Charlemagne

The difference between Italy and Spain

Worry more about the former than the latter

Print edition | Europe

Mar 21st 2019

It is tempting to lump Europe’s two big southern countries together. Italians and Spaniards talk
loudly, eat late, drive fast and slurp down life-prolonging quantities of tomatoes and olive oil
(such, at least, are the clichés). They were cradles of European anarchism in the 19th century
and fascism in the 20th century; brushing dictatorship under the carpet before embracing
Europe in the post-war years. During the euro-zone crisis from 2009 they were two
components of the ugly acronym “pigs” (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) denoting particularly
indebted economies. Today once more they are being mentioned in the same breath.

Italian volatility appears to be arriving on the Iberian peninsula. Spain’s once boringly bi-party
politics has become a five-party kaleidoscope with the emergence of the hard-left Podemos,
the centre-right Ciudadanos and most recently the hard-right Vox. It is increasingly polarised by
battles over Catalan independence. Last summer Pedro Sánchez’s centre-left Socialists (psoe),
backed by Catalan nationalists, toppled a centre-right People’s Party (pp) government. But the
Catalans refused to back the new government’s budget, forcing Mr Sánchez to call an election
for April 28th. A right-wing coalition of pp, Ciudadanos and Vox (which would surely inflame
Catalan nationalism) or a deadlock and new elections are the most likely outcomes.

It can ill-afford either. The country’s recovery belies the urgency of pension, education and
labour reforms, as well as nagging corruption and a rise in trans-Mediterranean migration.
Years of political instability would leave these priorities unattended. Eurocrats note that Spain
last year missed more deadlines for implementing eu legislation than any other member state.
The sudden emergence of Vox and its embrace by other parties (it props up a pp-led
government in Andalusia) evokes at once the country’s Francoist past and alarming parallels
with Italy. There, the Northern League, once a peripheral Vox-like party, now dominates a
chaotic, Eurosceptic coalition that is spooking markets as decades of negligible growth make its
debt pile teeter.

Yet despite all that, fundamental differences to do with national metabolism, lost on some
northern European officials, separate the two countries. Italy is shackled by conservatism and
stasis. Its euro-zone crisis was (and is) the mild acceleration of a long-term national slump. gdp
has barely grown since the late 1990s, making a debt mountain accumulated in earlier times
unsustainable. Spain meanwhile hurtles forward, having grown by almost half during that
period. Its euro-zone misery was more sharp and dramatic: a hyperactive construction boom
raced off a cliff during the banking crisis, causing a spike in unemployment.

The difference between slow-metabolism Italy and fast-metabolism Spain goes beyond
economic statistics. Decline has been the defining Italian experience of the past decades, so the
new looks threatening and unwelcome there. But Spaniards have experienced the past decades
as a time of rising prosperity and freedom after the drab Franco years. They are neophiles,
willing to try anything that smacks of the future. The contrast between the two countries is that
between Spain’s urban spaces, which gleam with futuristic architecture and public works, and
Italy’s peeling cities; between Spaniards’ openness to social change and Italians’ conservatism;
between the existential melancholy of Paolo Sorrentino’s films and the freneticism of Pedro
Almodóvar.

A fast national metabolism has its downsides. Some of Spain’s shiny new infrastructure is
wasteful and some Spaniards, especially in rural areas, resent the pace of change and are
turning to Vox in protest. But it does also make Spain’s descent into reactionary Italy-style
stagnation improbable. For one thing, its economy is fitter. Spain had a deeper euro-crisis but
recovered faster, thanks to drastic economic reforms and spending cuts. Exports and fdi surged.
Its gdp per person in purchasing-power terms overtook that of Italy in 2017 and is forecast to
be 7% higher within five years. Heavy investment in roads and high-speed rail has made Spain’s
infrastructure the tenth best in the world, says the World Economic Forum. Italy is 21st.

A sunny country
All of which translates into an outward-looking optimism. Mr Sánchez, who wants Spain to
become a third partner in the Franco-German alliance, is particularly pro-eu, but the pp’s Pablo
Casado admires Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats in Germany and Albert Rivera of
Ciudadanos brandishes eu flags at his rallies. According to Eurobarometer, 68% of Spaniards
view the eu positively compared with 36% of Italians. Vox directs its anti-establishment ire not
at the eu so much as at feminists and separatist Catalans.

It also talks about immigration, but less than other European right-populist parties. Why? The
foreign-born share of the population rose from 3% to 14% in the two decades to 2008, but
Spaniards are more likely than any other eu population to declare themselves comfortable in
social interactions with migrants (83% compared with 40% of Italians). Despite rising
immigration from Africa and new efforts to improve border security, none of Spain’s main
parties proposes to close ports or indulges in Mr Salvini’s brand of anti-migrant posturing. In
other areas, too, Spaniards have left the chauvinism of the Franco years behind; a broad
consensus backs gender equality and gay rights (equal marriage was introduced in 2005, behind
only Belgium and the Netherlands).

Years of political chaos could threaten this picture. But if that applies to Spain, it applies to
other European countries too, where the same fragmentation is taking place. Last year’s change
of government, though fraught, was procedurally exemplary and proof that Spain’s young
constitutional order now has at least the maturity of its western European neighbours. It is
Italy, with its decades-old fractiousness and stagnation, that looks more out of kilter. Spain is
different, goes the old saying. But Italy is more so.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline
"Metabolically different"
Print edition | Europe
Mar 21st 2019