An alternative Spanish agenda

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All rulers cultivate the art of setting and imposing their political agenda. On many occasions, politicians' agendas tend to be a subtle way to avoid explaining and confronting what is really happening. There are very clear cases, such as José María Aznar's initiative to participate in the Gulf War alongside the US and the United Kingdom when Spanish society had been advancing for years in the political and aesthetic culture of Peace.

If we analyze in a little more detail, we notice that the most advanced countries are those that have managed to establish a broad consensus in fields such as education, science, or technology, regardless of political tensions. For decades, the success of the American film industry was marked by its ability to prioritize the film industry as a center of national development, providing it with tax breaks and allowing Los Angeles to become its capital, even though hundreds of films were made in New York. This vision helped develop the business and technological project of Silicon Valley, where the myth, in any case very real, has been forged that innovation is everything in the new economy.

The political agendas of the US and France are very similar to ours but with one unique and notable difference: that politics does not interfere with or pervert what society needs and wants to develop.

The political agendas of these two countries are very similar to ours but with a single and notable difference: that politics does not interfere with or pervert what society needs and wants to develop. The Spanish case is somewhat different. After several years betting on alternative energies until becoming one of the leaders in said sector, they have ceased to be a priority in recent years. Political interference, lack of dialogue, and the inability to provide stability to agreed-upon pacts have caused the Spanish agenda to be empty or confusing in recent years. More than a year and a half ago, feminist associations organized and warned anyone who wanted to listen that they would no longer tolerate public silence on the unjust and unjustifiable wage gap between men and women. For more than a year, they organized, spoke with political, union, and business forces without the PP government realizing that society was going to mobilize. PP officials, faced with the massive social demonstrations, declared to the press that they had been caught by surprise.

We find the same example with the defense of pensions that have mobilized society, to the surprise and astonishment of many politicians. Spain's economic situation demands that citizens clearly know what the priorities will be in the next twenty years to focus their efforts and benefit from their achievements. The new agenda must warn without ambiguity, without half-truths, and without hidden interests that the Mediterranean Corridor must be a priority and that society will be able to verify its progress, that increasing investment in science and culture is essential to prevent our talents from leaving for other countries, that the demographic issue must be addressed, not only in technical terms, but also ethical ones, that Spain's tourism model must be rethought, being as it is a world power. We could continue placing items on the Spanish agenda, but the main one is that we can clearly know Spain's economic priorities, apart from the inertia of betting on the real estate or tourism business.