post; however I can wholeheartedly concur on that idea of personal responsibility.

> Everyone is doing overtime and it is not paid.

Sorry but not. Not my employees, that's for sure. Don't generalize.

After reading this whole thread, it has become clear that everyone has their own definition of a failed state. As for me, I don’t believe that Spain qualifies as a failed state. History that precedes it may have done so at some points, but every country comes with its own ‘baggage’.

I bet you are spanish.

Hearing a man speak, it is easy to know

Where he saw the sun be born

If he praises England, he must be English

If he rebuffs Prussia, he is French

And if he speaks ill of Spain... he is Spanish

- Joaquín Bartrina, circa 1870

So true. As a spaniard I do it all the time. Love/hate my country.

We are quite hard on us. This is a nasty cultural trait of Spain, because this hinders our work. I work in science and I think we would do much better if we didn't have this inferiority complex.

I think, it also hinders you from holding your government (on all levels) accountable. Cases of corruption or incompetence don't seem to me quite as reflected in elections as it should. The excuse always seems to me, that people claim the other side is just as bad. Not denying that, but with that level of expectation there is no need to clean up your act.

Exactly, seriously why is everyone in Spain like this? Spain is a wonderful and advanced country in most ways. Although I think having an inferiority complex is probably good for the country because it's the only way to improve.

National identity is a social construct. Spain has always been the sum of several national identities. This has of course created frictions, but there wasn't the push that order countries had to eradicate those identities when the birth of most modern states happened.

Franco tried to change that (as well as eliminating a sizeable part of Spain that didn't fit with his values). To this day, many spaniards identify the spanish national identity with those Franco's values (despite being fairliy minoritary and Spain a very socially progressive country).

After the transition to democracy, regional governments had a lot of incentives to create or reinforce their own identities to gain economic leverage against the central government. This has always been extremely transparent and it's no coincidence that the two richest regions have the strongest independentist movement.

So yeah, there is a lot of self-hatred or internalised inferiority complex... But also dishonesty. Many of the comments you will read online are self-interested (catalonian independentists) or even straight propaganda from the catalonian government. Not that it would be hard to find any other spaniard to rage about how Spain is, actually, a 3rd world country.

> why is everyone in Spain like this?

Nah, not everyone. You will see all this people singing proud "I'm spanish!, spanish!, spanish!..." in the next UEFA champions league. I assume that we are just a little drama queens sometimes, but in the end we all are very similar to you. You will find exactly the same frolicking behavior in any basketball league.

Being young adults and trying to thrive in a big city is not easy of course, but this is not a problem exclusive from Spain

Until it's a foreigner doing it, then we all team up against.

I have said it many times, no one has united the Spanish so much as Jamie Oliver cooking "paella".

As a latin-american, I never understood why spain could not capitalize on their relationship and cultural ties with Latin America, like England did with the commonwealth. We speak the exact language across a really vast territory across two continents, some potential there must have been!

It is really austonding that there only a loose integration between spanish-speaking countries, despite sharing very similar (good and not so good) cultural values.

Spain spends too much energy dealing with internal problems.

> We are quite hard on us.

There is no "us" in Spain. There's castillian imperialists and people living in occupied territories. The only possible "us" right now for many Spanish passport-holders is Europe.

> There's castillian imperialists and people living in occupied territories

Sorry but the constitution grants to every citizen the right to work and live peacefully anywhere they wish inside the country boundaries.

I'm pleased to inform you that this includes the grant for YOU to live in MY place without being tagged as "invasive imperialist" or harassed by me to quit the area. That would be simply illegal (the words idiotic and ludicrous would be also good adjectives); but don't worry, we never would do that to your family.

in short, haters gonna hate... Anybody can go and create their own Cat-anon and rewrite the history to fit into their delusions if they want (Is a free country after all), but they only lie to themselves and the reality will hit like a ton of bricks eventually

Seriously? Occupied territories?

It’s very frustrating that people are so vocal with extreme opinions such as this one. Whenever the topic of Spain comes up, someone will try to make it as if they have been conquered 10 years ago, trying hard to distort history that’s quite similar to most of the other countries.

I empathize with your frustration, although I don't think that these opinions are extreme at all.

You know what is frustrating, also? To have a foreign army occupying your country.