🇪🇸 Spain

Spain's median age of 45.5 hides the real collapse: the under-30 cohort is hollowed out. The 'generación perdida' of post-2008 emigrated hundreds of thousands to London, Berlin, and Amsterdam — the most mobile, the most educated, the AI-ready. Youth unemployment trend has surged from 31.6% to 40.2% in 12 months, meaning the remaining young are increasingly stuck. Birth rate sits at 1.16, well below the 2.1 replacement, while old-age dependency at 31.2% will hit 50%+ by 2050. The 'receiving' countries got Spain's best and brightest; Spain got their parents' pensions bill.

Spain's National AI Strategy exists mostly as a PDF. The Sánchez government launched the 'Spain Startup Act' and some sandbox regulation, but execution is starved by political dysfunction — coalition management, Catalan amnesty theater, and corruption investigations consume the oxygen. There is no serious retraining infrastructure for the white-collar displacement that AI will bring to Spain's tourism, banking, and public administration workforces. The 'Digital Spain' agenda is green-spaghettied across ministries with no industrial strategy behind it.