The State of Alcoholism in Spain covering its Epidemiological and Aetiological Aspects
Authors: Fernandez Francisco Alonso 
Published: January 2006

The increase in alcoholism in Spain is almost entirely limited to psychological alcoholic addictions. The “take off” commenced in the 1945–50 period and now involves 9 per cent of the population or 1 1/2 million people.

The incidence of female alcoholism compared to male sufferers has dramatically altered from 1:9 in 1954 to 1:4 at present, 20 per cent of Spaniards do not drink.

The wide spectrum of alcoholism embraces two essentially dangerous features:

Abuse in the consumption of alcohol on which there is almost always psychological or biological dependence.

The risk sooner or later of becoming drinkers, suffering from alcoholism or chronic alcoholism. Three precise types of alcoholic exist:

(A) The psychically ill, who drinks to modify symptoms, (B) The psychologically addicted alcoholic, who desires to escape from an environmental situation, and (C) The excessive heavy drinker, who is conditioned by environmental factors.

The constellation in the personality matrix induced by feelings of isolation and loneliness in the structure of a personality that over‐represses itself is the essential actiological agent in the establishment of psychological alcoholic addiction. Contributing factors are: Subcultural changes due to progressive mutation caused by the onset of the technological revolution with related changes in the Spanish subcultural way of life accompanied by changes in the environmental framework and outlook.

These changes commenced in the North in the late 1940s and subsequently the South and East, heralding an incidence of alcoholism varying from 5 to 20 per cent associated increasingly with a high index of isolation, decline in the habit of communication, increase in the spirit of competition and rivalry, breakdown of the family structure by uprooting the centre of gravity of family influence from the patriarchate to the filiarchate, combined an ill‐developed mechanism for coping with frustration in a poor family climate predisposed to alcoholism. The technological revolution with the associated auto‐repression and bureauocratic manipulation in this environment brings deterioration in the integration of the personality, and the ensuing conditions provide a seed bed for the germination of factors predisposing an individual to alcoholism.

In Spain alimentary drinking has given way in the present permissive melieu to pharmological drinking (at any time) and then increasingly to psychological addiction thanks to the mass media, in particular Spanish television, where drinking is projected as the “done thing”.

Female alcoholism starts later than the male, progresses more rapidly and is more disastrous to the conjugal bond.

Psychological alcoholic addiction in the male occurs in the following age distributions: 18 per cent between the age of 10–14, 54 per cent between the age of 15–19, 14 per cent between the age of 20–24, 11 per cent between the age of 25–29, and 5per cent over the age of 30.

Alcoholism in Spain is classless and ubiquitous, occurs independent of normal living standards or economic well‐being. The enormous increase is due to changes induced by a technological revolution that has over‐reached itself and can cause disruptions of a psychocultural and psychological nature.