Shortly after the outbreak of the Ukraine War, President Joe Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz held a press conference in the White House. A journalist asked the chancellor whether the new Nord Stream II gas pipeline would come into operation. Scholz did not even have time to begin answering when, on a question that concerns only the sovereign states of Germany and Russia, President Biden answered that “of course that gas pipeline will not go into operation”. Europe skimmed over that scene, which made evident what we really are and how far our citizens’ decisions reach. Months later, an explosion in the Baltic Sea finalized the words of the American emperor. Few presidents have been as explicit as a Democrat.
The Great Game
We must acknowledge and be grateful to the current American president for one thing: unvarnished clarity. A clarity that unsettles us. It feels as unattractive as the figure himself. For decades the United States has flouted the international order built on rules of equality between states and the peaceful settlement of disputes at the UN, which they themselves created. Yet throughout that entire period, in Washington they worried about preserving the forms and the veneer of legality, as well as the mask games behind which their empire hid. Today there are no masks. Bread is bread and wine is wine, and Maduro will not be judged in The Hague but in Brooklyn.
“There is a growing sense that those forms with Venezuela or Greenland, so characteristic of the Cuba- era, stem from American haste, in case we enter the spiral of the famous Thucydides Trap.”
Following the “Caracazo,” many analyses emerged about the new cold war and the movements in spheres of influence, backyards, and the control of resources that lie behind this updated version of the Great Game between empires into which we are sinking. 21st-century geopolitics rhymes a lot with the geopolitics of the late 19th century. And, although in recent months the emperor on our side has caught us off guard, that is not a situation that can last forever. Especially as it begins to be perceived that those forms with Venezuela or Greenland, so characteristic of the Cuba-era, are due to American haste, in case we enter the spiral of the famous Thucydides Trap.
To give just one example, as Adrián Díaz, a Spanish industrialist based in China, explains, in 2024 the United States built five large ships, totaling 76,000 gross tons. In that year China built two hundred and fifty (fifty times more) ships, totaling fourteen million gross tons. In other words, the world’s most powerful country on the World Island not only increases day by day its influence and control over Russia (the Heartland), but already has a naval production capacity—and thus resource needs such as oil—far superior to those of the peripheral islands whose control of the world, according to Mackinder, should come through sea power.
It is true that Trump’s clarity is irritating, yes, but it is also useful to us. The emperor does not beat around the bush and is treating us as what we all know we are but did not want to say aloud: mere vassals. Yet the emperor is older and obsessed with his legacy, that the empire should glow again.
The first question is whether that glow means “the American century continues,” as Trump has claimed, or whether it is truly a swan song. The moment of greatest shine for the stars is just before they disappear, and the foundations of the American empire are corroded, hence the haste, nerves, violence—and the forms. In the medium and long term, these forms can turn on him, when others stand up. It is hard to imagine that, in its current state, the United States can manage and finance a cold war and a trade war with China while also waging one with Europe. Unless it can install puppets in our continent to spur a race of gifts and concessions to see which vassal will be closest to the emperor.
The second question is this: beyond Europe and Canada’s stunned reactions, beyond half-measures in reaffirming a world order that no longer exists, beyond Ursula von der Leyen signing a new vassalage in 2025 or continuing to finance a European war in a country that our emperor seems to have granted Lebensraum to the Kremlin, are we willing to react before puppet rulers arrive?
The United States has caught us off guard, but even if the parties Washington sponsors were to win in Europe, European governments would start moving their pieces, since the phrase fuck the EU is a slogan much older than Trump’s appearance in the State Department.
“And in Spain? Assuming we are vassals, it must be clear that being a first- or second-level vassal is not the same as today.”
From the radical right to the European establishment, a move is increasingly evident. Jordan Bardella stated that what happened in Venezuela confirms the need for France to have strategic autonomy to be sovereign. Merz speaks of creating a single continental fund based in Germany (why not in Milan or Barcelona?) to channel private capital from European savers toward European companies rather than the S&P 500.
And in Spain? Accepting that we are vassals, it must be clear that being a first- or second-level vassal is not the same as today. Not only are we in a continent that is becoming peripheral in the new world and economic order, but we are on the continent’s periphery, and living on the periphery means that others decide for us according to their own interests.
A Defense of the Global City
In Spain we have some tools to rethink our place, calmly, with time, and to climb positions within the empire, but also beyond it.
One of these tools is the global city. Beacons that radiate originality and soft power to the world. Gateways for entry (and exit) of flows of capital, brainpower, and cultural phenomena of all kinds. Places where the agglomeration makes the system generate the economies of scale sufficient to develop and finance the welfare, infrastructures, and services our societies demand and where, when things go wrong, we can retain the talent that would otherwise depart for other global cities. But, as I recently explained in this article in El Confidencial, these cities also generate problems of coexistence and economic and social tensions that typically affect the most vulnerable layers and can destabilize the entire political system. Therefore, the question we must answer is whether, in a world of predators, we choose the problems that cities cause or the ones that come from not having them.
I believe that from Spain’s two global cities one can build many things. With will and strategy it is possible to isolate and address the problems, as well as generate and channel wealth from centers to the peripheries because there are resources for it. I think our great national strategy should be to plan how Madrid and Barcelona grow and complement each other: Madrilona. That, instead of the myopia of the continuous and sterile bickering of small politics, is beneficial that they be different in economic terms and in politics, because that creates redundancies and strengths for our system. Only from there can the country be stitched back together with a network of large and small cities that complement our autonomous framework.
“Federalists who want to build in negative terms, by short-circuiting Madrid as a global city, are mistaken and think the solution lies in reintegrating the capital’s capacities”
Also, I think federalists who want to build in negative terms, by short-circuiting Madrid as a global city and thinking the solution lies in tying the capital’s capacities to others while at the same time granting other places greater autonomy (especially fiscal) to defend themselves against that great center, are mistaken. Giving some what is denied to others will only create more resentment and internal frictions within the current system. We will all become poorer and fight each other face to face. And from our quarrels and our amplified weaknesses, other countries and large corporations will take advantage.
For mere competition in a borderless continent but with many fiscal gaps, the Dutch, the Irish, and other Europeans also have an interest that Spain host fewer global cities. And Spain is a country to which geography has condemned it to be relevant in geopolitics through the Strait of Gibraltar and the Canary Islands (deep control of the strait and the maritime traffic that encircles Africa).
Betting against our global cities is a short-sighted mistake because it does not account for the geopolitical factor that is more present than ever. An impoverished Spain is a country with many more tensions and, therefore, with many more questions to be answered by others on their own terms. We would become a proxy country where there have already been terrible proxy conflicts. Because in the 21st century, Caracas was never a city with truly global projection.
Beyond Madrilona
That is why the problems associated with having global cities are preferable to those that come from not having them. And when we speak of global cities, I am not referring only to gigantic metropolises with skyscrapers and financial centers. A global city is an urban system that coordinates flows of capital, information, talent, and regulatory power beyond its borders, not only by its size but by its ability to produce stability in a connected and competitive environment.
“If we are intelligent, Madrid and Barcelona can help finance and shape a cross-border metropolitan region where each city can contribute a different function”
In many cases, these cities are not alone: they function as extended metropolitan regions, networks of cities and nodes that, together, manage global complexity. By the way, a fascinating example is the urban system of the Strait of Gibraltar, where potentially our third global city beyond Madrid and Barcelona could lie. A city with a fundamental objective: to restore a peaceful order based on fair rules.
If we are intelligent, Madrid and Barcelona can help finance and configure a cross-border metropolitan region — including Málaga, Algeciras, Gibraltar, Ceuta, and Tangier — where each city can contribute a distinct function: advanced services and human capital in Málaga; logistics and scale in Algeciras; financial connectivity in Gibraltar; a strategic hinge (as a monitoring and regulatory control hub) in Ceuta; and great port and industrial capacity in Tangier-Med. None would be a global city on its own. But together they generate something more important than a single center: they produce shared geopolitical stability. They create interdependencies so profound that breaking the system would be more costly than maintaining it.
Together they form an architecture of interdependencies that not only drives economic activity but also produces geopolitical stability in one of the world’s most sensitive points, reinforcing the international model that Europe already defends almost alone. And perhaps there lies the key lesson for understanding the importance of 21st-century global cities: power does not reside in controlling territories, but in designing systems that make stability the shared asset.
