27/11/2013
Ignacio García de Leániz Caprile teachesManagement of Human Resources. University of Alcalá de Henares
Two years ago, the bicentenary of Jovellanos' death passed unnoticed among us, to our shame and as a sign of how sick we are as a country. Freud said that our memory losses betray us. In this case, it's as if the figure of our outstanding man would leave most of our political class unmasked. Therefore I consider it just in such a crisis–which is also a crisis of politics and of politicians–to celebrate today the anniversary of his death on November 27, 1811 in Puerto de Vega, fleeing from Napoleon's advance on his hometown Gijon.
And I think it is worth noting, in contrast to the prevailing mediocrity, a very unknown aspect of Jovellanos: the application, avant la lettre, of management to politics and public life, with their corresponding demands of excellence and reliability.
Jovellanos inherits from Kant a conception of politics as the improvement and transformation of reality, propelled by the engine of steady progress. This politician from Gijon adds to this a rigorous and methodical–that is scientific–application based on a very similar approach of the current PDCA cycle for Quality Management: plan–do–check–act. Following the metrics of observation and analysis of reality, Jovellanos' intelligence was always loyal to Ortega's ideal of "getting down to things". It is no wonder then that he should crown his Institute of Navigation and Mineralogy with the motto that best defines him: Quid verum, quid utile.
And Jovellanos' engineering vision explains his inclination to make journeys as constant as they were exhausting throughout Spain: León, Asturias, the Basque Country, Seville, Aragon, Santander, Catalonia, Castile, Galicia . . . Jovellanos was the Humboldt of our peninsula. And with every trip, its corresponding ad hoc Improvement Plan inferred from reality with its objectives and tasks firmly grounded in a rational cost/benefit approach.
But the application of one such Project Management and a résumé like Jovellanos', would not have been possible without the prior disappearance of the figure of the 'favourite' from Philip V to Charles III. This figure was replaced by the selection of the best in terms of a rigorous cursus honorum which would lead to that effective and transformative bureaucratic minority, of which Jovellanos is the best example. And always as backdrop, the main strategic lines already written in 1714 by Macanaz in his famous Memorial, the implementation of which would be carried out by our man. Rarely in the history of Spanish politics was there so much methodical rigour and professional ethos.
So now, looking in his anniversary at the tired face in the portrait painted by Goya and comparing his greatness with the littleness of his environment in times of collective unhappiness, one is unsure whether to follow suit or recall his last pre-mortem stammered words "Headless Nation . . . woe is me!" In our hands it lies.