Intellect

World View

SIMON
KUPER
The world’s most liveable
country could end up too
hot to handle

I
’ve just spent a year based in Madrid, trying corruption, Spain’s ruling elite has many achieve- The government seems to have quietly decided
to understand Spain. I have travelled from ments. As the writer Javier Cercas says, the past 40 that the interior’s depopulation is unstoppable. In
ValenciatoCádiz,oftenonhigh-speedtrains, yearshavebeenthecountry’sbestever.Democracy Empty Spain, people are making way for the area’s
pursuing a kind of glorious seafood-fuelled has been stabilised, Basque terrorism defeated and last two assets: sun and wind. In fact, the Spanish
study mission. My preliminary conclusion: the rare transition to high-income status achieved. interior is Europe’s biggest renewables opportu-
this is the world’s most liveable country, Public infrastructure is largely recent and there- nity. Already, wind and solar generate nearly half
albeit even more for privileged foreigners than for fore excellent. Life expectancy, now 84 years, is the country’s electricity. The €140bn due to Spain
the average Spaniard. But climate change could be projected to be the world’s highest by 2040. True, from the EU’s recovery fund could accelerate the
particularly devastating here. the average Spaniard spends that life in a low- trend. Spain’s government wants dying villages to
You’d think climate would be a hot dry country’s quality flat, often in a Soviet-looking apartment rentlandtorenewablescompanies.Inconveniently,
top priority, but in fact Spaniards spend more time block, on a net median annual income of €15,892. though,manylocalspreferindustriesinwhichthey
arguing about national unity. Spain’s great modern Butimprovementcontinues.Withpermanentcon- themselves could play a role.
trauma was Catalonia’s illegal referendum on inde- tracts burgeoning, unemployment Spain’s coming crisis is cli-
pendence in 2017. The federal government sent in – so long the national scourge – is at mate change. The orange dust on
baton-wielding police, and nine separatist organis- its lowest since 2008. Tourismwillshift our balcony this spring, blown in
ers of the referendum were jailed for up to 13 years. The country’s economic geogra- toSpain’slovelycool from the Sahara, felt like a portent.
Inresponse,flagswerehungfrombalconiesnation- phy has rearranged itself. Madrid north,assummer Parts of Spain are at their driest in a
wideaspeopleexpressedtheirvisionsofSpain.You has become a boomtown, the heatmorphsfrom millennium. I’m writing this beside
can often read a neighbourhood’s political charac- London of Spain, and something of attractionintothreat a whirring electric fan in Madrid,
ter just walking down the street: national flags in a tax haven. It has overtaken Bar- where temperatures have topped
bourgeois Madrid neighbourhoods, various ver- celonaasabusinesscentre,sucking 35C for weeks. Some regions get
sions of Catalan flags in Barcelona, and elsewhere, in companies, growing an almost Chinese-style hotter than 40C, which isn’t liveable.
increasingly, flags of other regions. Growing anx- new business district and competing with Miami The cracked, barren fields seen from train win-
iety over national unity propelled the far-right to become the capital of the Spanish-speaking dowslooknorthAfrican.ThegrapeharvestinJérez
nationalist party Vox into parliament in 2019. world, as Argentinians, Venezuelans et al flee to a began on July 28, the earliest in the region’s history.
Polarisation could worsen if the conservative functioning country. Already, desertification affects about one-fifth of
People’spartyandVoxwinnextyear’snationalelec- ButtherearetwoSpains:oneinhabited,theother Spain’s land. Farming with boundless irrigation
tions and crack down on Catalonia. But for now, I’m almost empty. Moments after your train leaves isn’t a long-term strategy. Millennia-old Iberian
impressed with how the Socialist-led government Madrid or the coasts, you’re in the almost aban- agriculture may be dying out. And I suspect tour-
is defusing tensions, pardoning the jailed separa- doned interior. Outside Madrid, the vast region of ism will gradually shift from Spain’s overbuilt
tists and negotiating compromises – often grubby Castile-León, ruled by the People’s party and Vox, south coast to the lovely cool north, as summer
ones – with Catalanist parties. That’s how a mul- has been depopulating for decades. Some villages heat morphs from attraction into threat.
tinational democracy is meant to work. Flags are have shrunk to a few dozen pensioners without I’m returning to Paris, but this isn’t adiós, just
coming down and Catalan support for independ- a doctor. Here’s one image I’ll retain of Spain: an hasta luego (see you later) to what I hope will
ence is plummeting, partly as people realise it uninhabited red-roofed farmhouse, alone amidst remain the world champion of liveability.
won’t happen: no foreign country recognised Cata- brown fields, with the only sign of human activity a
lan independence. More broadly, despite political clutch of distant wind turbines. simon.kuper@ft.com @KuperSimon

14 ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY HAYSOM FT.COM/MAGAZINE AUGUST 6/7 2022