“We can get out of the crisis, but we have to believe it.” In fact, Spanish people “can see how to get out, but we lack the confidence to do it.” This was the message that the president of the everis foundation, Eduardo Serra, gave in the conference Civil Society and the Transforming Spain report, which was organised last week be the Association for the Progress of Management (APD), with the collaboration of the Employers’ Confederation of Navarra (CEN), Institución Futuro (Future Institution) and the everis foundation (to download the Transforming Spain report, click here).
In his intervention, Serra, also the former Spanish Defence Minister, referred to the role of civil society in the current economic situation, and explained the Transforming Spain report, which, coordinated by the everis foundation, deals with the different reforms that the country needs for its economic and social development, and has the backing of hundreds of businesspeople, experts and other important people.
Serra recognised that our country “has had an extraordinary trajectory”, managing to multiply by a hundred its per capita income in the last fifty years, which he called the “Spanish miracle”. The president of the everis Foundation also pointed out that, even in 1996, in Europe, “we were seen as incapable of joining the euro, and we entered by right.” Thus, “we have to believe in our abilities”. Between 2004 and 2007 Spain invested 80 billion euros in the United Kingdom (in airports, banks and electricity companies), and was its primary foreign investor. Until 2007, when the international economic crisis began, which “has affected Spain particularly, not because we deserved it”, said Serra, who attributed the “severe blow” to our housing bubble, and mentioned how the credit crunch has put on show some of the weaknesses of our productive model, for example, that “we can no longer compete because of our low salaries”.
For this reason, the Transforming Spain report details some of the aspects of our model that need to be reformed, and those in which it is necessary to establish “long term strategies”, such as the rigidity of the labour market, or the failure of our energetic model, which is “excessively dependent on fossil fuels”.
Another of the keys that Serra pointed out was that of “looking outwards”, that is, exporting and becoming more international. The president of the everis Foundation stressed the importance of reaching consensus in areas such as education policy, in which, he claims, the potential excellence of new generations must be realised.
"The moment for reforms has arrived,” since this crisis is synonymous with change, “one moment is ending and another is beginning”, explained Serra. He added that, “in the globalised world, we compete against everyone, which requires a new society and a new talent market”.