By Antonio Tejeda Encinas
From Larra’s famous “Come back tomorrow” to the routine “wait for the report”, the Spanish bureaucracy has changed its form, but not its logic. Today, you don’t have to come back tomorrow: just wait in line. We have made the wait more agile, but not the decision. We have digitized it to make blocking faster and more efficient.
The problem is not technical, but structural. The administration has not been transformed: it has been shielded. Where before there were papers and windows, today there are screens, passwords, forms and automated silence. The fear of deciding – criminal, political or media – has replaced the will to resolve. And bureaucracy, far from disappearing, has become sophisticated to justify inaction.
Spain does not need more digital tools, but more institutional freedom to decide effectively. Because digitizing without purpose is just a way of making up for paralysis. More technology is not more modernity if there is still fear, suspicion and culture of the file. That is not transformation: it is simulation of efficiency.
Only if we change the underlying logic – the one that prefers processes to results, formal guarantees to real solutions – will we be able to build a truly useful administration. If not, we will continue to be trapped in this technological loop that does not solve, only differs. And in the end, the message will be the same: “you come back tomorrow”, but with an electronic signature
