The boomers We were born in a kind of European golden age, in what economists call the thirty glorious (three decades of uninterrupted growth, from the end of World War II to the oil crisis, 1945-75). It wasn't just an economic miracle; they were also the decades of the dream of Western European political unity and the construction of the welfare state. After the turbulent 1980s, the Berlin Wall fell, and the European dream spread to the former Soviet satellites. Then came the single currency and the Schengen area, and in the new century, it seemed that Europe was destined to become a single power, perhaps too dependent on the United States for defense, but with standards of progress, democracy, and values that would make it the envy of the planet.
Spain joined the European Union in 1986, and Catalonia boasted of being the spearhead of peninsular Europeanism (Pujol, on his frequent trips to the continent, was never one to lay claim to our Carolingian origins). Faced with the Chinese enigma, the post-Soviet hubbub, and ultra-liberal America, Europe was the promised land, a club everyone wanted to join, where cutting-edge technology and social sensitivity, unity and plurality, the defense of the West and the outstretched hand of the Mediterranean converged.
Perhaps we should have noticed that something was wrong when a power of such stature proved powerless to make its presence felt in regional conflicts in the Balkans, post-colonial Africa, or within the sphere of action of Putin's Russia.
Indeed. The current era is a post-European era, which is expressed in various areas: the economic slowdown, the crisis of the welfare state, the rise of the far right, and the practical abandonment of the dream of political unity due to increasingly accentuated national selfishness; the absence of a clear voice in the face of challenges from Putin's Russia, or the periodic crises in the Maghreb and the Middle East; the premature abandonment of the technological race, championed by Americans and Chinese in fierce competition. And above all, the lack of response to Donald Trump's snobbishness and his unabashed populism, which not only should not fear a commensurate response, but also finds allies in most European countries.
The EU's subservience to Trump and its lukewarm attitude toward Putin and, above all, toward Israel have stripped it of all the moral authority it had accumulated for decades. It's no wonder Netanyahu acts the way he does: he feels free. Trump is a militarist like him, and the voice of Europe is no longer the voice of conscience in global diplomacy. The moral punishment he could inflict on Europe—a veto at the Eurovision Song Contest, to put it mildly—no longer frightens anyone. It doesn't matter if the streets of Barcelona or Paris are filled with Palestinian flags if Europe isn't capable of acting as a world power and taking measures that truly shake up the geopolitical playing field.
For those of us who grew up surrounded by the dream and promise of Europeanism, the near future remains a huge question mark. We believed ourselves destined to be part of one of the world's great economic powers, on the path to becoming a harmonious federal entity, respectful of its diversity (unlike Spain), and willing to play a role in the world that would challenge the cynicism of the dominant superpowers. Of course, we have regressed instead of advancing, and not even the real threat of residualization is prompting a reaction from Europe's top leaders. The disappointment is such that we literally don't know which way to turn.
