Speech by President of the Government of Spain at 75th anniversary of United Nations

Royal Palace of El Pardo, Madrid

PEDRO SÁNCHEZ, PRESIDENT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF SPAIN

Your Majesty, Prime Minister of Sweden, President of Costa Rica, Heads of State, Heads of Government, public officials, ladies and gentlemen.

I wish to welcome you to this event to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations.

75 years ago, the United State President, Harry Truman, closed off the San Francisco Conference saying that history would honour us because the signing of the United Nations Charter was a sound basis to create a better world.

Later on, he would extend his own words with a message that I feel could today take on even more meaning, even more importance. Harry Truman, President Truman, warned us that "if we do not make use of the Charter, we will have betrayed those who gave their lives to forge it. If we try to make use of it selfishly to the benefit of just one nation or a small group of nations, we would be just as guilty of this betrayal".

Today, we celebrate this anniversary in an exceptional situation as the journalist reminded us. Mankind is facing unprecedented challenges in the last 100 years. In the same way as 75 years ago the terrible events of the first half of the 20th Century served to spur on the creation of the United Nations, today, once again, history calls on all institutions, on all high representatives of public institutions, to rise to the occasion.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and we are well aware of this, has not only unfortunately taken the lives of more than 1.2 million people around the world, including tens of thousands of fellow countrymen from my country, Spain, but has also caused the worst socio-economic emergency known to man. The worst calamity in a century; the greatest challenge of the last 100 years.

And yet, never before in the history of Mankind have we had so many instruments, so many tools within our grasp to act together.

For seven and a half decades, with a great deal of effort and determination, we have established a robust multilateral architecture based on an unequivocal and decisive commitment to a world that needs to be more prosperous, more inclusive and more sustainable.

On 21 September, this same 75th anniversary was held at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York, which H.M. the King took part in on behalf of our country, of Spain. That meeting approved a Declaration that set out 12 commitments that all the members of the UN felt were necessary to build a better future, the future we want to see.

We thus have a roadmap, and that is what is important, this Declaration, these 12 commitments, and together with that, the 2030 Agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals and also clearly the Paris Agreement. This all shows us how far we can go when we work together.

So now is not the time to question multilateralism. Now is the time for the rebirth of multilateralism. Our children, the generations to come, will judge us by our ability to strengthen and extend multilateralism, and consolidate its development.

The fight against the pandemic must not result in a normality that is identical to that of the pre-COVID-19 era. Now is the time to rebuild a better world and to recover this unity that has unfortunately weakened in recent years. Now is the time for a greener world - it must be greener and more sustainable.

We must work together for a much more sustainable and much fairer organisation and globalisation that guarantees the full exercise of human rights, which are currently, unfortunately, being questioned in many parts of the world. We must also commit to equal opportunities, to dignified employment, above all for our younger people. And we must clearly commit to digitalisation, this inclusive perspective that the digital transition must embody, and to the empowerment of women. Now is the time for feminism.

Now is also the time for social and territorial cohesion. For adopting specific commitments based on agreements already reached and for also promoting some new agreements. All of us here today are aware that the multilateral space will only be as strong as the sum of all its members. It thus depends on all of us.

It is in our hands to design and lay the foundations for the future we want to see for those generations to come. Now is the time to create jobs, opportunities and well-being for future generations, for those generations that have been born and are growing up through different crises - the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. That is why we feel that the best way to celebrate this 75th anniversary of the United Nations is by making a Call to Action to Strengthen Multilateralism.

We want to identify specific proposals on those priorities listed in the Declaration, that I mentioned before, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, to make a difference.

To do that, we have headed up this initiative, together with Sweden, whose Prime Minister, my dear friend Stefan Löfven, has decided to co-sponsor this together with Spain. Allow me at this time to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks for his support and also his virtual presence, live, at this event.

This Call to Action has been signed up to by a group of different world leaders that share this same commitment that we are making here today, in El Pardo, for a future where multilateralism plays an essential, key and central role.

I wish to express my gratitude to the President of Costa Rica, to President Alvarado, for signing up to this initiative and for his presence here with us live, despite the time difference.

And I feel very honoured to also announce that this Call to Action has been signed up to by the Heads of State and Government of Canada, of South Korea, of Bangladesh, of Jordan, of Senegal, of South Africa and of Tunisia, and also the Prime Minister of New Zealand. I wish to thank all of them, represented here by their respective ambassadors, for their participation and for also jointly heading up this important initiative together with Spain.

All the leaders that are taking part in this event have committed to continue to strengthen multilateralism in their respective regions and spheres of influence. Spain is a country with a global vocation. Our vision of the world is one of effective multilateralism in tackling global challenges that cannot be addressed on an individual basis, but only through open societies with continuous social progress. Open societies that demand that we further develop rights and freedoms, even defending these rights and freedoms that we have bedded down in recent decades, that demand more transparency and accountability from us, more democratic regeneration and more citizen participation in decision-making. Open societies committed to democratic values beyond our borders.

I will end with a quote that I like to mention whenever I can. This is a quote written by an important Spanish philosopher - José Ortega y Gasset - when speaking precisely about the importance of societies making progress. He said that "it is only possible to make progress when you look to afar. When we look to afar, the only path is progress; if we look to afar then we can better see and contemplate the big picture". Hence, this proposed action we make here today to celebrate the 75th anniversary seeks, above all, to reaffirm this commitment, of looking to afar and contemplating the big picture. This is our message to all the people of the world.

This same spirit is what inspired the foundation of the organisation's whose 75th anniversary we celebrate today.

Let this commemoration serve, Your Majesty, leaders, public officials, ladies and gentlemen, to continue to raise the threshold of our ambition, to continue working on a united front for a future that leaves no-one behind. Let's think big and look to afar.

Thank you very much.

(Transcript edited by the State Secretariat for Communication)

Non official translation