It is the moment

It usually happens that the daily noise is so deafening that scarcely it allows to hear little more than the thickest words, those that do that the big facts make a mistake with the most insignificant.

But we are living through one of these key moments. I know that the word historical has lost partly the force of his meaning of so much using it. But, really, we are living through a historical moment, a moment that marks the end of a form of doing and of understanding the economy and the beginning of a new model.

This is the moment in which we have to give the jump towards a new form of producing and to work, a new international economic order that necessary will bring with it also new balances of influence and of political power.

But it is not been written that the new model should have necessary that to be better or worse than the previous one, to whose cinders stick those who long for the still recent times in which the speculation was occupying first place on the emprendimiento, the short-term benefit on the long-term profitability.

It can be much better, because the instruments which now the humanity has are loaded with opportunities to improve the life of all. But it can be much worse because also there multiply the ways that they lead to increase the inequality and the oppression.

And that depends to a great extent on the politics that are done now, precisely now, when we are still fighting the big crisis that it preludes and accompanies to the big historical change.

And it is precisely now when the proper nature of the problems that we face needs of progressive and socialistic politics that contribute solutions from the convictions that make us strong: the solidarity, the equality, the freedom, the social justice.

This is the moment in which we can still do to our children and grandchildren the favor of which the deterioration of the planet is not irreversible; and to do to ourselves the favor of turning the proper defense of the ground, of the air and of the water into a productive activity capable of generating wealth and of creating employment.

We are at the moment of making possible that the necessary efforts and sacrifices that we all have to do to go out of the crisis do not turn into a big alibi to destroy the social conquests for which the workpeople have fought during generations, opening this way the way of the injustice.

So that the principal effect of the crisis is not an increase of the inequality and of the discriminations, the same or any more wealth for the everlasting ones and less rights for all the rest; so that the Spanish society goes out of this difficult period more united and not less.

And this is the moment in which we have to guarantee that the markets are to the service of the society and not the society to the service of the markets. We have to prevent a financial system out of all control us from it sets again at the edge of the abyss.

To construct a new economic order that is simultaneously more efficient and more just; to mark the rhythm of the needs for the economic development with the demand of saving the physical space in which we live; to defend the social cohesion and the rights of the workpeople; to do that the financial system is a strong basis and not an uncontrollable risk for the collective well-being.

These are the big challenges of the moment. And I see the president Shoemaker facing them every day from the conviction that the way of the exit of the crisis can only be walked if we it do all together, with efforts and sacrifices, yes, but without reducing the rights and the social protection.

And, frankly, I do not see to the right of this country thinking about the answers to these challenges. On the contrary, I see it doing driven to despair efforts to make sink the possibility of any agreement that makes possible to inject confidence in the society and in the economic agents. I wonder why and I do not find another answer than the opportunism.

A judgment of before yesterday

One of the big questions of our time is the legislative and judicial treatment of the freedom of expression and of his limits. It is an essential debate because it makes a mistake with the debate on the democracy itself. And it is a complex debate because the exercise of this right has abundant friction areas with the exercise of other rights also fundamental. And then it is necessary to measure, to calibrate, to counterweigh and, finally, to choose. And never or hardly ever the decision is completely clear, because always or almost always social values or the same way defensible individual rights are opposed. That's why in this matter the work of the judges is so important across the jurisprudence.

One of the most delicate variants – in this aspect - of the freedom of expression is the information freedom: the one that there exercise those that devote themselves to tell us precisely what it spends across different means. Here it is where the shock takes place more often between juridically protected values. Because the information can affect and affects often to the intimacy of the persons or to his basic dignity, to the individual or collective safety, to the general interests of economic or social type or to any other element worth being preserved inside our coexistence.

There is big the temptation of doing that the rope always breaks for the side of limiting the information freedom to preserve other rights. But it is a highly dangerous way.

It is true that the matter is so complex that it escapes to the general recipes and has to value every case for his concrete circumstance; but personally, if it had necessarily that to choose with general character, my inclination is to put myself of the side of the freedom of expression and of information. Moreover, I share the constitutional interpretations that support that, in case of doubt, the right to the freedom of expression must be considered to be a preferable right.

What does not mean that it is unlimited. Along with the right, to count and to know, there exists the right – perfectly legitimate in certain cases - to which they are not counted and there are not known any things which diffusion hurts that benefits. And also, another big question: does the information freedom include the diffusion of false informations? Is the lie protected by the right to the freedom of expression? In my opinion, no.

In any case, for me, the democracy is essentially a political system in which the leaders are chosen and revoked by means of the vote and in which they all have right to express themselves freely. These two elements, the vote and the free expression, they are in my perception, the central nucleus, the marrow of the democracy. And that's why I refuse to debilitate them anyway.

Of all this they debate and legislators and politicians will keep on debating always, magistrates and lawyers, professionals of the communication and civil in general. It is an exciting social debate in his fund and with an inexhaustible casuistry. No concrete case will solve the general problem to us; none general doctrine will save the work to us of analyzing and deciding about every concrete case.

But this is not the question in the recent judgment that he has condemned to two journalists of the Chain SER for spreading a certain information on the web page of this broadcasting station. Because the judge has not found lacking in veracity in the information; on the contrary, it has admitted definitely that the published was true. Neither it has questioned that the content of the information could be spread across mass communication media; on the contrary, it admits into his judgment that “cannot refuse that it is a question of facts noticiables”.

Then: why are the journalists condemned? Because according to the judge the information freedom is exercised in the mass media and Internet is not mass communication media. If it has fallen down of the chair, join. Yes, it is a question of a judgment of a few days before the beginning of the second decade of the XXIst century. And it bases his decision on this reasoning:

“The constitutional protection to the right to information refers to the media of social communication - television, radio or printed matter - but it must be tinted that Internet, there are no social mass communication media in strict, but universal sense”.

There are no mass communication media in strict, but universal sense. There that stays. In universal that thing about it has the whole reason; the motive for which this universality prevents from considering it to be a way in strict sense belongs to an arcane conceptual one that is not explained in the judgment. Although of step, the judge gives us the list of what can be considered to be mass media: the television, the radio or the press. We will have to look for a name different from the innumerable instruments and skills that we use the human beings to communicate in the called Age of the Information.

I will say to them that the judgment does not worry me especially. Because it does not question the freedom of expression or of information in his fund, but simply he ignores the progress. It is simply anachronistic, as it it had been in the times of the diligence to deny that the motorcar was a locomotion way. Internet is the big mass communication media, universal and in strict sense, of the XXIst century, and that at this point it we all know except the holder of the Court of Penal number 16 of Madrid. But that has easy arrangement.

Postscript: It is much better that they avoid displacements this weekend. If the forecasts are fulfilled, we can have difficulties in the highways, in the airports and in the iron routes. We will be on the foot of the cannon, but they will help us and will be helped if they postpone the unnecessary trips. Thanks a lot.

Haiti

The Nature is bountiful, powerful, sometimes marvelously hospitable and other times extremely inhospitable. But we cannot ask him to be just not that it is compassionate or united. The other way round, it tends to be arbitrary and cruel. That's why, it is sterile and hypocritical to complain that the natural disasters are fattened in the poorest places, in the countries that for his economic penury and his institutional weakness are in worse conditions to prepare them and to face to his consequences.

It is not a fault of the Nature that in the heart of the civilized world, in the middle of a few extraordinarily benevolent climatic conditions and to scarce kilometers of the most prosperous and developed society of the world, exists a place as Haiti. A place in which the people live in conditions of penury and misery that none of those that this text is reading might ever accept for himself or for his dear beings. A place in which the human life lacks any value; in that practically the State does not exist anything that does not even do his functions, although yes the most bloodthirsty dictatorships have been frequent. And a place in which there does not exist any of the material, sanitary means and of all kinds that they might allow to his inhabitants to face a disaster as the earthquake that they have just suffered trying to limit at least the damages.

We already know what it has to do when the news us realizes of an earthquake like that of Haiti and the victims are counted by hundreds of thousands: to sympathize and to help. We are doing two things. But that does not exempt us from our responsibility allows to us to avoid it complaining of unjust that is the Nature, which always strikes more dweebs. This is, for saying it gently, a cynical argument. Precisely in this area of the world the Nature has created a few exceptionally favorable conditions for a prosperous, pleasant and pleasant human life. And we have been the human beings, with our own hands, which we have made possible that in this place so poor societies exist, so infradotadas and so vulnerable as that of Haiti.

The problem, then, is not what we are doing in these days to help the Haitians who are still lucky to be able to be helped. The problem is everything what we have done earlier – and what we have stopped doing - so that a place that for his natural conditions might be a paradise is in fact slightly very similar to a hell, earlier and after the earthquake.

All those who daily protest and complain about the resources that devote themselves to the international cooperation and to the politics of help to the desarrrollo, considering them to be a superfluous philanthropy – and it is necessary to see the quantity of demagogy that is done in this respect, especially in moments of economic difficulties like the current ones - they lack moral force to cry out now so that the rich countries get overturned in the help the victims of the earthquake. Two or three weeks will happen, they will eliminate the most dramatic images of our TV sets and they will return to his familiar topics of teniendo-aquÝ-el-paro-que-tenemos-para-quÚ-nos-tenemos-que-gastar-el-dinero-en-ayudar-a-otros.

In fact, the Mother nature limits herself to fulfilling his function: it kills us and gives us the life, gives us the life and kills us. Everything else is our matter.

The poisonous tiff

In his column of yesterday, Saturday, in The Country, Manuel Rivas was occupying of reborn debate on the immigration to the thread of some municipal decisions and of his use opportunist on the part of the PP. And it was qualifying it with an expression as brilliant as accurate: poisonous tiff.

It is poisonous, first of all, for the mere fact of being a tiff. Of be looking like tiff, of appearing and be using deliberately as such. And it is poisonous for his intentions in short and half term, for the nature of the arguments that in her manage and for his effects-clarísimamente poisonous - on the society.

For a moment we must not even fall down in the temptation of following the decoy. This is not a debate on the electoral roll. They all know that the electoral roll does not serve to legalize the situation of anybody, but simply to state his existence, to know that it is there. To turn the irregular one in invisible is not a solution for anything, and who try to do it know it. In fact, it is the flare with which one tries to stimulate much more dangerous bonfires.

We all do not fit it is the new war-cry with which one thinks about how to put in foot a speech openly xenophobic and to turn it into flammable material for his use in the political struggle. The first essay will be in the Catalan elections. The dress rehearsal, in the policewomen. And the gala premiere, in the personal details. We all do not fit it is a meanness and also a lie.

If the Spanish economy has grown spectacularly until the beginning of the crisis, it has been to a great degree thanks to the immigration. If many Spanish have his today guaranteed future pension, it is thanks to the contribution of the immigrants to the Social security. If the European countries have some possibility of overcoming the unstoppable phenomenon of the aging of his general population and of the fall of his active population, it will be thanks to the immigration. To point out how causers of our problems to those who objectively are solutions bearers for the simple fact of that they avenge of out it is a declaration of irrationality that turns into irresponsibility when the one who does it is a political leader.

Naturally, all these advantages of the immigration only it are as it is a question of a legal, regular and controlled immigration. The opposite, the illegal immigration and out of control, is destructive for all: for the proper immigrants and for the society who receives them them without having chance of integrating.

That's why, the only sensible politics in this matter is to encourage the legal immigration and to fight the illegal one. To control the entry flows and to integrate quickly to those who enter. Control and integration, there is no another recipe.

I joust the opposite of what did the PP in the government. They allowed to enter descontroladamente hundreds of thousands. And when they were inside, they refused to recognize his existence, denied all right to them; but they did not also have arrests to expel them without much ado. Instead of turning them into an active and positive force inside the society, they turned them into a bomb of generating watchmaker's of instability and of all kinds of low passions.

The Shoemaker's Government has managed to reduce at least of the half the entry of illegal immigrants in Spain. Between other things, doing an intelligent politics of collaboration with the fatherlands, thing that the PP did not even try.

And yes, we have regularized to many. Namely we have turned many potential social outsiders into citizens who pay taxes, they quote to the Social security, they fulfill the law, they work legally and live in legal houses. Namely that expire with his duties like citizens. And naturally, they exercise his rights: between others, of educating his children, receiving health care or using the public services that are for all.

Unlike what many people were afraid (and some of them perhaps were waiting), the economic crisis, which has turned the employment into a scarce good, it has not provoked a xenophobia explosion in our society. And the fact that many immigrants have fallen down in the unemployment it has not been translated, as they were auguring any, in a climb of crime and of lack of safety in the streets. That has a lot to do with the social policy and also with the politics – intelligent, prudent, civilized and patriotic one - of Shoemaker on the subject of immigration, and with his iron will to not allow to drag for the singings of siren of the demagogy.

In the future it will be recognized that one of the Shoemaker's big achievements as leader has been to cross the worst economic crisis and of employment without a social break having taken place. In a society as the Spaniard, so inclined to fracture for so many things, thing is not small.

It is not a question of registering or of registering, this is a mere excuse. We are speaking about one of our most valuable goods – although it is only for the great thing for that it has cost us conseguirlo-: the coexistence and the social cohesion. This is precisely what there put in danger those who feed this one and other poisonous tiffs. And yes, finally it will be necessary to choose.

Pensions

There repeats even the satiety the idea of which the politicians not only must think about the next elections, but also about the next generations. So much it recurs, avenges or not to story, which has already turned into a topic.

In most of the democracies, the leaders are chosen for four years. And they are re-elected or revoked every four years. In some countries there even limits itself the possibility of presenting before itself to the reelection. But the society has problems – some of the most important, of the most structural, which determine the proper profile of the society - that can only be focused by the full-beam headlights, by temporary perspectives very superior to this period of four or enclosed of eight years.

All the governments have to appear and raise to the society problems and targets that they know that they will be reached finally and solved by other governments in the future; but that will never be able to be solved if they do not appear now. This is what, to my judgment, the creator of the famous phrase was meaning. To think about the next elections is legal and natural in democracy; to think about the next generations is part of the task of the leader, it is simply to expire with the duty.

The retirement at the age of 65 was established in Spain in the first decade of the XXth century. More than 100 years ago. In that moment, the average hope of life of the Spanish was 41 years.

To come to the 65 was an exceptional circumstance; very few were lucky. And those who were achieving it had – like average - a life of five or six more years. Very few were going so far as to receive the pension and were doing it during a little time. The cost for the society – even for a society paupérrima like that of that epoch - was small.

In the today Spain, the average life hope is about 80 years. When someone dies before the 65, it is said that “he died young”. The majority of the workpeople reaches easily the retirement age, and when they do it has also the reasonable hope to receive his pension for the long time: fifteen, twenty years or more.

This goes to more. The biggest have an increasing weight in our society, and his number will keep on growing in the next decades. It is anticipated that in the middle of this century almost one of the three Spanish will be major than 65 years.

Also, the living conditions have improved. And the sanitary resources have improved of spectacular form. What means that nó only many other they come at the retirement age, but the majority comes at this age in conditions much better than in the past: more healthy ones, more assets, more qualified in every respect.

And also, the economic and technological transformation does that it diminishes the number of the works that need an important physical effort.

All this there are extraordinary successes of the Spanish society. There are the best achievements of our progress, of our economic and social development. 100 years later, the Spanish live through a lot of more time and much better: it has not better measured of the success of a country.

But any advance takes in his bosom the germ of new challenges. Today we have a citizens' enormous quantity that is made major in full health, which they might – and they would wish many - to keep on being entirely active and productive. And that retire and receive his pension for many years.

We can come in a few years to a situation in which less than half of the society – assets - they have to support to another half – inactive for different reasons.

In the mid term, this is not sustainable. And it is not reasonable. We all know it. To deny it, to do as if the problem did not exist, the journalistic tomorrow holder will be able to solve us; but he supposes leaving those who avenge behind an unjust load and probably unbearable.

Today, the Social security in Spain does not have any problem of liquidity. But it will have it in the future if we do not do anything now. Those who are receiving today his pensions or next to retiring they do not have any worry motive. But those who are initiating or are in the middle of his labor life have right to which his future pensions are the same way guaranteed. And that only is possible with reforms like those that we start now.

Because also, in the last years we have walked in the opposite direction. While the society was aging, there has been generalized the practice of the earlier and earlier early retirement. In such a way that today the retirement middle age, in real terms, is clearly below 65 years that the law marks. To keep on sending to the retirement workpeople with little more than 50 years is out of the reality and out of the common sense, except very exceptional circumstances. With that also we are going to deal.

We have to fight against the today crisis. But also we have to be capable of preparing the possible crises of the future, especially those who are foreseeable. The measurements that we propose serve for two things. And on having presented them, having defended them and having extracted forward the only thing that we do, it is to expire with our duty.

It will be good for the next generations. But also, for surprise of some, perhaps it turns out that also it it is for the next elections. We will see.

To do what it is necessary to do

The government task does not have why to be exciting. In fact, it is much better that it it is not.

I make sure them that I do not have anything against the air-traffic controlers. In fact, it seems unjust to me that now anatemice and little appears before them less than like malefactors or parasites of the society.

There is nothing of that. I am sure that immense most of the controlers are citizens as respectable as any other, qualified professionals who realize his work with solvency and love for his work and workpeople who look according to the law for the best thing for themselves and for theirs.

This is not a movie of good and bad. I do not find any special gratification in appearing like the just minister who faces in field opened for the evil controlers and a booty snatches them supposedly obtained by means of extorting the society and the previous governments. He neither answers to the reality, nor is good for anybody that the management of the economic and political problems wants to turn into a knighthood novel. Not even Pepe Blanco has Quixotic vocation, not even the controlers are giant disguised of windmills.

The things are much more prosaic. Here the only thing that is in game there is the economic viability and the competitiveness of the air navigation in Spain in moment of economic crisis and of change of productive model. A little so slightly heroic, but as important as that. This has been the only approach that has mattered for us at the time of confronting the problem derived from the absence of agreement between AENA and the air-traffic controlers. This and not different is the field of the decree - law that the Government approved last Friday.

It is true that throughout a lot of time a series of situations has been accumulating, in the ambience of the air control, that taken in his set and projected on the backdrop of the most serious economic crisis, they turn out to be incompatible with the economic rationality and with the interests of Spain.

It is not possible to support in the Europe of the XXIst century a competitive system of air navigation if his costs duplicate to those of any other country. If there happens a situation of monopoly that others have left behind successfully. If the concessionary company of the service – a public service of entitlement public and given by civil servants, he does not forget - lacks all aptitude to direct and to organize the work. If there is consolidated a ludicrous remunerative diet in which one of the three hours worked is paid to the triple of his ordinary value. If any professional with 52 years has right to go away to his house with the complete salary, be convenient or not to the needs for the service. If the access to the group is ruled by the strict one and endogámico procedure of the cooption.

The sector of the air navigation in Spain was threatened seriously by all these circumstances. And when that happens, the obligation of a leader is to try to solve it

The concessionary company-AENA - and the controlers were taking five years of fruitless negotiation. Exactly from December 31, 2004, date in which the previous collective agreement expired. And the last proposals that the controlers had put on the table not only were not bringing us over to the solution of the problem, but they were aggravating it: if you do not want coffee, take two cups.

Then, the Government decides to take letters in the matter. With only one criterion: let's establish a rational frame that returns the Spanish air tariffs to the European normality and a new negotiation be opened in this new frame, the only one compatible with what Spain can allow itself.

I have not wanted to put in waist anybody. To throw the public against nobody. Much less to untie a conflict. The world splits between those who devote themselves to create mainly problems and those who devote themselves to solve them. Modestly, I aspire to be between the second ones.

The controlers decree - law is a mere government act in the context of an economic policy of struggle against the crisis and of modernization of our productive structures. If it serves for something in this area, I am considered satisfied. Everything else is part of a circus conception of the politics that I neither share does not even seem useful to me.

And the fact is that governing is, first of all, to do what it is necessary to do when it is necessary to do it.

The destructive passivity

In these days one speaks more than never of the need for a political agreement against the economic crisis. It is logical. It is clear that the struggle against the crisis will be more effective if all the political and social forces collaborate between themselves and contribute in a positive way. Till now, this has been achieved in the ambience of the social forces: with all his ups and downs, the dialogue between businessmen, workpeople and government is essential to face to the crisis, to reduce his costs and to avoid a social failure.

In the political area it has not been possible even do not even do not even to come closer an agreement of this nature. And this is one of the things that separate the development of the crisis in Spain from what has happened in other countries. Because in all of them the political forces of the opposition have thought that the national interest must prevail over any other; and with signed agreements or without them, they are collaborating with his respective governments.

Any political agreement, to be viable, has to answer to a common interest; but, also, he has to answer also to the interest of each of the parts. Those who take part in an agreement have to have incentives for it; or at least, they do not have to have incentive for the disagreement.

This is precisely the problem that we have here. The situation is very complex, but the terms of the political competition are very simple and they come down to the following thing:

The Spanish socialist party needs the recovery and the PP needs the crisis.

The Government needs the recovery because all his performance is centred it is this firstly - and almost only one - target; and therefore the economic recovery will be the measurement of the success or of the defeat of his management in this Term.

The Spanish socialist party needs the recovery because he knows that it is the necessary condition – although not sufficient - to have the majority confidence of the citizens again.

And the PP needs the crisis because it has come to the conclusion that the crisis is the only thing that can allow him to gain the next elections and return to the power.

Mariano Rajoy is a politician happily become disillusioned about himself. After two successive defeats, it has assumed finally that will never be able to gain a few elections if it depends on the support that he could cause in the Spanish society. If the PP wins one day, it will be in spite of Rajoy. And I dare to say that it will be also in spite of the proper PP.

Consequently, he has decided to base his political strategy on a thing that seems of perogrullo, but that is the key of the current Spanish political situation: if it does not gain the Spanish socialist party, it will gain the PP. As the power one cannot declare vacancy and only there are two real government options, if one loses it will gain other one although it has not done anything for deserving it. It is the law of the democratic inertia applied up to his last consequences.

Rajoy hopes to come already to The Moncloa to loins of its own prestige, not either of his political proposals, nor even of the force of his party. All that has already tried it and does not serve. This time his bet is that it is the EPA (Survey of Active Population) the one that takes him to the power for pure inertia.

For the same reasoning for which the Socialists we know that we will be able only to win again if the economy and the employment recover, the PP knows that it will be able only to win if the economy and the employment do not recover. The crisis and the unemployment are his master key, the winning horse for which they have bet all his political resources so that he leads them up to the wished goal. They do not need that it gains Rajoy; it is enough to them that Shoemaker loses.

You will have seen that the PP takes many months without declaring itself on the fund of any of the big debates of social and economic policy that have appeared in Spain. It is deliberate. They replace the debate on the contents with a cataract of invectives and personal attacks against the Prime minister and limit themselves to hoping that the sulfur should do his work.

It is true that this strategy has the small disadvantage of which it is clearly harmful to the interest of Spain. But the leaders of the PP seem ready to assume this cost without excessive spiritual unease. Because from his perspective there is a top target: that the power returns to the hands of which it should never have gone out. For the Spanish right, any that one that occupies the power without being one of them is an okupa and there is no priority more priority to evict it.

In a fire, there are those who immediately put themselves to the task it of trying to suffocate and help to that there are no victims. And there are those who limit themselves to shouting: Fire!: Fire!, without making anything useful against him and contributing to the panic and to the confusion. If in some of them they perceive a little disguised exhilaration tone as the flames grow, perhaps the fact is that it has hopes to remain with the lot.

The case is that it can be that they obtain it. But they have a weakness: once they have chosen for the model of the “destructive passivity”, which they obtain it does not depend on them, depends on us. The inertia is his biggest ally and our biggest enemy. In this moment, to do is risked, but not doing is suicidal. Let's realize it well.