Spain's European Identity Shaken By Debt Crisis

At a foreign policy conference at Spain's Ministry of Defense last week, the senior military officer presiding at the meeting opened his remarks by thanking "those who have come from Europe." Younger members of the audience rolled their eyes.

"It's a generation thing," says Jose Ignacio Torreblanca, 41, who attended the meeting as director of the Madrid office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. "Paris and Berlin are only an hour and a half away. You don't even have to change your currency or show your passport. But older people sometimes still talk of Spain as 'here' and Europe as 'over there.' "

That self-conscious attitude dates from Spain's postwar years under the rule of dictator Francisco Franco. The country's development was stalled, even as Europe as a whole marched steadily ahead. It was only after Franco's death in 1975 that Spain began to emerge from its political and economic isolation. Click here for more.