A study conducted by the Federación de Gremios de Editores de España earlier this year, however, paints a starkly different picture of readership in Spain. According to the study, the percentage of the overall Spanish population that reads for pleasure has increased every year since 2017, reaching 66% in 2025, the highest level ever recorded. Meanwhile, the percentage of the population between 15 and 24 that reads for pleasure rose to just over 76%, a rate that (in the words of the authors of the study) “helps dispel one of the false myths that persists in our [Spanish] society, which holds that young people do not read.” Spanish readers are not immune to the transformations associated with the literacy crisis: the rise of social media platforms, the proliferation of video and audio content, the advent of generative AI. And from speaking to academic friends in Madrid, my sense is that the deterioration of some of the skill sets that Horowitch identifies in her piece can also be detected in Spanish universities. Neverthless, the evidence suggests that, at the least for now, Spain has not only staved off the decline in reading that we’ve seen in the United States but modestly increased readership across the generational divide.^[2]

From a longer piece by Jeffrey Lawrence. Surely this raises some important questions. How can phones have killed Anglo reading but not Spanish? Is this linked to Anglo pessimism? In Spain, even the young people read. This is from the report Jeffrey quotes:

The data shatters the myth that young people don’t read. 75.3% of the population between 14 and 24 years old reads books in their free time.

Good news for James Marriott. Democracy is safe in Spain!