Within the framework of the Political Cycle coordinated by the La Salle-URL Faculty of Philosophy, and with the campus’s intention of being a space for debate, reflection and the democratization of knowledge, speakers of recognized prestige took part in a discussion moderated by Santi Vila, professor of the same faculty. Manuela Carmena, Former Mayor of Madrid; Albert Sáez, Director of El Periódico; and Rocío Martínez-Sampere, President of the Felipe González Foundation; analyzed left-wing ideologies from a local, national and international perspective.
The event was opened by the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Carles Llinàs, who highlighted the importance of hosting this type of debate to bring political reality closer to the campus community from a calm and reflective viewpoint. Llinàs also announced the celebration of the second cycle of this academic year, which will take place on February 18 and is titled The Future of the Right.
A retrospective look at the concept of the left
To begin, Santi Vila asked the speakers what the left is from each of their perspectives. Manuela Carmena opened the discussion by recalling her beginnings in the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) and defended it as “the most effective institution to fight against Francoism.” The Former Mayor of Madrid added: “Events change so much and people so little that it is important to focus on people and not so much on events.” She concluded her first intervention by analyzing the current state of the left: “Now we are living in a moment in which the essence of what the left was throughout the 20th century has dissolved. And where are we? I would say in an emptying of the concept of the left.”
For her part, Rocío Martínez-Sampere highlighted that “since the French and Industrial Revolutions, society has been structured through the binomial of equality and freedom” and that “social democracy is where this binomial of values freedom and equality combines best, but in recent times a new binomial has emerged: identity and power.” In this regard, Albert Sáez emphasized that “liberal democracy is the best period in the history of humanity, and I think this must be defended so that it doesn’t seem as if everything is the same.” Sáez defined the left as “trust in progress, in the idea that things can get better. It’s not just about changing what doesn’t work; it’s about changing to improve”; and he drew a parallel between the Christian tradition and the left through the concept of hope: “Hope makes us think that things can get better. We are people of hope; afterwards we will organize ourselves however we can.”
The transition, the rise of extremism and the future of the left
In the second round of questions, Santi Vila referred to Francoism and the transition to ask the speakers about the rise of extremism and the perception among young people that an authoritarian regime might be more beneficial than a democracy. Rocío Martínez-Sampere stated that “education is one of the policies that best guarantees equal opportunities” and that “democracy has an analog speed, while today’s demands require other speeds.” She concluded: “We are capable of reforming democracy.”
In his turn, Albert Sáez offered self-criticism: “A large part of young people’s discontent with democracy comes from the way we do journalism. We generate a state of opinion that everything is a disaster, and then someone arrives and gives a simplistic answer.” And regarding the transition, he added: “We have gone from idealizing the transition to demonizing it.” In this sense, Manuela Carmena pointed out that “democracy is a human institution” and that “during the dictatorship we had a profound desire for democracy.” “The transition was a success, but afterwards democracy has deviated greatly from what a democracy should be,” she added. Carmena closed the interventions with an optimistic statement about where we should go: “There is currently a dissociation between society and the political class. We need to start removing labels and talking about how humanity must operate.”
The event filled the Auditorium of La Salle Campus Barcelona in the fourth edition of a cycle that is consolidating itself as a meeting space for calm reflection and debate between experts and professionals from the political world with students, researchers and educators of the campus. In previous editions, the Political Cycle of the Faculty of Philosophy has analyzed the vocation of politics with Artur Mas and Iñigo Urkullu, the elections in the United States of America, and the context of Europe and the European Union.