Spain is depressed, perhaps more spiritually than economically. But there is a way for Madrid to turn it around
To any well-read modern Spaniard with internationalist instincts there’s a handy line from an elegant philosopher. “Spain is the problem; Europe is the solution,” wrote José Ortega y Gasset in his early 20th-century The Revolt of the Masses.
Here in Ortega y Gasset’s native Spain the remark is often quoted with approval. Yet the comment is insulting. Subtle self-denigration lurks beneath the surface of Spanish politics. It led to the unquestioning rush, after Franco, into the arms of the European Union, and for 20 years that did indeed feel like a solution.
But now this habit of reaching across the