The 2024–25 Heywood Fellowship sets out to examine how governments come to a national view of what really matters over longer time horizons, the ways governments can best confront and tackle future problems, and how the configuration, mechanisms and capabilities of the state can best enable the pursuit and delivery of long-term outcomes for citizens.

The Heywood Fellowship team reviewed Spain’s España 2050 strategy to draw lessons for the UK. España 2050 is a national foresight and collective intelligence project aimed at identifying long-term challenges and opportunities for Spain, with the goal of aligning with top-performing EU nations over 30 years. 

The review highlights key takeaways for others: the importance of government backing, the need for bold and explicit trade-offs, the time required to build strategic culture, and the necessity of forging political and public consensus.