"Eurovegas"? No!

A whole life devoted to education, research, promoting creativity, attracting tourism through our healthcare system, our excellent culture, including our cuisine… a whole life seeking to increase our natural, cultural and intangible heritage, biosphere reserves, UNESCO chairs, associate institutions… 

Proud to be the leading country in organ transplants, the third in biomedicine, one of the best in new materials… 

Have you visited the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona? Or the computer installations at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia? Are you aware of the Autonomous University of Madrid’s (UAM) immense scientific and technical developments, which to a great extent are the result of collaboration between the University and the High Council for Scientific Research (CSIC)? Or the Communications Park in Malaga? Or the Health Sciences Park in Granada?... 

We have spent many, many hours working to achieve a country that is multifaceted, federal, multilingual, plural, serene, and a leader in aid to development and cooperation, rather than in exploitation… We have promoted and participated in peace processes in Latin America and Africa… We have supported universal life-long education throughout the world… 

Proud to be Catalan, I have lived for many years in Madrid and I have loved Andalusia with a passion, and still do. 

I have applauded Spain’s successes in sports and been a conscientious Barça fan since I first went to the “Les Corts” stadium with my father in 1946, although my grandchildren prefer Real Madrid, regardless of who’s the coach… 

After 40 years devoted to biochemistry, after having co-founded the Severo Ochoa Center for Molecular Biology where today over 700 people work… after having implemented the National Plan for the Prevention of Mental Retardation… after having written numerous protests and proposals… after having supported the “outraged” and offered them my collaboration… in summary and like so many others and with so many difficulties, after a lifetime seeking to improve this country, Europe, and to the extent possible, the world… now Spain, instead of continuing to be a reference for human, cultural and democratic quality, may soon become a reference for the waste, luxury and dissipation characteristic of that 1% of the population, which under the generic term “markets” continues to rule the world. But the great financial, energy, media and military domain is on its last leg. The people are starting to find their voices. 

"Eurovegas"? Like trinkets offered as diamonds in moments of hardship, I believe this would be a very serious error.

• The Olympic Games, yes. 

• Offer our country –as some of the Autonomous Communities are doing– as the headquarters for large multilateral institutions, which will shortly replace those disastrous G7, G8, G20 groups of plutocrats… yes. The more, the better. Ocean sciences, yes. Increasingly more efficient renewable energies, yes. New materials –as in the University of Valencia, for example- yes. Transportation via high-speed trains, yes. Adequate water management, yes… 

• Cultural development in aspects in which we are experts, such as cinema, yes. 

• Huge cuts in military spending –such as Obama and Monti have implemented in the last few weeks- yes. 

• New agricultural technologies, yes… 

Macao and Singapore are not Spain. They have never been a part of the world that, despite it all, has offered all mankind creativity, life styles to identify with… and a few good examples. 

"Eurovegas" in Spain? Don’t fall into that trap. For many Spaniards –and for so many others who observe us from abroad- this would mark a historic retreat from the “quality and dignity” that cost this country so much to achieve and is so difficult to maintain.