The democracy does not die, although sometimes it may seem so.

While algorithms amplify every institutional crack, data tells another story: Spanish democracy resists where other European ones crumble. As happens with hypochondria, the obsessive gaze on symptoms can end up generating the imagined illness. A society that only examines its failures under an amplifying microscope (networks, partisan noise, constant indignation) runs the risk of seeing a collapse where there is only a stumble of an imperfect system.

The institutional health, like physical health, is not preserved by denying the symptoms, but neither by over-diagnosing terminal illnesses. In the current public debate, the narrative of the decline of democracy has acquired a not negligible weight, a powerful traction pushed by the partial vision that social networks project of political conflicts. Are there evidences that we are facing the decline of democracy?

Despite institutional tensions, Spanish democratic quality surpasses that of European partners as relevant as France (classified classified as ‘Flawed democracy’ with 7.99 points in the Economist Intelligence Unit index) or Italy (7.58). It is located, in fact, at a great distance from Hungary, which Freedom House considers ‘Partially Free’ (65/100). The Spanish constitutional framework has demonstrated operational resilience which international indexes validate as functional and separate from the processes of systemic erosion visible in Central Europe.

The cost of the alternative

Democracies generate, in the long term, more well-being than authoritarian regimes. The comparative study by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (Nobel Prize 2024) shows that, over a 25-year horizon, democratic countries achieve a GDP per capita 20% higher than that of dictatorships. Democracy, they conclude, is not only ethical, it is also economically rational. Hungary illustrates the costs of authoritarianism.

Its annual growth would barely reach 0.7% without European funds, and its score in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) has fallen 15 points in a decade. Comparative democratic indices reveal a sustained trend: Spain remains in the group of consolidated democracies according to V-Dem, Freedom House, and EIU, while Hungary under Viktor Orbán has experienced the most pronounced decline in the EU. Its Liberal Democracy Index fell to 0.32 in 2025. Freedom House downgraded it from Free to Partially Free in 2019, the first case of an EU member state to lose said status.

Poland offers a hopeful counterweight: despite the institutional erosion between 2015 and 2023 under the Law and Justice Party, the change of government in 2023 allowed to recover the V-Dem indicators, demonstrating the capacity for democratic self-correction that still exists within the Union.

The perception gap, trust in crisis

The disconnect between institutional functioning and citizen perception is abysmal today. 69% of Spaniards declare not trusting their national government, a figure that rises to 91% among right-wing voters, according to Eurobarometer 2023. In 2025, the Ipsos survey showed satisfaction with democracy of barely 27%, compared to 52% who declared themselves dissatisfied. Ideological polarization is growing, fueled by media scandals, although the social center continues to bring together 60-70% of the population according to a Funcas study (Forty years later: Spanish civil society, from an initial impulse to a long one).

Distrust is not, however, synonymous with passivity. Although the participation rate in municipal and national elections of the last decade does not suffer significant variations, Spanish civil society shows increasing participatory maturity: the percentage of the population that has participated in demonstrations has doubled in two decades, reaching 38% and placing Spain among the European countries with the greatest social mobilization since 2008. Added to this is its digital leadership: Spain is the second European power in electronic public services, a sign of increasing institutional modernization, although insufficient to reverse political disaffection.

Spain embodies a contemporary paradox: institutions that work (it's clear, not all perfectly), and citizens who feel they don't. The data refutes the collapse, but the narrative of decadence has a danger of its own: it acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Is this perception gap a symptom of a democracy that demands higher levels of participation or is it the result of a political communication incapable of competing with the emotional effectiveness of populism?