He presents his work by ensuring that the Constitution today belongs to everyone because in its day “it could not belong to any party.”
The former president of the Community Board of Castilla-La Mancha, José María Barreda, has defended the role of political parties and society during the period of the democratic Transition in Spain, “a great collective responsibility that avoided confrontations and fostered agreement”, in contrast to the environment of polarization and tension that “does not favor the climate that should exist.”
This demand for the agreement from initially opposing positions is the spirit that permeates his new book ‘A grassroots militant in (the) Transition’, a volume with a prologue by Nicolás Sartorius that will be presented this Thursday at 7:15 p.m. at the Faculty of Letters of Real city. The author will be accompanied by the journalist Lucía Méndez, the professor of Contemporary History Juan Sisinio Pérez Garzón and the vice president of the Board of Communities, José Manuel Caballero.
Later, on July 4, the book will be presented at the Ateneo de Madrid with the presence of the Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría, the cartoonist Peridis and the director of infoLibre, Jesús Maraña.
In an interview with Europa Press, Barreda explained that the book covers the years of the Spanish democratic Transition from the “key moment” of the murder of Carrero Blanco, from which he intertwines the author’s life experiences and his ideological evolution with the political transformation of the country as a whole.
Thus, Barreda recalled that Spain managed to combine competing approaches to emerge from the Dictatorship, in the face of the current “excessive tension and tremendous polarization that, of course, does not favor the climate that should exist.”
“During those years of Transition the Communist Party abandoned Leninism, while the PSOE abandoned Marxism, and we all faced a crucial moment in which two approaches came together: on the one hand the reformist bloc, whose maximum representative was Adolfo Suárez, who came from the Franco regime and advocated an evolution from law to law, in the face of the democratic opposition, led mainly by the Communist Party of Spain, and the PSOE, which proposed a democratic rupture,” he recalls.
“This confrontation of models between reform versus rupture would crystallize in an agreed rupture that gave the 1978 Constitution as its fundamental fruit,” highlights the former president of Castilla-La Mancha.
In his opinion, “the success of that Constitution did not belong to any party exclusively and could be accepted by everyone, including the nationalists.” Faced with the review “of what some disparagingly call the generation of ’78”, Barreda makes a “positive” assessment of the work of those years. “The contemporary history of Spain reflects an almost uninterrupted fratricidal confrontation in the 19th and 20th centuries, and in that complicated and difficult moment, not exempt from violence, the Spaniards were able to ward off that danger and find an agreed solution that avoided the frontal confrontation, the train crash of a Cainite fight to the death,” he argued.
In the book, the author also captures his personal ideological and political evolution. “Indeed, the starting point can be placed in an awareness of the evangelical Catholic spirit, with the influence of the Second Vatican Council and some progressive Marianists who trained me in the pre-university stage, to jump ideologically, upon arrival at the university, to the anti-Franco movements, first with the Communist Party and later with the PSOE,” he recalls.
In this way, the book also becomes a sentimental journey of the author himself, who begins each of his chapters with verses that are already part of his “sentimental and political education”, and includes references to the cultural effervescence of the time, mainly to the activity that took place in the residence halls. “It is the story of an anti-Franco militant from those years,” he emphasizes, influenced by Marxist readings and texts related to what was then called Eurocommunism, “an effort to overcome the approach of dictatorship of the proletariat and try to offer a human face of communism”.
“SUPER CRISPATION”
In this context, José María Barreda has confessed that he is not in favor of “idealizing” the past, but has recognized that at that time “there was great collective responsibility that avoided confrontations and led to the agreement.” Barreda, who currently presides over the historic Club Siglo XXI, recalled that in that same institution Manuel Fraga introduced Santiago Carrillo in the mid-70s.
“Now there is excessive tension and tremendous polarization that, of course, does not favor the climate that should exist,” he emphasizes. “I have always defended the definition of politics made by the classics and which for me has been a guide to conduct: the purpose of politics is to remove hatred from its eternal character, and not the opposite, not to promote hatred, nor cainism “, not even confrontation, but rather achieving coexistence in peace and tranquility, being tolerant, respecting the adversary and never turning him into an enemy,” he reflected.
“We should start from the principle that there are no enemies, but only political adversaries who must not be destroyed but rather respected and fought with ideas and programs, but not with disqualifications and insults,” he insists.
In this sense, he has recognized that in those years a part of the left “despised” social democracy. “In those days at the university, the social democrats were the worst, they were despised and were even called social fascists and reactionaries, but frankly it is becoming clearer to me that it is worth building a social democratic state where there is security for everyone from the cradle to the grave “.
Asked about his opinion on the ideological evolution of the Socialist Party since the arrival of Pedro Sánchez to the leadership of the PSOE, he maintains that it is very conditioned by some “traumatic” moments.
PRESENTATION IN CIUDAD REAL
Barreda presented his work to society this Thursday afternoon, and he did so by defending it as “a personal experience in line with the events that were happening in Spain at a crucial moment”, with the murder of Carrero Blanco as a starting point.
In statements to the media before the event, Barreda noted how at that moment “a whole dynamic was unleashed in which, to put it simply, there were two great forces”, the reformists who came from the Franco regime “who wanted to go from law to law and carry out a reform that would not imply a democratic rupture” and the democratic opposition “which was then led by the Communist Party of Spain and the Socialist Party”.
Remember that “neither of the two options could prevail over the other” and they ended up “finding a solution that was the only possible one, consensus, understanding, pact and agreement.”
“And that led to the 1978 Constitution, which could have been everyone’s because it was not that of any particular party,” said the former president, who defends that the Magna Carta is “a fruit worth valuing.”
Now there are “those who have denigrated what they pejoratively call the ’78 regime and, however, that was an exercise of responsibility on the part of all the political leaders who came from very opposing positions.”
Despite the current polarized situation, he has been optimistic, and hopes that “the situation will relax and change.”
