What has become of European social democracy? It is shocking that Spain is one of its last strongholds. What is the reason for this generalized decline that is giving life to the expansion of the far-right and which finds no compensation in the space to the left of socialists, who are still experiencing this situation with even more bewilderment? Are we to understand that the role of social democracy was one of counterbalance during industrial capitalism, within the framework of European democracies of the last century, and that now it cannot find its place in the new financial and digital capitalism? It is evident that the meaning of words and things changes, and that the mutation of the criteria of truth and virtue that shape each moment has an impact on the ways a society organizes itself. But the role of social democracy was fundamental, and its weakness is noticeable. And what is disturbing is that, while social democracy fades, blatant forms of authoritarian impulses are gaining ground everywhere, with a clear shift towards right-wing radicalization that exponentially propagates neo-fascist impulses.

1. Social democracy must be resurrected. It is a slogan of the moment, in full struggle with a rising neo-fascism, which emanates from the melancholy of the distant times of Europe's rebirth after the Second World War, the so-called "Trente Glorieuses" (1945-1973), which encompass the apotheosis of the sixties, when everything seemed possible. But how should we read it? In the positive version, recognition of citizens' rights, more social spending, dignification of work, and housing for all as shared goals. However, the repetition, as if it were a litany, becomes suspicious at a time when a large part of the citizenry feels stuck or out of play under the weight of constant acceleration, which with its destructive effects actually hinders any sketch of hope. A time when oppression is transferred to machines at the expense of labor, considerably increasing the concentration of power in the hands that manage them. In fact, it is the nostalgia for a time that was actually shorter and more precarious than we have believed, around the United States, Great Britain, France, and liberated Germany, which dressed up the ephemeral myth of a more or less controlled capitalism, with somewhat idealized levels of equity. Frustration and melancholy are now chained together as, with the transition from industrial to digital and financial capitalism, everything seems upside down in the hands of economic and media powers with enormous polluting capacity.

In 2010, the late British historian Tony Judt questioned the malaise that was engulfing our world after the great crisis of 2008 in an essay that, sixteen years later, remains relevant. The book, which in the Catalan version was titled The World Is Not Enough, began with a resounding warning: "There is something profoundly wrong with our current way of life." After recalling that "we cannot continue living like this," in a world so unjust and unequal, and noting that, however, "we seem incapable of conceiving alternatives," the essay advocated a return to social democracy, which is the policy that has historically brought the most well-being and equality to European society and which Judt considered, without idealizing it, as "the best option available." Of course, as long as it served to change the current state of affairs. In fact, the book concluded with a paraphrase of a well-known statement by Marx: "So far, philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."

In a time of widespread capitulation by the European left—they don't know, they don't answer—and the continent's resounding acceleration toward the far right, Pedro Sánchez seems determined to be the last social democrat. For some time now, he has been practically the only European voice made heard in the face of Donald Trump's onslaught and provocations. And now, just as the right-wing parties here—the PP and Junts—have rejected in the Catalan Parliament the decree that includes the increase in pensions, the president of the Spanish government proposes the extraordinary regulation of all undocumented immigrants who have been in Spain for five months, provided they can prove their status, granting them a residence permit. It seems that there are currently 840,000 immigrants in an irregular situation. And it is perfectly normal in a democratic system to resolve their situation: not only for ethical and humanitarian reasons, which would be sufficient if we weren't all so trapped by our own culture and that of others, but also for basic economic and social integration reasons.

In this era where the spectacle revolves around Trump, his patrons, and his epigones, the question is rarely asked: what about the left? The rightward shift of the right, which brazenly shirks the responsibilities demanded by a democratic society, is generating a conservative radicalization that blurs democratic right-wing politics and brings veritable phantoms to power. But at the same time, another reality that threatens the left-right dialectic upon which European democracies rely seems to go unnoticed: the erosion of social democracy, a cry no one wants to hear. Sánchez's PSOE is one of the last holdouts, at least in its outward appearance, and yet its practice is often closer to the demands of economic liberalism than to the values ​​of classical social democracy. And if we look at the rest of the left, the erosion is becoming increasingly evident.

Is social democracy today simply an obsolete relic of the good old days of Europe's reconstruction after the Second World War? Expressed this way, the question has a provocative component, but it is ultimately legitimate. Analyses of the increasingly clear rise of the far right in the West (the rest of the world is currently operating with other ideological oppositions) modestly conceal the collapse of a social democracy that is no longer explicitly claimed by even the social democrats themselves. There are words in and words out, and this is one of them: just think of the language of the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia or that of the Spanish government. Neither Isla nor Sánchez use the word regularly. Reviled with wrinkled noses by the parody left that believes well-being is a capitulation of higher moral ideals, and also harassed by the extremists who have transformed resentment into a political program and historical amnesia into a long-term strategy, social democracy is going through one of its worst moments. It seems that for many people, social democracy is an exhausted political project, something from bygone days incompatible with the impoverishment of the middle class. There are even those who hold it responsible for a substantial share of the 2007/2008 crisis, having opted for constant and unlimited public debt: a kind of second bubble parallel to that of certain private productive sectors.