Why Italy Doesn't View Spain as Spain Views Portugal

The map disproves the thesis that Italy looks down on Spain

Italy is at most 630 kilometers wide from east to west. Spain stretches over 1,000 kilometers from western Galicia to eastern Catalonia. With these two figures, half the thesis collapses: the idea that Italians look down on Spain just as Spain looks down on Portugal. The other half persists through sheer repetition, as this debate has gone on for nearly three years without either side shifting its position.

The thesis: Spain is to Italy what Portugal is to Spain

The argument rests on four pillars. The first is southernness: Spain extends further north than Portugal, and Italy further north than Spain, so the ladder of southerners and northerners supposedly repeats upward. The second cites internal genetic diversity, supposedly greater across Italy's extremes than among Spanish subgroups. The third is economic: Italy is part of the continent's industrial and financial heart, while Spain remains on the periphery. The fourth crosses colonial history and phenotype, claiming five centuries of migration with the Americas left a mark on Spaniards' appearance.

This is the part that holds up least. Critics point out there are no appreciable Amerindian genetic traces in the Spanish population and that the parallel with Portugal is tenuous, as African ancestry in the neighbor country is not homogeneous nor distributed as the stereotype suggests. Post-dinner genetics has always been a risky sport.

630 kilometers vs. 1,000: the figure that breaks the parallel

The width comparison hurts the most. Italy does not exceed 630 kilometers from east to west at any point; Spain covers more than 1,000. Anyone defending the parallel based on a larger and more varied Italy loses the second axis. A country can be smaller and win in one dimension; never in both. It is elementary accounting applied to a map, and sometimes that is enough.

Interestingly, the starting point, north-south extent, does not decide much either. Italy is more elongated vertically, yes, but that does not place it further north than some believe: Galicia is at the same latitude as Tuscany, and Barcelona at that of Rome. The geographic ladder holds together with pins.

Eleven Italians in Spain for every Spaniard in Italy

Where the conversation becomes empirical is in flows. The ratio cited is striking: for every Spaniard living in Italy, there are eleven Italians living in Spain. And not because wages are higher here. The movement goes in the opposite direction from what the hierarchy attributed to Italians would suggest: if they believed themselves so superior and us so peripheral, the flow should be reversed. There are firsthand accounts in that direction, of Italians settled here who do not want to return and some who went back to their city and within months tried to reverse course.

The nuance comes from another flank: much of the Italian population residing in Spain are not Italians from Italy, but descendants of Italian emigration to Latin America who arrive with EU passports. Statistics measure citizenships, not origins.

Italy believes itself the center of the world, and admits no discussion

Several voices agree on the diagnosis: the supposed superiority toward Spain is not specific. It is exercised equally toward French, Germans, or British. The idea of being at the center of civilization, art, and good taste is absorbed from childhood and is not refuted by data, because it is not a judgment but an act of faith. The most repeated formulation — Italians as the chosen people, but with reasons — summarizes the mechanism well.

Hence the resemblance some highlight with another country: ego, swagger, ability to sell themselves as a global product. Gastronomy, design, cinema, music. The most common comparison is with Argentines in Europe, and not always as a compliment. Although those who have traveled extensively there add an uncomfortable detail for both sides: remove pizza and pasta from one side and paella from the other, and the cuisine looks suspiciously similar.

The real mirror is France, not Italy

Against the initial thesis stands an alternative gaining adherents: the condescending relationship attributed here to Italians is exactly what France maintains with Spain. The cultured and well-intentioned French person reproduces toward us an attitude that fits the one Spain holds toward Portugal. With an addition: France bears no national grudge, because its 20th-century traumas overshadow everything. French cultural enmity is with the Anglo, not the Iberian.

Sicily, Naples, and Milan were Spanish

The other great counterweight is historical. Italy is a country of less than 150 years; 400 years ago, Spain controlled Sicily, Naples, Milan, the Palatinate, and Flanders. Presenting Spain as Italy's poor cousin requires forgetting which peninsula ruled the other. And there is a second forgetting: southern Italy was not always the poor brother. Before unification, it was no worse than the north; industry was built up there later, partly due to proximity to the rest of Europe. The cliché of the backward south is a child of unification, not geography.

The underlying question remains, closed by neither side: if cuisines are similar, languages are understood halfway, and cities copy each other, where does the need to place one above the other come from? Perhaps, precisely, from being too similar.