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.

He interviews in Public

He interviews in the edition of the Public newspaper of today realized by Manuel Rico

The debate bothers to José Blanco deeply on his supposed ascent inside the Government. He insists that the important only thing is to speak of “the measurements to anticipate the exit of the crisis”. But his inclusion in the commission created anticrisis this week by the president Shoemaker has been interpreted from unanimous form to right and left: Target is the political man of the moment.

Is José Blanco the future, as does affirm the minister Corbacho?

José Blanco is the present and he has his overflowing aspirations.

But will not he deny that you are a value in rise inside the Government?

I simply try to do the things the best thing that I can, to apply the common sense and to look for the efficiency in the department.

Does his projection obey the holes that leave others?

Since I have assumed political responsibilities in the national ambience, I have spent for different moments. Those who earlier were insulting me now try to raise me to the altars. The important thing is to have the feet in the ground and to never lose the perspective.

Let's go to the commission anticrisis announced by Shoemaker in the Congress. What is ready to agree really on the Government?

It is necessary to introduce rationality in the economic debate and to leave behind the political row. This is the order that we have of the citizens, who wish answers to create employment as soon as possible. If we are capable of generating between all a confidence frame, and also this goes accompanied by reforms that it is necessary to attack from a wide consensus, we will be answering to this target. The citizens also demand an agreement and the PP, before this demand of the citizens, he must decide if it acts like engine or like brake of the economic recovery.

The PP has announced that it will go to the commission, although Rajoy makes sure that it will be a "wasting time" and that it is a question of an alibi of the Government.

To defend the general interest and to work together to anticipate the exit of the crisis is not a wasting time.

But really does he believe that some possibility of agreement exists with the People's Party?

We have offered to negotiate without previous conditions, because the only condition is the general interest to go out of the crisis. I am sure of that when the PP sees that we have started constructing all the groups, it is going to bury the tomahawk and is going to join to the work. And if it does not bury the tomahawk, it will have to give many explanations to the citizens.

The PP is then before a retreat species.

The PP has done of the crisis his harnessing pennant to come to The Moncloa. Most of the society want that the crisis finishes as soon as possible and the PP transmits the impression of which he wishes the crisis to continue until 2012. This every day is more clear and in the debate of the Congress it has remained clearly exposed: Rajoy has imposed conditions, some of them that would put in risk the credibility of Spain if they were applied, because he knows that with previous conditions it is very difficult to be able to match.

Does it refer to the proposals of descents of taxes?

Sure. There is a stability picture and it is fundamental to preserve the target to reduce the deficit. Also, Spain has the lowest tax system as regards his GDP of the European Union. If Spain was initiating a crazy career of adjustment of his taxes to the fall, it would be necessary to resign from the deficit target or to cut resources away to the social protection, to the idle ones, to the pensioners, to the grant holders. That would create a social break of irreparable consequences.

What seems to him that the PP has presented in the Congress another initiative that encourages the doubts about the solvency of Spain?

When the PP questions the solvency of our country it does not attack the Government, it is questioning the future and the well-being of the Spanish.

If the PP does not compromise and with the Catalan elections in doors: does he believe that CiU will accept to be painted the portrait by the Government?

The nationalistic groups are demonstrating to have more sense of the State than the PP. Those who invoke permanently the patriotism, when the hour of the truth comes, prefer his interest to the interest of Spain.

Might an agreement now with CiU be the first step to sign a Government agreement with the Catalan nationalists?

No. Right now the only thing that worries us is to rationalize the economic debate and to sign agreements as wide as possible in fundamental topics: to improve the competitiveness of the Spanish economy, to impel the renewal of our productive model, to expire with the target of fiscal consolidation, to facilitate the access to the credit of the companies. CiU has repeating the same targets in his claims. Therefore, it is a question of capturing shared targets and of rowing all in the same direction. But it is done not by electoral calculation neither to look for a major political stability.

Does not it turn out to be strange that in the commission anticrisis vice-president De is not the Vega?

The crisis is economic and the vice-president who has the responsibility in this one area is the second vice-president. Him it is not necessary to split hairs because it does not have them.

And does not he believe that Of the Vega it might be annoying for his absence?

I know that it it is not. Those who from the PP are feeding this idea have a lot of way to be covered to come at a height of Teresa.

The first week of February was, probably, the worst lived one by Shoemaker since he is a president. In the proper socialistic lines they listened to three criticism on the Government: that the coordination is improvable, that trumps the communication politics and that nobody operates like protective Shoemaker shield, so that the president takes all the blows. What part of reason is there in this three criticism?

Spain and the rest of the world are confronting the hardest economic crisis of last 80 years. It generates anxiety and worry in the society and, therefore, also in the Spanish socialist party. But the answer that one has come giving from the Government of Spain is similar to the one that has happened from other governments: to encourage the economic stimuli, to try to guarantee the biggest social protection and look for an action of joint answer to a crisis that is global. What is missing often in the analyses is a perspective of more largeness to know that the problem is not to give one more press conference or to explain better a decision, the problem is of fund. And then there can always be tones that help to understand better the things, but this is the anecdote.

The forms can increase problems of fund. For example, if a plan is sent to Brussels on the reform of the pensions and moves back at a few hours.

This is an example of how an anecdote turns into category. The important thing is that the Government had realized an exposition of budgetary stability and in the end what stayed is the anecdote. In the national political debate there are, regrettably, too many anecdotes and good few fund analyses.

Does not he believe that Shoemaker should have apologized to the Spanish for denying for the long time the crisis?

After an economic growth as that we had between 2004 and 2008, I understand that it is difficult to assimilate the entry in such a deep crisis and in a little time. When they began the first symptoms, it was possible to think that they were light. We were not hoping that the wind was going to turn into a hurricane. In the end, the financial crash aggravated the crisis and dragged to the whole international economy. Shoemaker has already said that in the first moment he did not recognize the intensity of the crisis, but the fact is that nobody in the world had foreseen an impact as that we had.

And does not he believe that there has drawn into the citizenship the message from which the Government conceals the truth, as does insist the PP?

It is true that that has happened this way and that it has spoiled the credibility of our performances. But the truth will have to outcrop some day. The singularity of the crisis in Spain is motivated by a speculative model in the real estate sector that had his impulse, his climax and his maximum development when it was governing the PP. If of the Spanish economy there was deducted the behavior of the real estate sector, now we would be moving in parameters identical to those of the European Union.

Is the Government ready to extend the contract of 33 days of indemnification to the men of between 30 and 45 years?

The Government has raised a few reflections on the reform of the labor market and does not want to determine, being defined on a type of contract, what has to be the result of the work between the management one and the trade unions.

Pero Zapatero makes sure that in Spain the dismissal will not get cheaper. Is not to extend the contract with 33 days of indemnification perhaps to low the price of the dismissal?

I am not going to speculate on what it can happen. We are going to struggle to reach an agreement, which in itself would be a revitalizing element for the employment creation.

But does it support the Government that will not low the price of the dismissal?

The reforms that Spain needs are not those of lowing the price of the dismissal or flexibilizar the conditions of the same one. On the contrary, we need to bet for the stability in the employment.

Does it defend to extend to 67 years the retirement age?

I defend to improve our pensions system, so that 3,2 million persons who receive minimal pensions see improved his protection. To improve our pensions and to guarantee them in the future, some things we will have to do. We will have to tackle the real enlargement of the retirement age, since the average now is in 63 years, not in 65. And we will have to finish with the early retirement abuse. I have taken a decision myself so that the air-traffic controlers could not go away to his house at the age of 52 receiving entirely his salary with a remunerative special license. Finally, we will have to look for formulae that allow us to guarantee the solvency and improve our public pensions system.

It has indicated several aspects that undoubtedly would improve the solvency of the system of pensions, but it has not clarified if it defends to postpone at the age of 67 the retirement age.

I have put an example so that it was understood well: now the legal retirement age is in 65 years and the real age is located in 63. If the retirement age is extended, probably what we achieve is to bring the real age over to the legal one of this moment.

Is he a supporter of extending the calculation period to calculate the amount of the pensions?

No, I do not believe that the calculation period should be extended.

Does it keep on defending that it is necessary to raise the taxes to the rich ones?

They have already been raised.

They have been raised to the whole world, across the increase of the VAT.

We have raised the taxation of the Sicav and have increased imposed the soccer players, for example, in addition to doing a general exposition as regards the VAT in line with the average of the countries of the European Union. Some of them want to be a country of the first in public services and in infrastructures and have at the same time the taxes of a Latin-American country. That cannot be. The services cost money and it is necessary to pay them.

He foresees new taxes increases for this year.

No. It would not be reasonable.

Say to me what things the Government has harmed in the combat against the crisis.

Probably we would have to realize earlier an agreement exposition, although it is true that first we try to stop the blow with stimulus measurements as the Plan And and now it is a question of tackling the structural reforms. And perhaps the citizenship did not see us with enough determination at the time of explaining the politics that we design to fight the crisis.

Let's speak about the party. Counsellor Ernest Maragall claims a proper group of the PSC in Madrid. Would be the Spanish socialist party ready to accept it?

This is a musical appellant. We take the biggest respect as the decisions that the PSC adopts in the exercise of his autonomy, but I believe that the current form of cooperation is positive for both.

Or that is the best formula.

It is positive for both.

In case it was giving the sum: do you defend a Tripartite one 3.0 or does he believe that it is an appliance that provokes fatigue?

I what desire is that Montilla keeps on being the president of the Generalitat. And if it can be with more force of the PSC, and governing without depending on anybody, much better.

But it will admit that for the Spanish socialist party an agreement might be better between PSC and CiU in Catalunya.

The best stage for the Spanish socialist party is that it governs Montilla alone.

And would the second best stage be an agreement PSC-CiU, for the effects of stability that it might have for the state politics?

The citizens will decide with his vote the Government of Catalunya, not that of Spain. And let's not prune trucar the will to form government in Catalunya thinking in Madrid. We take appreciation and respect as CiU, but they are the citizens those who speak in the urns.

You defend that Shoemaker is the principal assets of the Spanish socialist party. To what does the subsidence of his credibility attribute in the surveys?

To a situation of anxiety that exists in the set of the country and of suspicion towards the political class. The most significant thing in the last CIS was that they were lowering both Spanish socialist party and PP. There is a suspicion towards the politics on the part of the citizens and that explains what happens.

Is this Shoemaker's slope irreversible?

The other way round. Shoemaker is the best assets of the Spanish socialist party.

How many communities will the Spanish socialist party lose in 2011?

I hope that it should gain someone.

And that does not lose any?

Exactly.

And which believes that it can win?

I am not going to give tracks to the adversary.

Are not the declarations of José Maria Barreda a symptom of be saved the one who could?

Barreda has tinted his declarations and the whole Socialistic Party has been grateful for it.

Is Andalusia the biggest problem for the Spanish socialist party in this moment in view of the last surveys?

I do not have any doubt about Andalusia. Griñán represents a new time to answer to the new challenges, and face it has that thing about always, to Javier Arenas.

Or that the Andalusian surveys are erroneous.

I handle surveys of Andalusia that are very positive. But believe me, I am an unbelieving one of the surveys that are done out of the electoral time. Two years are missing for the Andalusian elections.

You who has pitoniso reputation: does he believe that Tomás Gómez will be the socialistic cartel in Madrid?

The partners are going to decide that after the summer, that he is when it touches.

When Gómez affirms that the Socialists of Madrid are not “the rear courtyard of Ferraz”: are you considered aforesaid?

No, certainly I am not considered aforesaid.

But he will not say to me that his relation with Gómez is excellent.

The relation is the same that I support with all the General Secretaries of the party. I wish him all the success in his work, wish it to have all the recognition of the society of Madrid and I wish it to be right in the formulation of the alternative. It takes three years being employed at her and has a made trip. And when his moment comes, the partners will have to evaluate.

Would the minister Rubalcaba be a good candidate for the Town hall of Madrid?

I do not see it.

Will the public mergers dependent on Promotion provoke dismissals?

In no case. They are going to provoke decrease of managing charges, we are going to add synergies and are going to look for the efficiency.

Or that, if there are dismissals, will be of managing charges.

Dismissals not. The managing charges are of free designation and, likewise they are designated, they can be replaced.

If the controlers go charging of illegal form from 1999: why has the socialistic Government been late five years in braking this situation?

I answer of my decisions. There was an information repeated from the General Intervention of the State, and what we have decided now was answered by him to the need that Air Navigation was sustainable, to look for a major productivity and to help to invigorate a sector that I fixed like the tourism with the descent of the valuations of the airports.

But it seems clear that, with these reports about which he speaks, it might have acted earlier.

I insist: it was a complicated decision. The important thing is that we have tackled a problem and now it is a question of solving it definitely by means of the dialogue.

What infrastructures will debts take as the Plan of Austerity?

I will try to do more with less resources. But, in any case, I am going to try to preserve everything relative to the railway transport in his triple slope: high speed, outskirts and goods.

Does it seem reasonable to you that Waiter could be isolated from the Hearing for trying to investigate crimes of the Franco period?

Honestly, it does not seem reasonable to me. But it is the Justice who has to take his decision and we will respect it.

What does he think about Aznar's gesture in the University of Oviedo?

This gesture is the best summary of a way of understanding and of doing politics.

Paradoxes

They say that one of the outlaws of ETA that has just stopped the police studied medicine. Paradoxes. To be prepared for a profession that consists of saving lives and of devoting itself professionally to the opposite. Doctor and gunman to salary do not do good miscellany. That's why this killer instead of spending next decades in a hospital making something honorable is going to spend them to himself in a jail paying for his crimes.

There are more paradoxes. For example, that the Prime minister the one that with more fierceness – and with more faithlessness - has accused of beginning in hands of the terrorists turns out to be the one that closer is of obtaining the definitive ETA defeat. The one that more and better it is managing to corner to the terrorist band, her to deprive of all his supports, to limit to the powerlessness his totalitarian frenzies. ETA can still kill, but it can already only kill. His operative defeat will come; his political defeat is a fact for time. And something has to do with it the antiterrorist Shoemaker strategy. That of the first term and that of the second one, because both have answered of the form most adapted to the circumstances of every moment.

And I say more: if it had not been done what was done in the previous term, the operative weakness and the political isolation of ETA in the Basque society would not be so absolute as they it are in this moment.

And a third paradox is to see the evil Rubalcaba, who is being recognized finally unanimously like the best Secretary of the Interior of the democracy and the most effective conductor of the antiterrorist struggle. The one that more ETA chiefs it has managed to stop, the one that has taken at his maximum efficacy level the collaboration with France, the one that it has to the called world of ETA plunged in the uncertainty and longing for better times.

Finally, it turns out that the Command Rubalcaba exists. Such a command is not another thing than the Forces and safety Bodies directed with intelligence by a democrat with sense of the State.

Today, Rubalcaba is the worst enemy of the terrorists. What is equivalent to say that he is the best friend of the peace and of the freedom of the Spanish. Thank you, friend.

He interviews in The Reason

He interviews in the today edition of the newspaper Reason realized by Esther L. Palomera

- the Government has finished the first round of political contacts with the parties and it seems that we can already give for discarded a global agreement.
- the Government has will to study in depth what joins us and to avoid what separates us. There is a wide margin to keep on speaking.
- the PP speaks only about minimal coincidence points.
- what less it imports is how it takes shape or how it is called. We are not looking for a final photo, but for measurements shared to anticipate the recovery.
- Does it mean that the PP does a speech in public and other inside the commission?
- there has been an evolution. They have moderated his criticism. We have just listened to mister Rajoy to say that he has proposed of the Government that they are positive and that is in disposition to support them. It seems to me that it is a very important jump. And with that it is with what we want to remain.
- proposals that earlier were pushed back by the Executive …
- in this moment there are priorities to which we have to give answer and someone correspond to some of the presented initiatives, truly. For example in case of the rehabilitation of the housing and the energy efficiency he had proposed similar, but what the Government raises now is more ambitious, since it includes a reduction of the VAT and also a tax relief of the IRPF for the works of reform.
- Would not it be reasonable that, after one year and a half of uncultivated negotiations between trade unions and businessmen, the Government was legislating on the labor frame?
- we did a series of proposals to the table of the social dialogue, but we understand that there is no effective labor reform that could be to the margin of the agreement between businessmen and trade unions. What we have to do is to urge, to be demanding and to overturn all the efforts so that the social dialogue yields his fruits.
- And does not he believe that it is time to impose a temporary horizon?
- we have already said that this process should hasten, and although we do not want to impose the times, two or three months it is a reasonable term because the needs for the country are pressing.
- if the Government agrees in that the Autonomies are so responsible as the State of the public deficit: why has not he considered the proposal of the opposition to fix the limit of expense and of indebtedness of the Communities?
- the expositions that they affect to the set of the administrations must be agreed in the Council of Fiscal Policy and Financier (CPFF). But I remind to him that we did an exposition in the Presidents' Conference so that the stability / austerity plan was a target of the set of Public administrations, and it was the PP who boycotted a final resolution on this topic. Nevertheless, I understand that in this moment we are not to reproach ourselves anything, but to be employed at shared horizons. The PP has now the opportunity to convince to his Autonomous regions so that in the CPFF they facilitate an agreement on the stability, but also on the austerity. The Government will present a very severe plan to save in running costs, to avoid duplicities, to add public synergies across the merger, to reduce managing charges and high charges … And I hope that this measurement should be completed also by the Communities and the Town halls.
- if, as they said to us, our financial system had a big fortitude: why now is it so urgent to confront his restructuring?
- it is necessary to obtain more reliable entities and with more aptitude to compete.
- And would not it be necessary to finish with the political control of the Savings banks?
- it is necessary to tackle a reform that, being respectful with the competitions of the different Articles of association, to we allow to add synergies and be more efficient and competitive. In turn it is necessary to guarantee the stability of the same ones because it is the best message that we can give to the thifty persons and to the companies. In this sense I believe that we should advance also in the depoliticization of the boxes.
- if Brussels has warned that with the increase of the VAT from July the recovery will be more difficult: will not it be reasonable, as him ask CiU and PP, the Government to postpone this decision?
- Spain is the country of the EU with the lowest VAT, below us only is Luxembourg. We have also a fiscal pressure as regards the GDP of the lowest of Europe and nevertheless we try to be the first country in infrastructures, well-being and protection to the unemployment. Both things are incompatible. If we were following the recommendation of some, we would be the only country of the EU that would lower in this time the taxes. In any case, in Spain, the Government wants a realistic vision to expire with the target of the reduction of the deficit and, simultaneously, to support the social protection and the productive investment. This, with the fiscal adjustment that the PP proposes, would be incompatible.
- Why does not the Government fulfill the order of the Parliament of reducing 25 per cent the high charges?
- the plan of austerity that the government is going to present is much more ambitious than a simple reduction of high charges and that the set of initiatives that have appeared in the Congress of the Deputies. The austerity cannot limit itself to if there is the minister more or less. This is the chocolate of the parrot. Our proposal will affect the whole Administration of the State, high charges, but also to public enterprises. It is so necessary to do it like agreeing it. It would be suitable that the rest of the Administrations also was raising it.
- Is the State of the Well-being sustainable with this conjuncture?
- if we do not do anything to future it will be untenable. When the Government does a proposal on the pensions, he does not think about the today pensions but about those of in 20 years. It is necessary to take decisions and to tackle the debates from the seriousness and the rigor. Spain will have some day to homologables appear that if he wants to have infrastructures of the first and a well-being of the first will have to have tax levels to the countries that have this type of services. In our country we have lived through an increasing revolution of rights and a diminishing income revolution. Some day we have to speak about that.
- Also of sanitary copayment?
- I am not raising any concrete proposal, what I say is that we cannot aspire to have social services and equipments of the first and have the lowest fiscal pressure of the EU. It is not compatible.
- Does he recognize any error of the Government in the management of the crisis?
- the Government did not see the intensity of the crisis that was coming. It him happened also to all the Governments, even to the opposition, although now he says the opposite.
- Why does he believe that you are in the commission anti-crisis and not the Secretary of Labor?
- because this way the president decided it. The Secretary of Labor is impelling the social dialogue and the negotiations of the Agreement of Toledo.
- Then his is not an ascent, a bet of future?
- sincerely I do not believe it. My presence obeys what I am and represent in this moment. Consequently, I am going to try to do the best possible work to answer to the confidence that the president has deposited in me.
- Are the declarations of Hugo Chavez tolerable against Shoemaker for the car of the Hearing on the supposed collaboration of the Venezuelan Government with ETA?
- I cannot share the declarations. In any case, I am sure that the Venezuelan Government is going to study the car of the National Hearing and to investigate the accusations contained in the same one, since he speaks about very serious facts. I am sure that he will be the first interested party in clarifying it.
- Has the Spanish Government been to the height after the death of the dissident Osvaldo Zapata?
- the only purpose that guides us is the progress of life of the Cuban, the respect to the DD.HH. And I believe that in this sense there is necessary a politics of demanding dialogue, which is what impels the Government.
- Was shoe a common criminal?
- not.
- Is it, then, in disagreement with actor Guillermo Toledo?
- absolutely.

The hard-working woman

The XXth century has been that of the vertiginous changes. In him, the history has hastened and the face of the world has transformed more quickly and more deeply than never. If we measure it in relation to the past, between 1910 and 2010 they have passed not 100 years of historical time, but many other.

For me, the two most transcendental changes of the epoch that has had us to live, which are called to have more lasting effects, there are the scientific and technological revolution and the unstoppable advance towards the equality between the women and the men. Or if they prefer to say it with all his letters, the beginning of the end of the discrimination of the women with regard to the men.

The first one, because the science and the technology have transformed radically the conditions of life and of work, the economic system, the possibilities of communication, the proper duration of the human life; everything what has to do with our way of living.

The second one, because from the point of view of the justice it has begun to finish the most clamorous of the inequality, which was consisting – and of many ambiences it keeps on consisting - in the mastery of half of the humanity over another half for reasons purely physical (the biggest physical force of the man and the reproductive function of the woman).

And from the point of view of the pure social efficiency, because for centuries the economy has been organized under the beginning of which 50 % of the population was excluded or discriminated in the productive activity. And it not only was and it is unjust; it was and it is an incompatible waste of resources and capacities with a modern economy.

In fact, the women have always worked. But they have always done it in conditions and in secondary functions shut up in the very annoying concept of works for women – that in fact had to be translated like works that the men do not want.

Only the competitiveness is possible in the new economy if there is used 100 % of the available human resources to the maximum of his capacity. I do not say that it is the only excellent factor, but there is a significant relation between economic progress and equality. Or between economic delay and survival of the discrimination. Give a rapid revision to the map of the world and verify it.

I have said it often: in the future, one of the most remembered features of the Shoemaker's period as President will be that in him – and very principally for his personal commitment - the Spanish society it has passed of giant in the way of the equality.

When the justice and the efficiency, or the beginning and the interests, push in the same direction, the change becomes inexorable. And it will be finished when he already has not any sense to celebrate the Day of the Hard-working Woman.