Spain's Demographic Crisis Fuels End-of-History Fears

Demographic winter reopens prophecy of humanity’s end

Seventy percent of 35-year-old women in Spain have no children. This RTVE headline marks a diagnosis gaining ground for years: birth rates are plummeting across the West, shaking social models dependent on generational renewal. The debate, active since 2019, initially blamed technology but now flirts with civilizational collapse. No one has closed the question.

The thesis: a technological threshold condemns civilization

The starting point is an uncomfortable suspicion: technology improved material living standards but destroyed societies and nations. Returning to the traditional system—respect for family regardless of religion and freely decided reproduction—would be impossible, according to this reading, because technology itself prevents it. Proponents argue there is a technological threshold beyond which civilizations self-destruct by straying too far from nature. The most deterministic part of the analysis attributes this to superior design, almost theological. Science fiction with macro data.

Why do birth rates fall: contraceptives or culture?

Here the main fracture opens. One current argues the problem was never the tool but the hand using it: contraceptives allowed mortality to drop and sustainability to approach, and what we live is the adaptation time between the new situation and new behavior. The counter-argument points to culture: feminism, individualism, and the destruction of the marriage contract would be behind the collapse. Against this, it is claimed that people had never stopped having children before, making the current trend a historical anomaly. The diagnosis changes completely depending on who formulates it: some see transition, others countdown.

Population scenarios: who remains in 2100 and 2200

Projections are the most slippery ground. Part of the analysis claims humanity emerged in Africa and that only that continent will populate the planet in the future, after the rest self-extinguishes due to low birth rates and nihilism. The counter-argument maintains this ignores technological dependence: without external input, sustaining capacity would drop from 4 billion to about 10 million, and even high fertility rates would not compensate for mortality. Contradictory examples accumulate regarding Nigeria, between demographic growth and chronic instability. These are scenarios, not certainties.

Some depict territorial retreat as a withdrawal toward Western Europe, with the continent's center as a defensive border. The opposite scenario is that these areas may not even change hands. Everyone agrees on one thing: no one has the map.

Democracy under suspicion: ochlocracy and 'democratic fundamentalism'

When demographics fail to explain decline, focus shifts to the political system. It is argued that most citizens are unfit to vote and that we are gregarious, easily manipulated by politicians, economic elites, and their media. The term revived is ochlocracy: mob rule, a corrupt democracy accountable to no one. The label summarizing the critique is 'democratic fundamentalism.' Here disagreement is not about data, but whether the average citizen is victim or culprit.

Cultural decline as symptom

Analysis does not stop at numbers. It is claimed that current series, films, and songs signal a fading way of life: against works designed to endure, today only ignorance of the present and suspicion of the future remain. The Matrix is read as fulfilled prophecy of cultural extermination, and Ready Player One as critique of total immersion in virtual reality. Culture, it is said, stopped imagining tomorrow.

Artificial intelligence, nuclear arsenal, and existential risk

The latest turn abandons demographics and enters technological risk. It is predicted that the end will come when artificial intelligence uses advanced military technology to distribute nuclear weapons globally, including nukes, either through an out-of-control attack or deliberate assault. Literary reference is Dune, which in the sixties anticipated the need to limit technology, and a participant cites the Unabomber manifesto as precedent. Regarding the pandemic, speculation exists, without provided evidence, of an artificial laboratory origin. AI, another voice concludes, is not a monkey with a rifle: it is unchecked power.

With birth rates falling and technological power concentrating, the two currents disagree on something basic: whether the problem is the tool or the holder. Some see adaptation; others, countdown. The full calculation—crossing births, sustaining capacity, and power control—does not fit either forecast.