24/03/2014
Ángel Rivero, Autonomous University of Madrid
Anyone who has lived the Spanish Transition will remember with nostalgia a time when difficulties, which were many, were overcame with the eagerness of doing things well. Unlike previous times, past mistakes, which hade made Spanish democracy very brief, were known and borne in mind, and the majority willed not to repeat them. Like Suárez said, the predominant aim was to make coexistence long-lasting and not just a parenthesis.
There is no doubt that said convictions belonged to the whole Spanish society, and that is the reason why they succeeded. However, while we cannot ignore collective success, neither can we underestimate the value of its protagonists. In the first place, the King of Spain, who wanted a democratic and modern Spain; and used his intelligence and outstanding personal appeal for the enterprise to succeed. But it is also Suárez’s merit, who unlimitedly used his friendliness, intelligence and his personal charm to build a democracy based on harmony.
Suárez’s figure has sometimes been belittled by making reference to his academic background or to the weakness he showed in the control of his own party. But perhaps his outstanding political virtues have been less recalled: his eloquence, his ability to make people agree on what seemed impossible through persuasion. Suárez turned the mistrust of democracy in the hands of the military and officials of the former regime into commitment to freedom. He did not only make it possible for the Communist Party to be legalised, but also definitely contributed to modernise and democratise it. Because Suarez’s eagerness to harmonise acted like a mechanism which forced his adversaries to commit themselves instead of fighting.
If we have missed Suárez for a long time, it is because after him and the politicians of his generation, who took part in said enterprise, arrived others who decided to belittle the work of those who had preceded them in order to highlight their own figures. Harmony-oriented politics was then replaced with rough politics where agreements passed off as an unavowed pact of silence and where treating the adversary as a fellow citizen was equivalent to betraying their ideology itself. What happened, in short, is that ideology passed off as politics, and the nobility of politics as a tool for harmony was forgotten. That is why we have missed Suárez for a long time.