Felipe González warns that in “moments of great uncertainty, the arrogance of having the whole truth is extremely dangerous”
July 7, 2022

Former President Felipe González has starred in the first of the extraordinary conferences of this edition of the El Escorial Summer Courses, with a speech in which, after recalling the lawyer Matías Cortés, he focused his talk on the importance of defending democracy, as well as the legal certainty and freedom that derives from it. González has spoken of the dangers that lie in wait for democracy in these times of uncertainty, especially from those who believe they have the absolute truth and who are unable to recognize their mistakes. Some of the politicians who act in this way, according to the former president, are Vladimir Putin, Nicolás Maduro, Xi Jinping or Daniel Ortega.

Felipe González, who believes that we are biochemically optimistic since we have been doing webinars on the post-pandemic for two years although we have not yet come out of it, acknowledges that now we are overwhelmed by economic and social uncertainty. It is true that in Spain “employment is growing very rapidly and, unusual fact, there is more supply than demand, so there will continue to be some pull in the economy, but the crisis has caused the income levels of most of the population in 2008 to they are very similar to those of 2022 , also with inflation that is hitting us from all sides and that can hardly be resolved without an income pact in the style of the Moncloa Pacts ”.

Inflation, according to his words, is nothing more than a general impoverishment, but it does not affect everyone equally, ” it affects much more those who have less, and therefore it is necessary to equitably redistribute the effort and for that there is to agree.”

It is in these moments of great uncertainty when “the arrogance of having the whole truth is extremely dangerous, because nobody has it and anyone who has responsibility for any issue, when they put their head on the pillow, knows that it tells them that they have no certainties, even if he has to give them to his interlocutor, because that is his task”. He also criticizes that now that “we are so multilingual we continue to be hicks who do not stop looking at our navel, when in reality the same thing is happening all over the world, from Patagonia to Washington, where the attempted coup with the assault on Congress.

A first solution that could be taken in this uncertain world would be, at least, “to recover legal certainty, which is the building of coexistence “. González assures that there is a law that is forgotten, “which should be the first quarter of participation in any government”, which is the Legal Regime of the State Administration, which guarantees how decisions are processed in any circumstance.

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