Hesperia Manifesto: Iron Surgeon, Mass Deportations and End of Pensions

Hesperia, the movement demanding a dictator for Spain

What is Hesperia and who is behind it? A text published in October 2025 under the signature Hesperian Manifesto, on the Foro Hesperia website, proposes transforming Spain through an "iron surgeon": a prominent figure, a dictator, a providential figure who takes the reins and surgically removes what it describes as chronic tumors. The proposal is not presented as an aesthetic position, but as a response to a supposed dying Spain in which no one reaches their potential. The document declares itself independent of inherited ideological blocks: a Hesperian, it argues, can be republican and not communist, nationalist and not Catholic.

That eclecticism is, in reality, a sum of pieces. The manifesto rejects restoring old systems and advocates looking to the 21st century, while, according to its critics, embracing a pagan imaginary and an idealization of the Iberian past. And it demands leadership that asks no one's permission.

An "iron surgeon" no one knows where he comes from

The operational core of the text is the figure of the savior. It is described using medical vocabulary: extirpate tumors, break deformed bones, and reposition them so they fuse again. Pain and sacrifice, it says, to reach the ideal Spain. The metaphor demands a specific surgeon, and there appears the first hole: the manifesto does not name anyone.

That absence does not go unnoticed, even among those who share part of the diagnosis. Some object that no nation is saved by an elect, that caudillismo is characteristic of second or third-rate countries and that it never happens. From that same shore, it is conceded that the text's ethnonationalist base will gain ground, while the rest is dismissed as accessory.

Post-Christian and proud: the clash with Catholic tradition

The manifesto does not hide its distance from religion. From its orbit, it asks what is luciferine about believing that Spaniards have the right to exist without diluting themselves, and what is not, converting to a religion in which one does not believe because it fits better with an ideology. The counterargument from Catholic positions arrives quickly.

The opposing argument maintains that the Spain that this movement claims to want to defend was built precisely by Christians, with its network of dioceses, parishes, and churches dismantled throughout the 19th century. Renouncing that history, it is argued, is renouncing the only thing that remains. Some declare that whoever is born Christian and renounces it is throwing away their greatest advantage.

Pensions, deportations, and the package that does generate rejection

The economic chapter is the one that raises the most blisters. The complete abolition of pensions, including survivor pensions, appears among the proposals attributed to the movement, and the criticism is immediate: the widow who lives on her pension has the ground taken from her. The alternative that emerges in the conversation is to reduce pensions above a certain amount, not demolish the entire system. It is argued that the retirement age of 65 was set in the United Kingdom in 1925 and that life expectancy has grown 23 years since then.

On immigration, the text demands mass deportations and presents the arrival of foreign population as a threat to the existence of the Spanish people themselves, as well as a way to precarize the labor market. It is, by far, the part with the least nuance and the one that structures the rest of the narrative.

Young people against the system, or politics as a gesture

The manifesto presents itself as the voice of an unrepresented youth, facing a State that, it says, has declared war on them. It appeals to action over moderation, which it qualifies as a placebo: losing a hand would be fine if the arm is saved. It is an effective mobilizing framework and also its most fragile point.

The rebuttals point to the generational gap as a trap. In an aging country, posing politics as a struggle of young people against older people is, it is argued, a calculation error: the last generation with sufficient demographic strength to put the system in difficulty would be those born in the seventies. And some go further: if the movement stays with the bombastic phrase, it will end up as marginal folklore.

The accounts no one has made

The most uncomfortable is missing. From the movement, slogans hardly emerge and no funding proposals: how a State without pensions is sustained, how much a large-scale deportation would cost, or where the money comes from. The calculation on retirement, with its 65 years and its 23 years of gained life expectancy, is the only quantitative exercise that appears in all the material.

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Waiting for the surgeon. When he arrives, if he comes, he will find that no one has written down who pays for the operation.