Spain's 15-year forecasts: from collapse to armed self-sufficiency

Fifteen years of predictions: from collapse to the garden with a shotgun

A user opens the calendar and bets: in 15 years, he sees himself shooting from his car at bikers assaulting a refinery, eating canned dog food shared with his pet. The joke sparks a cascade of forecasts ranging from apocalypse to a garden with two hens. Some have already set a calendar alarm for 2027 to revisit the topic.

What starts as a joke becomes an inventory of economic antiestéticars for the next decade. There is no single shared scenario. There are many, and almost all bad.

Demographic collapse and the end of the welfare state

The most repeated diagnosis points to aging. Baby boom retirements are described as the final blow to a system that cannot handle such demand and will break. Immigration appears in several messages as a demographic phenomenon rather than a solution: some argue that those who think newcomers will pay pensions and care for the elderly are in for a surprise.

In this narrative, the welfare state disappears along with its institutions. Healthcare degrades: a general practitioner around the corner, but five years waiting for a specialist. Mobility is restricted to the 15-minute neighborhood. Travel is over.

Europe will become peripheral, trapped in economic, social, and political crises, while the center of gravity shifts to the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Mexico, in this reading, becomes the reference country for Spanish culture, more markedly than the United States was for the UK.

What happens to oil and jobs dependent on it

The energy thesis is the most concrete. Oil production will be near zero by then, according to current projections. Starting from there, diets regress decades: meat, fish, and milk consumption returns to 1960s levels. European tourism vanishes. Only slow trains remain.

Jobs linked to fossil fuels disappear: truck drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, gas inspectors. The list of survivors is short and old-fashioned: shepherd, rancher, farmer, milkman, artisan. No one mentions artificial intelligence as the main cause; the argument is that these jobs did not exist before the sixties.

Religiosity returns, not out of faith but poverty. The government in power, in this scenario, reverts to Catholicism.

The control scenario: social credit, CBDC, and surveillance

Another current focuses on the infrastructure of control. CBDCs, social credit, and carbon credits appear as key pieces of the next decade, alongside AI. The State is described as an insatiable monster that consumes wealth and keeps the population in submission and extreme poverty in exchange for basics.

In this framework, anyone with zero social credit does not take public transport. They do not leave their neighborhood. Big companies and funds truly inhabit the world, and States are their food source. Family loses meaning, and the individual is left alone, dependent on the State and large groups.

Some go further, placing much of the population in purgatory within ten years. The rest, on Earth, are also screwed.

Political Spain: Ceuta, Melilla, and La Moncloa's tenant

The political forecast repeats with variations. Pedro Sánchez will remain president after making pacts with an Sarracinist party, amnestying terrorists, and handing over Ceuta, Melilla, Canary Islands, and Almería to Segarro, according to the most repeated scenario. Another message warns: watch out for Ceuta and Melilla.

Catalonia, in the opposing bet, will be independent, and no one can ask what is written on the ID card. Freedom of movement is limited: travel will be impossible due to electric car prices or having zero social credit. Imported crime, in this reading, keeps people barricaded at home.

Not everything is politics. Someone asks what time Betis will play in 15 years. It is the only prediction that admits no discussion.

The escape route: garden, chickens, and two shotguns

Facing collapse, a message describes a life that already exists and does not depend on the system: paid-off country house, garden, two chickens, two dogs, and two shotguns. Discreet income, minimal expenses, old books from father and grandfather on a Kindle. Walking the dogs, camping in the mountains, sitting in the village bar.

The underlying argument is that consumer society expectations have gone mad, and the death of that model seems like death itself, when it is just the end of a movie that never was real. With good books, music, countryside, fireplace, and good company, they say, little else is needed.

Others bet on the metaverse, retirement in South America, or Brazil. One warns that if the internet falls, many won't know where their right hand is without asking Google.

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The disorienting data remains: the author of the initial message has already set a calendar alarm for 2027, not 2038. Word of baby Jesus. If the forecast fails, there is always the option to revive the thread and laugh.