{"id":118417,"date":"2025-12-04T00:29:32","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T23:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/iberosfera-por-que-es-un-espejismo-y-el-futuro-espanol-solo-puede-ser-europeo\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T20:33:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T18:33:40","slug":"iberosfera-por-que-es-un-espejismo-y-el-futuro-espanol-solo-puede-ser-europeo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/blog\/iberosfera-por-que-es-un-espejismo-y-el-futuro-espanol-solo-puede-ser-europeo\/","title":{"rendered":"Iberosphere: why it is a mirage and Spain’s future can only be European."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Antonio Tejeda Encinas<\/strong><\/a> , Doctor of European Union Law. President of the Comite Euro Americano de Derecho Digital -CEA Digital Law<\/strong><\/a> Euro-American Committee of Digital Law -CEA Digital Law<\/p>\n

The next government will need statesmanlike Europeanism, not nostalgia. Spain does not deserve to choose between populism and erratic drift<\/em><\/p>\n

December 2025 is no ordinary month for Spanish foreign policy. With the Pro Tempore Secretariat of the Ibero-American Conference in our hands until 2026, the Madrid Summit on the horizon and the shadow of a second Trump term redefining the Atlantic, the S\u00e1nchez Government flirts dangerously with iberospherist rhetoric \u2014 talent mobility, promotion of Spanish as a common heritage and cooperation on digital rights, according to the 2025-2028 Foreign Action Strategy presented by Albares in April \u2014 without daring to break with Brussels. It is a lukewarm gesture that, unintentionally, hands Vox and the Disenso Foundation the emotional monopoly on Hispanidad.<\/p>\n

In the shadows of this officialdom beats the most ambitious and dangerous narrative: the “iberosphere”, sold as a transatlantic bloc of 700 million souls against “globalism”. Celebrated at Madrid summits with Milei and Kast, fuelled by the symbolic ties between the transatlantic far right after Argentina’s October legislative elections, this idea is no nostalgic diversion. It is a geopolitical proposal that equates the EU with a yoke and dreams of a “greater Spain” leading a fragmented mosaic on the other side of the ocean. This drift is not the exclusive preserve of the opposition. The PP, in its legitimate pursuit of majorities, flirts dangerously with programmatic concessions to Vox that would compromise the responsible Europeanism an alternative government needs. Spain does not deserve to choose between an erratic Government and an opposition that sacrifices Brussels on the altar of Bamberg.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Europe, in its most uncomfortable hour \u2014 less Europeanist, less dynamic, less ambitious \u2014 opens the door to these mirages. But Spain cannot afford them. Not because the bond with Ibero-America is negligible \u2014 on the contrary, it is a natural extension of our influence \u2014 but because confusing it with a strategic alternative is ahistorical, unviable and toxic. From a critical, demanding Europeanism of adult responsibility \u2014 that of Adenauer, Schuman and De Gasperi, a project of Christian and Western civil power, not the spineless multiculturalism of certain current commissioners \u2014 I affirm: Spain is only viable in a European key. Outside it, we do not lead Ibero-America; we dissolve into it.<\/p>\n

This is not sentimentality; it is pure structure. Europe provides Spain with what no other framework can: an integrated market that absorbs 60% of our exports, a shield of rights, macroeconomic stability, the euro as an anchor, multiplied external projection and global regulatory capacity in AI and data where we carry weight as a collective power. Without this ecosystem we become a peripheral actor without critical mass, without autonomous military muscle or technological independence. Abandoning it for an “Atlantic turn” would be, as the Elcano Royal Institute warns in its January 2025 analysis, a leap into the void.<\/p>\n

Proposing a “strategic Iberosphere” ignores the reality of Latin America: a mosaic polarised by populist cycles, institutional instability and governance weaknesses. ECLAC 2024 data reveal the danger: the United States consolidates its position as the largest investor with 38% of FDI, while the European Union’s share plummeted to 15%, the lowest figure since 2012. This loss of European influence is precisely what a Spain diluted in iberospheric fantasies \u2014 without collective European muscle \u2014 would irreversibly accelerate. Vox makes exactly the same mistake as the indigenist left: both live off the same resentful nostalgia, one with the Cross of Burgundy and the other with Che. Both dream of dead empires and forget that today greatness is measured by influencing global norms, not by the reach of the language.<\/p>\n

Any Spanish attempt at primacy would reactivate the anti-colonial narrative \u2014 masterfully instrumentalised by China, Russia and Iran \u2014 and would be read as right-wing neocolonialism, just as toxic as the left-wing variety. We are not “primus inter pares”: we are the ghost the region uses to unite against us.<\/p>\n

Abandoning Europe would mean losing influence in Brussels, high-value continental markets and essential legal, technological and military protection. In exchange we would take on systemic risks and crises we do not control: post-electoral polarisation in Chile and Argentina, migrations that Trump II could redirect towards our shores.<\/p>\n

Spain does not need to return to empire or dissolve into the woke global village; it needs to be a great European nation, as it was when it led the Counter-Reformation and the defence of the West. That is only achieved by occupying the European institutions until it hurts, not by fleeing towards an ocean where we will be, at best, silent guests.<\/p>\n

What Spain needs are not managers of nostalgia, but institutional architects: jurists of European law, regulatory strategists, career diplomats who understand Brussels as a chessboard, not as an enemy. The next government \u2014 whatever its colour \u2014 will only be viable if it unabashedly embraces the statesmanlike Europeanism that made Germany and France great in the 1950s.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In geopolitics, nostalgia is not strategy; it is slow suicide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Spain has one possible destiny and only one: to be an upper-middle power within the only civil power the West has left. Any political project that aspires to govern must accept this reality or it will condemn the country to irrelevance.<\/strong> Everything else \u2014 be it Vox’s iberosphere, the lukewarm multilateralism of the current Government, or a PP that bargains away its European soul for votes from Ferraz<\/strong> \u2014 is noise, poorly digested nostalgia and cheap literature disguised as patriotism.<\/p>\n

Spain needs a School of Hispanic European Realism: Europeanism without complexes or nostalgia, Western civil power with a Spanish accent, reason of State in Brussels and in Madrid. Neither a resentful iberosphere nor a woke global village.<\/p>\n

#RealismoEuropeoHispano #AntonioTejedaEncinas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Antonio Tejeda Encinas , Doctor of European Union Law. President of the Comite Euro Americano de Derecho Digital -CEA Digital Law Euro-American Committee of Digital Law -CEA Digital Law The next government will need statesmanlike Europeanism, not nostalgia. Spain does not deserve to choose between populism and erratic drift December 2025 is no ordinary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_cea_women":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1104],"tags":[],"cea_women":[],"class_list":["post-118417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis-opinion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119282,"href":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118417\/revisions\/119282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118417"},{"taxonomy":"cea_women","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ceadigilaw.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cea_women?post=118417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}