Given the amnesia affecting many Spanish politicians about the virtues of their past, I would like to recall what the transition meant for us Latin American liberals. Spain then showed us the way to harmony. The dimension of that debt is comparable only to the disappointment and restlessness we feel today when we see it mired in discord.

Let’s start with debt. In the mid-seventies, when the most absurd theories were circulating about its “historical impossibility” of approaching modernity, Spain initiated a paradigm shift that seemed unimaginable. Those who believed that caudillismo would survive the “generalissimo” in hats “by the grace of God” were wrong. Those who thought that centuries of absolute monarchy disqualified the consolidation of parliamentary monarchy were wrong. Those who claimed that the shadow of the Inquisition and centuries of religious intolerance will prevent the transition to an open and free society in all areas of life (sexual, artistic, religious, intellectual) were not right. Those who doubted that, ahead of its counterparts in Germany, France and Italy, Spanish socialism could leave behind its old party structures, as well as its authoritarian ideologies and mentalities, to adopt the political forms and institutions of classical liberalism, were wrong. Those who decreed the essential incompatibility of socialism and the market were wrong. Those who despised the ability of historical adversaries to compete for power within the framework of freedom, tolerance and respect for legality were wrong.

Spain was then a revelation and an inspiration for Ibero-Americans: branches of the Iberian trunk, we knew that we too could – if we so decided – strive for that level of maturity. And little by little, the example spread. Over the next decade, with the exception of Cuba, almost all Latin American countries left behind dictatorial regimes of the right or left (including their military and guerrilla forces) and accepted voting as the only legitimate means of access to power. Spain has shown the way to building societies in which the search for prosperity and justice, as well as the resolution of natural political and ideological differences, have always been framed in respect for the rule of law, in a moral atmosphere that stops everything. Noble word Greek, Latin and Spanish roots: the word concord.

In the Roman Empire, José Ortega y Gasset (Spanish philosopher, for amnesiacs) returned to the theme of agreement in 1941 in Cicero’s writings, inspired by the Greek tradition. “When in the state – writes Aristotle – each side wants power for itself, there is discord.” Although concord should not be “confused with conformity of thought,” concord always presupposed “healthy hearts…hearts that agree with themselves and reciprocally agree with each other, because they deal, so to speak, with the same things.” (Nichomachian Ethics).

“It is obvious – writes Ortega – that society exists thanks to consensus, the agreement of its members in certain final opinions. This consensus or unanimity of thought is what Cicero calls ‘consensus,’ and which he defines, in full terms, as ‘the best and firmest bond of every state.'” The picture of the heart is perfect. In discord, with a divided heart, “society ceases to be society at all: it falls apart.” The reason, Ortega explains, is not a battle of ideas, but an incompatibility of beliefs “about who should be in charge.” When that fundamental belief fades, irrational passion reigns.

Today, we who believe in freedom in Latin America see with sadness how discord threatens Spain. How did it get to this point? The historical ignorance of the younger generations, in love with their self-proclaimed moral superiority, is a factor. The second is mimesis, the complicity or at least the pandering of a part of the Spanish left to Latin American populism. It is very sad that in Spain, the vanguard of our democracy in the seventies, this Latin American monstrosity is thriving.

But the Spanish discord is not the result of a dispute in ideas or even beliefs. This is largely due to the fanaticism of identity and the will to power embodied in the alliance that rules today. They are – first of all – those who did not even agree with themselves, who revived the spirit of caudillism, who appealed to polarizing ideologies and mentalities and put the rule of law in jeopardy.

The story has surprising twists. Perhaps it is not utopian to think that the time has come for us, Latin Americans, to show Spain the way to recover that main value that the citizens of every country quietly practice in their daily lives, and that value that is being destroyed by populist governments: harmony. . (OR)