A quarter century ago, in 1989, history accelerated. It was a year full of events: from the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by the Taliban to the revolt of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the end of apartheid in South Africa or that of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Above all, it was the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which marked the end of the frozen world of the Cold War. The inertia of that moment still moves us. Like two centuries earlier, when the capture of the Bastille marked the end of the ancien regime, everything changed. The main consequence of that sudden thaw was the return of Geography. Europe became the geopolitical space that is controlled from the center. Germany occupies that place in the geographical and also in the economic. It is the most powerful country in Europe and is required to take the lead. But are the Germans prepared for it? What does Germany want? What are your interests? How does it affect all its European partners?

JM Martí Font, who was the correspondent of the newspaper El País in Germany when the wall fell, has again traveled to press the many factors that compose it: the role of memory, the ever-present imprint of the Protestant Reformation, conscience Ecological, the terrible weight of history, the new sensation of what it means to be German, the relationship with its neighbors, the power of its productive economy, the challenge of the new energy policy, the great internal differences of a surprisingly plural country or The decisive role of immigration in shaping society. The result is a lucid and revealing analysis of how Germany shapes Europe and in turn is shaped by it.