Michael Reid, author and journalist, will analyse the current political situation Spain is facing and the challenges ahead, amongst those electing the next prime minister.
Spain’s transition to democracy of 1975-82 was long seen as a success. It ushered in a golden quarter century of economic growth, political stability and social progress as well as the country’s return to the European mainstream. Then came the financial crisis and austerity. In the past 15 years Spain has suffered multiple discontents: political polarisation including waves of populism, the questioning of the transition settlement, and the fragmentation of what had been a two-party system. Many of these discontents are those of democracies everywhere. Spain’s specificites are the relative strength of peripheral nationalisms in Catalonia and the Basque Country and the seemingly unbridgeable depth of the left-right cleavage.
The inconclusive election of July 23rd and its aftermath has highlighted these specificities. To remain in office, Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist prime minister since 2018, may have to concede a controversial amnesty for the Catalan separatist leaders involved in the unconstitutional bid for independence in 2017. Alternatively, the country may face a repeat election in January. Despite this political uncertainty, Spain enjoys underlying socio-economic stability and populist forces are weakening.
Meet our speaker and chair
Michael Reid (Michael Reid) is an author, journalist and speaker, specializing in Latin American, Iberian and international affairs. In 2023 he was appointed as a Visiting Professor in Practice at the School of Public Policy of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
From 1994 until 2023 he was a staff journalist for The Economist. From 2014 to 2022 he wrote the “Bello” column on Latin America and was a senior editor and Spain correspondent; from 1999 to 2013 he was the magazine’s Americas Editor; he was previously its correspondent in Brazil (1996-99); consumer industries correspondent (1994-95) and correspondent in Mexico and Central America (1990-93). He spent most of the 1980s based in Lima covering the Andean region for The Guardian and the BBC.
His new book Spain: The Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Country was published by Yale University Press in March 2023. His previous books include Forgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America (Second edition, 2017) and Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global Power (2014), both published by Yale University Press.
Andrés Rodríguez-Pose (Andrés Rodríguez-Pose) is the Princesa de Asturias Chair and a Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics. He is the Director of the Cañada Blanch Centre LSE. He is a former Head of the Department of Geography and Environment between 2006 and 2009. He is a past-President of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) (2015-2017) and served as Vice-President of the RSAI in 2014. He was also Vice-President (2012-2013) and Secretary (2001-2005) of the European Regional Science Association.
More about this event
The Cañada-Blanch Centre at LSE is the vehicle to achieve the objective of the Fundación Cañada Blanch: developing and reinforcing the links between the United Kingdom and Spain. This is done by means of fostering cutting-edge knowledge generation and joint research projects between researchers in the United Kingdom, and at LSE in particular, on the one hand, and Spain, on the other.
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