The general strike has already been called. And the chorus of voices is already beginning, repeating the same refrain, call after call, and have become part of the landscape of general strikes in this ...
The general strike has already been called. And the chorus of voices is already beginning, repeating the same refrain, call after call, and have become part of the landscape of general strikes in this country.
Three major argumentative lines support the speeches. Some say that it will be useless because it will not be able to modify the government's position, which, protected by its absolute majority, does not have to negotiate anything with social agents.
This discourse, which the government has embraced with the faith of a convert, contrasts the legitimacy of parliament and the power delegated to political parties and the right that assists organized civil society to participate and influence the political debate, from the instruments that the legal system grants them, precisely, to exercise that right. In this conception of democracy, citizens vote and remain silent until the next election. But the model of social coexistence established in our constitution goes much further and includes the role and instruments that society is given so that power is exercised subject to balances and controls. Parliament is the representation of popular sovereignty, but not even that power is an absolute power. Faced with the legitimate decision not to give in to pressure from the street and on the same level of legitimacy, is the right of the street to continue pressing until it achieves its objectives. That the result of the legal and democratic confrontation is harmful to the country cannot be attributed to only one of the parties and even less to the one that is willing to negotiate.
The result of the contest will basically depend on the determination of Spanish society to defend its model of coexistence and I personally believe that this determination is very high. But the fact that the counterpart insists on announcing the futility of the strike in advance, assumes that they agree with the forecast of a massive follow-up that evidences the volume of discontent and makes new calls unavoidable.
The last thing we need in this country are saviors who are clear about what needs to be done, and even less that those who govern take refuge behind the homeland and popular sovereignty. On the contrary, there is an urgent need for leadership capable of generating agreements and meeting places. It is time to stop this nonsense of cuts, impositions and unilateral decisions that are dividing the country and generating a social fracture that will be the most serious of the consequences that this crisis may leave us.
Starting from the fact that there is only one way out of the crisis and that only a small group of enlightened people, exclusively, knows the recipe for the exit is an insulting sophism for intelligence. Even less so, when among these small groups are people who have a direct responsibility in the bacchanal of financial speculation that is at the genesis of the crisis. In any case, the imposition of a formula by one part of society on the other, making the weight of the sacrifices fall on the others, is the worst of the options. On the one hand, because it has already been empirically demonstrated that it not only does not contribute to the exit, but, on the contrary, makes the ditch of the crisis deeper, impoverishes us all and makes it difficult in practice to control the deficit and pay the debt. But in addition, opting for this type of exit means renouncing the consensual approach to the situation so that the exit is truly balanced and fair as the president of the government claims to intend. The difference lies in the fact that for the power, its clear conscience and innate lucidity, if not directly divine inspiration, dictates what is fair, balanced and necessary and for us, this band of disbelievers, balance is achieved when agreements are reached between the conflicting interests and between the formal and institutional representatives of those interests.
Therefore, the final usefulness of the general strike of May 29 will be seen, for now its purpose is not to impose on anyone the exit desired by the unions, but to open a process of real negotiation in search of an agreement that unites Spanish society. On the contrary, the detractors seek to determine from a parliamentary majority a political, moral and ideological leadership so indisputable, so absolute, that it is incompatible with democracy, and for which, of course, the citizens have not voted. The one who defined himself as president of all, is governing for some and against others, we have told him in the street hundreds of thousands, we will tell him millions during the strike and we will remind him that no one has the exclusive of the general interest and that the president of the government, far from being the owner of it, must be its most committed servant. Without us, without the participation of the workers and their organizations, without attending to our interests or trampling on them, the general interest is not built, in the same way that it could not be built by attending only to ours.
The second argumentative axis has to do with the moment, especially serious, and consequently especially inopportune for a strike call. The employers, the government and some other expert, of those who defend free dismissal while they have eight-zero indemnities, preferably and in this order, subscribe to this line of argument. Let's leave aside the fact that not once in history has the employers considered any moment as a moment "for strikes" although it is impossible to resist the temptation to remind the kind reader that when one, invariably, call after call, always alludes to the inappropriateness of the moment, becomes part of the landscape of the call, that it be done when it is done and against what is done will always be inappropriate.
If, on the contrary, they refer to the special harshness of this crisis and the especially hard year that, apparently, awaits us, what has been especially inopportune is the application of the severe policies of spending cuts and collective rights, which have plunged the European Union into recession and for which no one takes responsibility. Especially inopportune is the temptation to govern from the most blatant authoritarianism and from the grotesque reaffirmation of unique economic thought, at the precise moment in which the viability of ultra-liberalism and the pretension of shrinking public spaces are faltering in the face of social pressure and the inevitable stubbornness of reality.
But when they curl the curl of the grotesque and cross a dangerous border, the detractors of the strike is when they return to monopolize the concept of homeland to label as unpatriotic anyone who disagrees with them. This thread followed from the leadership of the Popular Party and from the media platforms that encourage them, returns to the abstract concept of homeland that no longer has to do with the well-being and equality of its citizens but with the ownership of flags and symbols that based on being monopolized are detaching from legitimacy.
The right should be very careful with itself and everyone with it, lest, mesmerized by the absolute majority, grown by the extreme weakness of the political opposition, deceived by their cheerleaders, they once again consider Spain as the estate of their whims, return to their eternal temptation of unique thought, of unique morality, convinced that they will pass over everything, that they will end everything without resistance, because every time they have yielded to this temptation the country has lost a generation of its inhabitants, an opportunity for progress and fifty years for its history.
*Carmelo Jorge Delgado, Secretary of Economy and Sectoral Policies of CCOO Canarias.
