Gil Weinreich is the author of Sparks of Spain, a redemptive, satirical thriller in which a Jewish past whose power and potential never really went away becomes the theater of a miraculous Mossad rescue of Spain's Jews. Sign up to his free Substack, where the book will be published at a pace of three chapters a week.
Another significant election is set for the end of this month, and while the result is likely to be more felicitous than Israel’s electoral-math stalemate or America’s red-green-alliance rout, the Spanish vote on November 29 comes after its civilization is already hanging by a thread.
Indeed, in the race toward civilizational collapse, Spain had been leading the pack for years, with a fertility rate of 1.10 and consecutive years when deaths exceed births. And aside from the dramatic footage of the estimated 80,000 Moroccans who breached the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in July, the re-reconquista of Spain has been ongoing since the country’s accession to the EU in 1986; it is currently estimated that 11 percent of all babies born in Spain today have at least one Muslim parent.
But while Muslim sympathy for their fellow Arabs in Gaza undoubtedly contributes to the Arab Palestinianization of Spain, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has done a pretty good job of that himself on a fairly constant basis over the past several years. Sanchez reflexively blamed the Jews for the Ceuta invasion, citing without any evidence Israeli use of social networks to encourage the Moroccan migration. This was nothing more than a popular leftist conspiracy theory that Sanchez latched onto, saying something not only about him but also about a climate of opinion in which Israel, lying kitty-corner across the Mediterranean, has morphed into Spain’s primary enemy.
Just months after the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel, Sanchez recognized a “State of Palestine" and then joined a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice. The prime minister’s moves may have encouraged Spanish Arab Palestinianism, but in any event they were crowd pleasers in a country where the Palestinian Arab flag and other fashion accessories of terrorism such as the keffiyeh have become ubiquitous symbols. When unions strike for better pay and working conditions, the flag and checkered rag accompany them. You’d think that Spain’s World Cup victory in July was Hamas’s triumph-the flag was everywhere. Sanchez even addressed a crowd with Palestinian Arab flags waving in the background and praised pro-Palestinian Arab protesters who disrupted a Spanish national cycling race for their commitment to human rights.
But for all the preoccupation with "Palestine", it is less clear how much knowledge, as opposed to mere virtue signaling, Spaniards possess regarding their ostensible sister country. I saw an interview with a Spanish gay couple who were asked what their response would be if Spain’s conservative opposition took power. Without missing a beat, they told the interviewer they would move to Gaza; they were clueless that a rooftop view of the Mediterranean would likely be the last thing they would ever see there.
While the Palestinian Arab flag is popular, there is a parallel development. The Spanish flag has increasingly given way to more local identities such as Catalonian, Basque, and Galician, as the pre-election mood continues to sour. For all the sanctimonious lectures about two-state solutions, it seems Spain itself will be heading in that direction before long.
Meanwhile, Sanchez, an economist by training, is heading into an election with anemic economic growth of 2.19 percent, forecast to further decline to 1.67 percent in 2027. Yet his nemesis Israel, shackled by more than three years of war, is projected by the same OECD study to accelerate from 2026 growth of 3.30 percent to 5.61 percent in 2027-well over three times the Spanish rate.
High youth unemployment and low average wages compared to other European countries are also factors that may affect the November 29 vote. But voter surveys have shown that cost of living, skyrocketing rents and tourist gentrification have especially soured voters on the ruling socialists who promised but failed to address these issues. And a catastrophic high-speed train collision on October 28 killing 69 people near Toledo has prompted questions about the Sanchez government’s basic competence.
Economic malaise, plus the ongoing illegal immigration crisis and incessant corruption scandals plaguing Sanchez and his cronies explain why most polls favor the conservative opposition, with the mainstream conservative Partido Popular leading Sanchez’s socialists, followed by the more culturally conservative and nationalist right-wing Vox party. The left-wing parties that ordinarily coalesce with the socialists are not polling well, so it seems that change is coming to Madrid.
But Sanchez is fighting back. In a speech at a campaign rally in Tarragona on Saturday, he worked in a line that carries cultural weight these days. “On November 29, we will tell them with our votes that Spain is governed from Spain, not from Washington, not from Tel Aviv, not from Buenos Aires, not from Moscow, but from Spain." The notion that Israel controls Spain would seem absurd on its face, but it is reminiscent of exactly that kind of antisemitic paranoia which induced an earlier Spanish government and fevered mobs to drive out some of Spain’s most noble and productive citizens over half a millennium ago.
Undoubtedly there are numerous Spaniards who do not harbor ill will toward Jews, maybe even regret the 15th century Inquisition and don’t aspire to the Islamification, or merely the impoverishment, of their country. But they’re not the ones who make the big decisions. It is elites like Sanchez who send ferries to escort illegal immigrants to the Canary Islands and fly them to the mainland or encourage Qatari “investment" (like their American counterparts in the Democratic and Republican parties).
Replacing Sanchez’s failed government will be a good start to mending things. But only time will tell if Spaniards can reclaim their minds from the now deeply rooted “Free Palestine" culture that has covered up the government'ss failures, turning Jews and Israel into convenient scapegoats while romanticizing the people with whom they share a long and intense history of mutual carnage.