Boomers are pointed at time and again: homeowners, beneficiaries of stable jobs (or former jobs), and today (or in the years just around the corner) recipients of pensions that, in many cases, guarantee them a dignified old age. Facing them, millennials and Gen Z seem to survive on an uneven playing field, trapped in impossible rents, precarious salaries, and unstable jobs. With these premises, a narrative of confrontation has been built, of generational trenches. Some reproach privileges, others respond with accusations of fragility and lack of effort. The result: a constant noise that feeds headlines, TV debates, online discussions, and even bar conversations.
This discourse found willing loudspeakers some time ago. Influencer Víctor Domínguez, known as Wall Street Wolverine, went so far as to call retirees “the most selfish group in Spain” and “the biggest burden keeping the country from moving forward.” He hasn’t been the only one: ultraliberal columnists and commentators often lash out at pensioners. And from other ideological approaches, boomers are also presented as a generation settled into comfort—an image portrayed, among others, in journalist Analía Plaza’s book La vida cañón. La historia de España a través de los boomers.
On the opposite side, criticism of young people has also been plentiful. More than a decade ago, Montserrat Nebrera popularized the label “crystal generation” to describe the youngest millennials and Generation Z. Since then, the expression has been repeated like a slogan: supposedly overprotected, uncommitted, and frustrated youth. Clichés that, just like caricatures of boomers, feed the idea of a senseless war between age groups.
It is true that there are notable inequalities between generations. Access to housing is a paradigmatic example: according to the Bank of Spain’s Household Financial Survey, only one in four young people born between 1985 and 1995 owned a home at age 30, while among those born in earlier decades the figure exceeded 65%.
Economic history explains that difference: in the seventies and eighties, buying a home was more accessible than it is today. But blaming those who bought back then is a conveniently comfortable diversion. Wouldn’t it be more logical to question the public policies that, for decades, failed to guarantee a sufficient stock of social housing?
As British sociologist Jennie Bristow recalled in her essay Stop Mugging Grandma, turning boomers into scapegoats responds to a cocktail of collective anxieties: population aging, public spending on pensions and healthcare, and the cultural legacy of the sixties. A narrative that places blame on older people for what are, in reality, political decisions.
Sociologist Pau Miret, from the Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics, put it clearly to me in a journalistic report on boomers: “This whole generational war is based on fake news. Boomers are seen as a problem because of a demographic fact over which they have no responsibility.”
The numbers also contradict the myth of universal privilege. According to data from the Ministry of Social Security, almost 15% of retirees in Spain receive less than 700 euros a month, below the poverty threshold. Residential vulnerability is not foreign to old age either. In 2019, sociologist Irene Lebrusán—well known on this portal—explained it in her study Housing in Old Age: Problems and Strategies for Aging in Society, published by the CSIC, where she concluded that 20.1% of people over 65 in Spain were at that time in a situation of extreme residential vulnerability.
Culture wars need clear enemies, and in recent years age has become a convenient target. Older people are accused of living off young people; young people, of being incapable of building a future. But behind this mirage lies the uncomfortable truth: the deepest inequalities are not explained by date of birth, but by social class, gender, or territory.
The myth of intergenerational war distracts from the essential debate: how to sustain a system that guarantees dignity at all ages. Neither older people are to blame for youth precariousness, nor young people for the impoverishment of many pensioners. What we need are not trenches but bridges. Inclusive policies that recognize what each group contributes, that distribute resources more fairly, and that allow parents, children, and grandparents to walk in the same direction: toward a society that does not pit its generations against each other, but cares for them all.
