The Hispanic Dividend

The Objective, October 12, 2025

Gloria Estefan, a Cuban exile since childhood and the granddaughter of an Asturian, gave a massive concert in Madrid on October 5th, 2025. At that event, wealthy criollos from the upscale Salamanca district reconnected with the poor from the "Latin Triangle." They stood in contrast to one another, but their youth and joy clashed even more starkly with the melancholy of the native passers-by.

If it wants to survive, Spain could certainly use this demographic infusion. In 2025, out of every hundred residents, twenty were born abroad, or twenty-five if we include those born here with at least one foreign-born parent—a figure that has increased five-fold since the start of the century. Relatively speaking, this demographic shift has caused fewer conflicts than in other European countries, from Germany to France, the UK or Sweden. This lower level of conflict is explained by Hispanidad—the shared Hispanic heritage we celebrate today—even if we do so in our own way: some with contempt and others with a more elegant but no less biased disdain. Most people, however, fail to appreciate its value.

But we all benefit from the fact that nearly half of Spain’s immigrants are Latin American. We not only share the language, but many other cultural elements, from festivals to codes of courtesy. For this reason, Spaniards express greater affection and trust toward Latin Americans than toward other groups, and as many as 73% of us believe they have fewer difficulties integrating. This is not just perception, since that cultural closeness makes coexistence easier and aids integration. The proof is that, for whatever reason—discrimination not excluded—immigrants of Hispanic origin exhibit employment rates very close to those of the native population and are underrepresented in the prison population. By contrast, those from other continents show employment gaps of up to twenty-eight percentage points relative to natives and are overrepresented in prisons.

Our fishing fleets provide another indication—no less revealing for being sector-specific—of how different immigration models work and, above all, of the need to manage them. The sea places fishermen in extreme conditions that force them to cooperate for months in a confined, dangerous, and exhausting space. That strain exacerbates conflicts, imposes strict rules of coexistence, and leaves no room for subterfuge. Notably, faced with the growing shortage of native-born sailors, many skippers and shipowners have no qualms about hiring crew from almost any country or culture, but they are also keenly aware of the need to manage their crews’ coexistence.

Let’s learn to actively manage this diversity (that “almost anyone” included); today we only do it halfway. Spain has been applying rules that promote selective immigration, but in a contradictory manner. On one hand, we favor culturally kindred immigration through the free entry of EU citizens, specific agreements with certain Hispanic American countries, and a fast track to Spanish citizenship after two years of continuous legal residence (instead of ten). Since 1954, those born in Ibero-American countries and the Philippines have enjoyed this fast track; since 1990, so have those from Equatorial Guinea, Andorra, Brazil, and Portugal; and since 2015, the Sephardic Jews originally from Spain. Moreover, we generally do not ask them to renounce their original nationality.

However, conversely, we harm this cultural affinity when we prevent the children of those Latin American immigrants from being schooled in their mother tongue, thereby condemning them to an entirely avoidable educational delay estimated at between one term and a full academic year. Think of the exclusion this delay causes in families who migrate in search of upward mobility and who, for the most part, are already starting out on the lowest rungs of society.

It should come as no surprise, then, that according to Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE), Latin Americans (including Brazilians) account for more than half of foreign residents in Madrid, but only about one-third in Catalonia. In Catalonia, immigration of Maghrebi and sub-Saharan origin is more prevalent, and over half of Pakistanis in Spain are concentrated there, with Barcelona’s Raval neighborhood already turned into “Little Lahore.” In the vain attempt to preserve its identitarian purity, Catalonia is creating an increasingly fragmented and conflict-ridden society (as for the Basque Country, it’s best not to even mention it).

If we want to remedy this, the solution within our reach lies in guiding the blending of Hispanic cultures—starting by making it easier. We need only to reinforce the measures that already promote it and eliminate those that hinder it.

Furthermore, by doing so we will correct the historical mistake we made by abandoning the indigenous Americans to the criollo elites. Those elites, upon independence, were able to exploit them with no counterbalance whatsoever and without equipping themselves with the institutions that would have allowed them to create prosperous societies, following the example of the United States.

Some still idealize General Riego’s pronunciamiento (military revolt), which in 1820 aborted the expedition that was attempting to suppress the American rebellions. In light of the results, perhaps it only benefited the Anglo-Argentine interests that apparently financed it. There is still debate about this last point, but there is little doubt that, by cutting off all aid to the royalist armies, it wiped out the last hope of restoring the modest protection that the royal administration had provided to indigenous people—whose descendants today have to emigrate to Spain.

Distant history, but a pertinent one: it reminds us that, alongside the dividend, there is a historical debt that we must indeed repay; but not for the conquest, rather for the abandonment.