Global consciousness for ineluctable deep transformations

I

We cannot continue tolerating that each day thousands of people die of hunger and abandonment, mostly children aged 1 to 5 years, while more than 3 billion dollars are spent on weapons and military expenditures.

It is necessary the transition from an economy of speculation, production delocalization and war to an economy of sustainable global development based on knowledge, accompanied by setting priorities at world scale (food, access to water, health, environment, education and peace). All under a re-founded United Nations, representing "We, the Peoples" ... provided with the necessary personal, technical and financial means. Only in this way can we tackle intergenerational responsibilities, "our supreme commitment" in the words of President Mandela.

We cannot continue tolerating that "the welfare State" shelter just, in the best case, the 20% of humanity in the prosperous neighborhood of the global village. The other 80% live in conditions incompatible with equal human dignity, in a progressive gradient of precariousness.

-Nor can we tolerate that democratic multilateralism has been replaced by plutocratic groups (G7, G8, G20 ...) expecting that a few rich countries “rule” the other 196!

- How can we accept that the human family is still living with the "sword of Damocles" of the atomic bombs, nuclear warheads?

-How can be accepted that, according to recent data from Oxfam, 85 personas hold wealth equivalent to half of the humanity (3,3 billion persons)?

-How can we accept that the States, progressively weaker, are puppets of large multinational companies, progressively strong?

When I look into the eyes of my grandchildren and my great-granddaughter, I think of all the worlds ‘children and the terrible verses of José Ángel Valente – “I expected your voice...- and it failed” and the emphatic phrase of Albert Camus - “They were despised because while they could do so much they did so little“-.

Facing the physically and conceptually somber horizons, I read and reread the illuminated poem of Miquel Martí i Pol: "That all is to be done and everything is possible ... but who but all?".

Yes, who but all?

Together we can.

It is time for global awareness, of global citizens.

I come from the land of the Ebro. I am from Barcelona. I feel deeply Catalan. And Spanish. And European. But I feel, above all, world citizen.

The challenges are global.

Our response today can already not only be heard but listened: the new communication technologies allow the popular outcry.

There are more women taking decisions today.  The woman is the cornerstone for this different future we wish.

The future has to be yet written.  Let us invent it.

Let’s be able to look far and high.

The coming generations claim it us.

II

In the Transition, with determination and courage, everyone tried that a General was substituted by a civil person. And in this way the political pluralism was achieved, with important concessions that should not be forgotten, of those who subordinated many sections of their trajectory to the rising democracy. And the essential structure of the State started.

“Unfinished Symphony”, said Adolfo Suárez, facing the immense pressures that conceived a coup d’état for a coalition Government headed by a military.  That “red Spain but not shattered” left unfinished the authentic federal articulation of Spain, without historical privileges.

The Autonomous Communities have been a good alternative to previous “verticality”.  The result is visible.  But a long time ago both the internal and external context advised changes in the Constitution, -especially the eight chapter in depth- so the Spanish State could play the important role that corresponds in the European Union and in the democratic multilateralism.

The Spanish nationalism has been more aggressive and inappropriate in some occasions that peripheral.  Those million signatures against the Catalan Statute, the repeated outbursts and “passivity” of the government, have exacerbated those who are convinced that the full development of their cultural identity, gathered to the great capacity for self-government, would allow more welfare to the whole population.  The process has originated, from truly autonomous aspirations, to independent ones.  Instead of finding fulfilment to the fair aspirations with well-accredited political formulas, -the United States of North America, Germany, Brazil, Mexico...- they are considering secessions  that are not foreseen in the European Union or the United Nations, and above all do not contribute to the urgent need to tackle  - “Who if not all”-  the great global challenges.

Let's get together and find the appropriate formulas. They exist. We have the duty to find them. Or invent them. Now it is the time to decide the paths of tomorrow that were left incomplete more than 30 years ago because of those anchored in the past. Now we need watchmen of the future, with a vision of the whole Earth. Taking into account all citizens of the world. Taking into account our own descendants.