Is the System Deliberately Making Spaniards Dumber?

Has the Spanish Population Been Made into 'Zascandiles'?

Is the average Spaniard dumber than their grandparents? This question lies at the heart of a recent controversy that has moved from generational nostalgia to the most convoluted theories. The starting premise: with so much technology, comfort, and convenience, character, resilience, and independent thinking have been lost. This is not a new diagnosis, but the word used to label it is.

From Nostalgia to 'They've Made Us Dumb on Purpose'

The narrative begins by idealizing parents and grandparents as people with a sense of life and reality. The response is quick: they weren't all that great either. "There was a bit of everything back then," one person notes; another recalls that people were already dim-witted before. The lukewarm consensus: life "felt more real" back then, now it's meaningless drifting.

The shift occurs when discontent turns into suspicion. Some argue that the system doesn't just brutalize, but seeks something deeper: to raise unautonomous beings. Another current claims that television and computers incorporate technology to hypnotize people. None of this has proven backing, but it circulates as easily as the generational reproach: the older generation would have voted en bloc for their pensions at the expense of the youth's future.

Blame, Shared and Always External

Some argue that the supposed lack of judgment doesn't distinguish generations: neither boomers, nor Generation X, nor millennials, nor the youngest are exempt. And some attribute it to supposed political and media control that also provides no evidence.

That the same lament is repeated in every era invites doubt about the diagnosis. Perhaps they haven't made us dumber: we've been writing the same complaint with different spelling for decades.