The Snake’s Egg in the State

I write these lines from Buenos Aires, in the heart of the southern hemisphere’s winter — a place where the state still functions at its most elemental level, even amid profound challenges. What I see here illustrates a reality that should alarm Spaniards too: when autocratic-leaning models of power hold sway for too long, institutions don’t remain intact — they become organised ruins. That’s precisely the moment Spain now finds itself in under Pedro Sánchez.

A deep problem afflicts governments that cling to power through semidemocratic means — the kind of tactical manoeuvres more typical of 21st-century socialist machines than of a stable liberal democracy. Their legacy is not merely economic; it is the colonisation of the state itself. Patience, precision, and patience: every ministry, every deputy directorate, every board and every last low-level office has been systematically filled with loyalists whose allegiance lies not with the nation or society, but with the party or the individual who appointed them.

To understand what that means in practice, consider the everyday mechanics of governance. In Argentina, when a newly appointed official complained that no one would even bring him a coffee, exaggeration became a metaphor. But that was because entire agencies, from secretariats to sub-departments, had been captured by partisans. In Spain, the pattern repeats: officials loyal first to political masters and second to the state have hollowed out the institutional core.

The metaphor of The Snake’s Egg is borrowed from Ingmar Bergman — a work where the future horrors of a society can already be discerned from what’s incubating inside the shell. In the Spanish context, the imagery is apt: from the outside it’s already possible to see what Sánchez’s tenure is bringing forth. Once a European leader of promise, Sánchez now behaves less like a consensual statesman and more like a South American strongman operating in a semi-democratic twilight.

Under his watch, while the quality of life for most Spaniards declines, Spain’s standing in the world has been reduced to something light and easily dismissed. His government does not simply accumulate debt — it stretches it to the limit, ensuring that he will not be the one to pay the consequences; his successor will. The ostensible achievements celebrated in colourful headlines — rankings of “best financed” or “most generous” — are illusions. Sánchez does not shoulder the bill; he merely prolongs it.

But what will be truly hard to reverse is not fiscal imbalance. Spain is a wealthy nation. Economic adjustments can be made within a decade. The real problem will be “decontaminating” the state — dismantling the vast, deeply embedded structure of loyalists that has grown up like geological strata since 2018, when Sánchez’s administrations began annually planting layers of tens of thousands of politically aligned public servants. No change of government can instantly undo that.

For decades, Spanish politics coexisted with corruption at the top — the familiar mud of the old bipartisan survival pact. But the current threat is worse: it is corruption from below, the kind that arises when officials prioritise party loyalty above duty to citizens. The office ceases to serve the public and instead serves the political protectors who put them there.

Spain could learn a harsh lesson from looking at Argentina’s mirror more closely. The scale is different, of course, but the parallels are disturbing. Just as in Buenos Aires — where entrenched networks defend themselves and mobilise both inside and outside institutions — Spain now confronts a machine designed not to govern but to impede any successor and maximise impunity.

Sánchez has only guaranteed his position until 2027 at best, but he is accelerating — not retreating — so that the structure he leaves behind becomes ever more entrenched. The turbulence ahead could force a crash landing. Or perhaps we will endure another complacent summer while the state keeps mutating into a more militant, machine-like entity