Spain's hypergamy thesis runs into the foreign mirror

The complaint about Spanish hypergamy clashes with the migration experience

One participant says he has travelled through eight countries in South America and describes how, upon returning to Spain, he notices a sense of rejection from Spanish women compared to Paraguayan, Argentine or Uruguayan women. The anecdote, posted on a current affairs forum, sums up the frustration running through the thread: the conviction that in Spain hypergamy —the tendency to pair up with someone of higher status— has reached a level not seen anywhere else in the world.

The starting point is an observation about Instagram: foreign men who are «unremarkable, mediocre and even ugly and broke» appear paired with attractive women from their own country. In Spain, by contrast, it is taken for granted that any attractive woman aspires to a «hunky tanned tattooed stud». The international comparison thus becomes the centrepiece of a venting session that mixes perception, personal experience and a good dose of mythology.

From the Italian «creep» to the rejection attributed to Spanish women

Nostalgia soon appears. In the nineties, one participant recalls, Spaniards laughed at Italians because they «hit on anything that moved». Now the mockery has been reversed: it is the Spaniard who complains about the pickiness of Spanish women. The evolution of the joke serves to illustrate a paradigm shift in which the complaint about the dating market has become a cliché.

The comparison with other countries does not stop at South America. Another message points out that not even South Korea reaches the level of «snobbishness» of Spanish women, to whom it attributes an attitude of rejection described with a derogatory expression. The harshness of the judgement does not stop the author himself from admitting that only the women of Buenos Aires seemed comparable to him. The migration experience becomes the main source of authority: those who have lived abroad have something to say.

Birth rates as a battleground

The thread drifts towards demographics. Hypergamy appears as «the real cause of the low birth rate», a thesis put forward without data and countered by another participant with a field observation: in the park and at the parents' association, it is precisely the «proge» who have children, while traditionalists and conservatives, he claims, barely have any offspring. The dispute over who has more children becomes a duel of narratives in which neither side provides figures.

Irony also has its place. One message attributes the phenomenon to the «Soros and Pedro sánchez plan» to wipe out Spaniards through hypergamy. It is the caricature of a conspiracy theory used as a joke in the thread, but it hints at how far the frustration is channelled through grandiose explanations.

The dating market, without data

The conversation moves between personal experience and generalisation. One participant recounts having been in a relationship for years with a Paraguayan woman and reduces his experience with Spanish women to «two or three hook-ups» and the risk of running into «the local nutcase». Another points out that immigration, by introducing «500 new guys a day», alters the dating market. These are impressions, not statistics.

The only attempt to put a price on the matter comes in a proposal: with 100 euros and a phone, it can be «sorted out» this very afternoon; with 200, «you can bang a model». The hyperbole serves to illustrate the idea that the sensual and romantic market has an economic component that hypergamy distorts.

The conclusion that imposes itself is that the initial thesis —there is not so much hypergamy in the rest of the world— still lacks data to back it up. What there is, is a sum of perceptions, travels and comparisons which, admittedly, do reflect a real frustration. The question left hanging is whether that frustration responds to a structural change in the dating market or to an optical illusion fuelled by social media.