Experts warn for severe demographic crisis in Spain
Children waiting outside their school in Madrid. Photo EPA, Juan Carlos Hidalgo
Southern Europe
Spain's population is in a severe crisis. And politicians ignore it, Mariano Martinez Aedo warns.
Every five minutes, a couple divorces. Also, the population shrinks so quickly that more than 270,000 children should be born each year to compensate for the deaths, Martinez Aedo warns. He is the President of the Family Policy Institute.
And instead of seriously tackling this problem, the Spanish government takes families less and less into consideration and ignores them constantly, he points out to ZENIT.
Devastating
Maria Menedez de Zubillaga, the President of the Association of Large Families of Madrid (AFNM), agrees with this. She, too, sees a significant lack of commitment from the political world in Spain. "It is worrying", she says to ZENIT. "We are witnessing the demographic winter that leaves behind empty schools, hospitals without newborn babies and devastating economic consequences."
At the same time, both the Family Policy Institute and the AFNM believe that it is not too late to reverse the trend and combat the demographic crisis in Spain. However, that requires the Spanish government to make families a political priority", says Menedez de Zubillaga. In addition, Spanish society should realise that co-parenting and surrogacy "are not only aberrant but also border on perversity and immorality."
Planet
Having children is the best thing that happens to parents in their lives, the President of AFNM adds. "A child is not a burden; it is the best, and the planet is not damaged by having children. Instead, children take care of the planet."
Martínez-Aedo agrees. "Without family, there is no future, and without children, there will be hardly any hope for a country doomed to the bankruptcy of the State of Welfare."
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