Spain’s Angry and Unemployed Young Men. By George Friedman. Real Clear World, May 21, 2013.
Friedman:
I
should have been prepared for this. We stayed in a very nice hotel in Granada.
In the morning when we left the hotel, there was a beggar sitting on the
sidewalk, his back to the wall, to our right. We paid little attention. Beggars
are not uncommon in Europe or the United States. But there is an aesthetic to
beggars. They look a certain way, owing to alcohol, madness or a very long time
in trouble. When we returned in the late afternoon, he was still there. He was
in his mid-to-late 20s, wearing glasses and reading a book. He was dressed in
khakis and a decent shirt. He wasn’t mad, he wasn’t drunk and he wasn’t like
the hippies of my youth. He wasn’t playing an instrument. He was sitting,
absorbed in a book and begging. There were other beggars in Granada of the more
conventional sort but also several more who looked like this one.
There
is an argument that says Spanish unemployment is not as bad as it seems because
a huge amount of it is youth unemployment. It is implied that youth
unemployment has less social consequence. Certainly, it is more immediately
destabilizing to have the head of a household with children out of work, but
when – as some say – 57 percent of those under the age of 25 are unemployed, it
also has consequences. Older people get bitter, despair and tend to be
fatalistic with what life dealt them – or at least a lot of them do.
A
22-year-old becomes desperate. When a young man is unemployed because he is a
musician or an artist awaiting discovery or because he has lived carelessly,
that’s one thing. But this is different unemployment. It is a generation whose
dreams are shattered. They may have hoped to be a businessman or a craftsman,
but that’s not going to happen now. Unemployment of this sort doesn’t go away
in a few months or years. This is the level of unemployment the United States
experienced in the Great Depression, the kind of unemployment that scars an
entire generation. World War II solved the unemployment problem in the United
States, but there is no global war on the horizon for Spain. Imagine what would
have happened in the United States if the war hadn’t come and the Depression
had lasted 20 years.
No one
knows how long this will last but everyone suspects that it will be a long
time, and I share that suspicion. How do you accept a situation that says you,
at the age of 22, will live on the margins of society along with half of your
friends? More important, how do you live with that fact if you worked hard
preparing for a career?
Failures
that are caused by living carelessly can be managed. The very carelessness of
the life makes the consequence nearly morally required. Some people in every
generation fail and fall to the bottom rungs of society because, well, bad
things sometimes happen. Those people do not constitute a social force. But
when nearly half a generation, most from middle-class families, finds itself at
the bottom, there is no explanation to provide solace. In its place there is,
quite reasonably, a sense of victimhood. Whatever explanation one gives for the
Spanish crisis – the stupidity of politicians, the laziness of the public, the
greed of bankers or whatever else – the generation that is bearing the burden
is the only one that is not guilty – at least not yet.
This –
being the victim in personal calamity shared by half a generation – is the
foundation not just of political instability but also for the politics of rage.
The older middle-class citizens, with the lives they thought they had secured
shattered, hurled into the ranks of the permanently impoverished, represent the
vanguard, if you will. But those who will never live the lives they thought
they would, they are the explosive mass.
. . . .
The
German problem is the European problem and vice versa, and so it has been for a
long time. Ever since 1871, when Germany was unified, Germany and Europe have
been struggling with the question of how to live with each other. They thought
they had found the answer in the European Union – and maybe they will, but not
yet. Europe does not know how to live with a Germany that uses the free trade
zone to surge its exports while blaming Europe for being lazy and shiftless.
Germany does not know how to live with a Europe that does not see that all of
its problems are due to its lack of industriousness.
Of
course, to our 22-year-old in Spain, the debate has become irrelevant. He is
broke, scared and bored – not something you want a mass of young men to be.
That is the point at which history turns. Over time, they become men with
nothing to lose; they become violent men, trying to reshape the order by any
means necessary. Looking around the violent parts of the world, it is young men
with nothing to lose and fantasies of glory, led by older men who understand
them and their needs, who wage the civil wars that tear countries apart.
The
same happened in Europe after World War I. Sometimes the disaffected youth turn
to crime, sometimes they turn to political crime and sometimes they become a
political party. In Europe, it was a generation that felt betrayed by World War
I, then an older generation crushed by unemployment and inflation and finally a
younger generation with nothing left to lose. Then came World War II and the
stunned realization that there were indeed things left to lose.
Driving
in Spain, things look quiet, neat and empty. But in that emptiness there is
something ominous, perhaps not so much post-apocalyptic as pre-apocalyptic.
Spain is still under control, and the European elite still believe an answer
will be found. But I don’t see the path that leads to the redemption of a
generation’s hopes. There is time, but in my mind there isn’t enough. And given
the attitude of the Eurocrats I have met, there is no sense among the elite
that time is running out.
