Investiture speech of the candidate for the Presidency of the Government before the Lower House of Parliament

Lower House of Parliament, Madrid

SPEECH BY THE ACTING PRESIDENT, PEDRO SÁNCHEZ, AS CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF SPAIN IN THE 15TH LEGISLATURE

Good morning. Egun on. Bon dia. Bos días.

President, honourable Members, compatriots, fellow citizens who follow us in the media and also on social networks.

Demonstrating in the streets is one of the forms of exercising democracy recognised by our Constitution.

In recent days we have heard thousands of citizens express themselves freely and legitimately in protests called by both the Partido Popular and Vox. To all those who have exercised this right peacefully - and I stress, peacefully - I would like to convey my respect and recognition because they have exercised a constitutional right to political participation that is enshrined in the Spanish Constitution.

The Constitution - ladies and gentlemen - provides for only one higher form of democratic exercise, and that is voting in elections. This is precisely the procedure laid down in the Constitution for the formation of the government and, consequently, also for the investiture of the Presidency of the Government.

Today and tomorrow, in this House, we are going to listen to the 25 million people who voted on 23 July in a constitutional election, called and held in an impeccably constitutional manner and in accordance with the rules laid down in the Spanish Constitution.

Today, in this House, we are going to listen to - and abide by - the will of the Spanish people expressed through their representatives as recognised by our Constitution. Today and tomorrow, we will follow the rules of parliamentary democracy set out in our Constitution and initiate the constitutional process that will lead to the formation of a constitutional government in Spain.

And we are going to do so because this is established in the Constitution itself, in the laws that emanate from it; but also because we learned from our fathers, our mothers, our grandfathers and grandmothers, that there is only democracy within the Constitution; because outside the Constitution and its rules there is no democracy, but imposition and caprice.

And it is important, ladies and gentlemen, that we have this debate and that the government that will come to power in this House gets to work as soon as possible, because our country, like Europe and also like the world, is undergoing transformations that are unprecedented in the history of humanity.

Some of them have a distinctly positive character, such as feminism, which aims to end patriarchy and thus achieve fairer and more equal societies. On the other hand, there are other transformations that will be beneficial or devastating for our society as a whole, depending on how we respond to them.

The most obvious example is the climate emergency, which affects the entire planet, and which represents just that, an emergency that forces us to transform our economies, our consumption habits, our mobility, our energy policy..... All this in order to preserve a habitable planet for both present and future generations.

I will give just one fact to give you an idea of the scale of the challenge ahead. Achieving climate neutrality this century will cost 2.6 percentage points of global Gross Domestic Product this century. Failure to achieve it would mean a 30% contraction of the same global GDP.

Together with this, ladies and gentlemen, there is a second great transformation, which is the unstoppable advance of globalisation, but unfortunately without an effective multilateral system, which exacerbates inequalities between countries, produces intense and uncontrolled migratory movements; migratory movements which, furthermore, are being exacerbated as a consequence of the climate emergency, the lack of opportunities in the countries of origin, the persecution of those who are different under dictatorial regimes and the rise or the entrenchment of armed conflicts.

We are seeing it in Ukraine, we are also, unfortunately, seeing it in the Middle East. We witnessed it not long ago in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and with the same determination with which Spain helps those being attacked, in this case Ukraine against an aggressor country such as Putin's Russia, through its flagrant violation of international law; with the same determination we demand an immediate ceasefire by Israel in Gaza and strict compliance with international humanitarian law, which today is clearly not being respected.

Let there be no doubt, we stand with Israel in condemning and responding to the terrorist attack that Israel suffered in October, of course, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice and held accountable. We demand the immediate release of the hostages still being held by Hamas. But just as clearly, ladies and gentlemen, we reject the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. We call for an immediate ceasefire. Consequently, the bombs must stop, the humanitarian aid needed by the Palestinian people must come in immediately, diplomacy must be opened up with the urgent holding of a Peace Conference and the solution, rightly demanded and long demanded by the Palestinian people for the recognition of their state, must be endorsed by the international community.

And in this regard, I would like to make a commitment, my first commitment of this legislature. Inspired by the 2014 Cortes Generales resolution, the new government is going to work in Europe and, of course, in Spain, to recognise the Palestinian state.

And of course Spain and Europe must continue to support Ukraine until the last Russian soldier leaves a country that wants to be free, that wants to be European, thereby achieving a just and lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine and also, consequently, between Russia and Europe.

Ladies and gentlemen, I was telling you about the climate emergency, inequalities between nations and regions, the rise of armed conflicts and the increase in inequalities within our countries, after decades of failed neoliberal policies that have devalued the material conditions of the middle class, and also of working men and women, and have undermined the foundations of the welfare state.

Alongside this, the 4th industrial revolution and the explosion of Artificial Intelligence is challenging human control over technology and heralding the replacement of many of today's jobs. A replacement that, according to various studies, could amount to roughly half of current jobs.

Many of these transformations have been present during the Spanish government's Presidency of the European Union. Examples include the strengthening of the social pillar, the reform of the electricity market, the culmination - hopefully before the end of the year - of the Pact on Immigration and Asylum, the increase in Spanish and European humanitarian aid to Gaza, the new economic governance - which we hope we can bring to light before the end of the year -, the Artificial Intelligence Act and the preparations for the next important COP28, where Europe and Spain must lead by example in the fulfilment of the Paris Agreements.

And I want to stress this, ladies and gentlemen, because Spain's active and constructive leadership in all these global debates, with a strong social impact on the day-to-day lives of the people we represent, shows that our country, that Spain has been gradually recovering the international clout that we have not had in recent years. And not because one or another language is spoken fluently, but because Spain is today seen by many countries around us, both in Europe and in the international context, as a reliable and committed partner in the face of the great challenges facing humanity.

And I would also like to say to the citizens who are following this debate that I am fully aware that all these transformations provoke a feeling of defencelessness in large sectors of our population, who feel helpless, lacking certainty in the face of such disruptive and dizzying changes.

There are many workers, self-employed people, members of the social economy, who see their jobs and businesses at risk as a result of the relocation of economic activities to countries which, unfortunately, have fewer freedoms and fewer social and labour protections. Or the replacement, as I said before, of their jobs by machines, automated machines. There are workers and unemployed people who view migration with some suspicion as they feel a potential risk that their contribution to the labour market will be harmed. There are entire geographical areas, including here in Spain, threatened by water shortages, by fires, by desertification, which has a direct impact on traditional productive sectors that are extraordinarily deeply rooted in our societies - I am thinking of agriculture, livestock farming and fishing - but also of other sectors that are very important in terms of GDP and in terms of job creation, such as the tourism sector and the transport sector, all of which are exposed to the consequences of a climate emergency that is not slowing down but rather speeding up.

Households, ladies and gentlemen, that are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. The high cost of living, the lack of access to decent housing, which is one of the age-old problems of our democracy. All these harsh realities and many others, therefore, demand a firm and committed response from the public authorities. What we need to do is to strengthen the welfare state, to widen the social safety net, just the opposite of the cuts and dismantling of the public sector proclaimed by the neoliberal thinking of those at the top.

And if these situations of stress and uncertainty do not receive a positive response from democracy, this feeling of insecurity, disbelief and confusion may spread ever further among the population and fuel reactionary political expressions that end up undermining the very foundations of our democracy.

In short, ladies and gentlemen, either democracy responds by providing security, or the legitimate feeling of social insecurity that many citizens have as a result of the revolutions that are pending will turn into anger, and that anger will end up feeding political proposals that end up undermining democracy itself.

I am referring, of course, to the reactionary proposals that take shape in far-right political groups that question democracy and also human rights. When you question feminism you are questioning a cause that obviously impacts on human rights, to give just one example.

Reactionary proposals that discredit science, as we have experienced during the management of the pandemic. Reactionary proposals that deny the scientific evidence of climate change; we experience it every day. They despise culture, they attack those who are different for being different, and they attack causes as just, as I said before, as feminism.

I refer to them and I also refer to those reactionary ideas that end up parasitising the parties of the traditional right: the Republican Party in the United States, colonised by Trumpism; the British Conservative Party dragged down by Brexit - and which now, as we have just seen, has regained its main creator; the currents of the European People's Party that are giving in to the far right; the traditional Argentinean right, overwhelmed by the delirious reactionary discourse of Milei.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the dilemma facing the world. The dilemma facing Europe. And it is also, consequently, the dilemma facing Spain. Either democracy provides security, or insecurity will kill democracy. Either we address all these transformations with social justice and from social justice, or the foundations of our prosperity will be weakened. Either Spain continues to move forward, ladies and gentlemen, or Spain moves backwards. That is the dilemma we are facing here in Spain as well.

And it is a dilemma that goes far beyond the classic distinction between left and right. What clashes are two different ways of understanding society and also of facing Spain's present and future. As was already the case 100 years ago, in times of intense change, an intense ideological and political contest is being waged between a reactionary and a progressive option; the reactionary and, consequently, regressive option promises an illusory return to a glorious, mythologised and false past. An option that, like the demagogic movements of classical Greece, points the finger at scapegoats and offers no real solutions. At one time it was the leftists, at other times it was the global elite, it was the EU authorities, and always, always, always it is the feminists, the trade unionists, the migrants, the LGTBI community, the environmentalists and, again, the left.

And in the face of this reactionary option, there is an option that is committed to progress, to consolidation, to the extension and improvement of the great social conquests. An option that provides the security of organised solidarity as a response to legitimately individual fears. It is therefore up to us to decide whether we face these challenges head on, or let inequality run wild and spark an environmental catastrophe that will condition the well-being of present and future generations, including our own species.

It is up to us to choose to move forward or to move backwards. It is also up to us to decide, ladies and gentlemen, whether we improve and increase public services and social benefits or go back to the neoliberal and austerity postulates that have caused so much pain to many generations since the financial crisis.

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, we are faced with a choice: either we move forward or we go back to that starting point. Equally, the time has come to reaffirm our commitment to democracy. So far this century, ladies and gentlemen, the number of autocratic regimes has grown by 20% and democracies have fallen back to their 1986 levels. One quarter of the world's population thinks this is good news, that in frenetic and complex times like these, it is better to leave government in the hands of authoritarian leaders who make decisions alone, without having to answer to parliaments, elections or the media - don't be fooled, ladies and gentlemen - and there are those of us who think this is foolhardy.

There are those of us who believe, ladies and gentlemen, that democracies are systems that guarantee greater economic growth, greater levels of peace, greater levels of freedom, greater rights and social justice.

Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, we have to choose, we must choose, it is up to us to choose; just as we must also choose whether we want to continue to make progress in the dignity of work, in the empowerment of women, in respect for sexual diversity, in the integration of the migrant population and also in the continuing fate of many disabled people, who need and demand the dignity that the public authorities must grant them; in the belief that a plural society is undoubtedly a better society. Or if, on the contrary, we go along with the prophets of hate who want to lock women in kitchens, LGTBI people in closets and migrants in refugee camps.

Humanity is therefore facing an existential dilemma and the decisions we take today will condition the world in which we will live for the rest of our lives and which we will pass on to our sons and daughters. In other words, the stakes are high. And as I have been saying, there are only two alternatives. On the one hand, there is the proposal of the retrograde right-wingers who want to dismantle practically all the progress we have made in recent decades. What these right-wingers do is ooze classism. They deny the gains in rights, in dignity of work, they reject the welfare state, they deny climate change, they despise those who love differently from them, they impose a unique and exclusive model - as we have been seeing in recent weeks - of feeling and being Spanish - by the way, we are as Spanish as you are, we are no less Spanish than you are. And they oppose the leading role of women in society. In short, they reject change, they refuse to change things and only propose a return to the past.

And against them there are progressive forces that are ready to move forward, not take a step backwards. Forces that are well aware of the problems that we face, that the citizens of our country face, and that are, moreover, convinced that these problems can be overcome, that they must be overcome. And that if we make the right decisions, Europe and Spain - and the values we embody - have a bright future ahead of them and can illuminate the rest of the world with their model.

The regressive right, ladies and gentlemen, follow outdated economic dogmas, ignore the experts, question the contributions of science and, consequently, prove incapable of managing the public sector. They are as incapable of solving problems as they are capable of instigating hatred and social anger. They have mastered the reactionary technique and their only skill seems to be exploiting the legitimate fears and frustrations of a part of the population to gain power. Once in power, however, they spread chaos, as seen in the resounding failure of Prime Minister Liz Truss, the Brexit debacle and the erratic handling of the pandemic. They are incompetent in management, but frighteningly effective in spreading resentment and hatred.

In the last decade, ladies and gentlemen, far-right parties have doubled their votes in Europe. They have won one in four seats in national parliaments and have entered 12 state governments and hundreds of regional and local governments. And they have not done it alone. It is true, it would have been impossible for them. Far-right parties have expanded thanks to a traditional right that has blessed them as fellow travellers and opened the doors of these governments to them. As a result, today a not inconsiderable 27% of Europeans live in a country governed by these reactionary forces.

For many years, ladies and gentlemen, Spain and the Spanish people have been spared this scourge. There were even many international analysts who celebrated the fact that a country as important as Spain in the European context was able to keep the far right out of its institutions and governments, and praised Spanish society accordingly. Unfortunately, that began to change four years ago, when the far right burst into this Parliament in force, although not with enough support to gain the effective levers of power.

The radical change, in any case, was consummated on 28 May in the municipal and regional elections held in our country. On that day, the traditional right, the Partido Popular, had to choose what kind of right it wanted to be: the responsible right - if we can call it that - that understands the need to stop the advance of the far right before it is too late, or an irresponsible right that whitewashes and legitimises the far right in order to come to power.

That night Mr Feijóo could have chosen to be like Mrs Von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron or Donald Tusk, but he did not. He went down the road to perdition that he had embarked on a few months earlier in Castilla y León; in short, ladies and gentlemen, he joined his destiny to the far right. He cut the fragile cordon sanitaire that his predecessor, Mr Casado, had nevertheless maintained, and joined the reactionary club of Trump, LePen, Orban and Santiago Abascal.

The PP, then, ladies and gentlemen, decided to bless the far right and opened the doors to five autonomous governments - with portfolios that are not minor, because they hold, for example, Interior and Justice, which are responsible for the care and safety of women who suffer gender violence -, five provincial councils and 135 town councils. In other words, they gave them the power to affect the lives of more than 12 million Spaniards. They gave them the platform to spread their message of hate and even made it partially their own, following the model already rehearsed by Mrs Ayuso in the Community of Madrid.

The consequences of this pact of ignominy are already being seen. In Castilla y León, ladies and gentlemen, the Partido Popular and Vox have cut the budgets earmarked for training people who are out of work. They also cut economic resources for migrant integration, for combating gender violence, while trying to extinguish the social dialogue between trade unions and employers.

In Aragon, they have vetoed talks on the prevention of gender violence aimed at adolescents. They have disbanded the Directorate General for Climate Change and are cutting medical appointment hours in rural areas.

In Madrid, ladies and gentlemen, they have announced the urgent repeal of the LGTBI law and the dismantling of the network against LGTBIphobia. All this legal dismantling implies the curtailment of rights and freedoms and something much more serious, ladies and gentlemen, it implies making those who already feel vulnerable even more vulnerable.

Today more than ever a State Pact for LGTBI people is needed and the new progressive coalition government is committed to bring about such a State Pact.

In Madrid, in the capital of Spain, ladies and gentlemen, in Valencia and in Extremadura, the right wing has lowered taxes on the highest incomes, while reducing spending on public health; leaving thousands of children without places in nursery schools and school canteens and doubling the price of bus tickets and passes.

In the Balearic Islands, ladies and gentlemen, they are preparing to close the Anti-Corruption Office, while promoting opacity in the declaration of assets of public officials.

(President of the Lower House of Parliament: Just a moment, Mr candidate for the Presidency of the Government. Ladies and gentlemen, I would ask that you remain silent and for us to rise to the occasion. If anyone doesn't want to - quiet, please behave yourselves. If anyone does not want to listen to the proposals of the candidate for the Presidency of the Government, they are free not to do so, but no one can take away the right of citizens to hear them; we represent them, we owe it to them. Please continue, Mr. Candidate).

Thank you very much, Mrs President.

In many municipalities, the Partido Popular and Vox have removed bicycle lanes, suspended photovoltaic licenses, stopped the implementation of low-emission zones, and have had to renounce European funds. In others, they have removed sex education from high schools, restored Francoist street names, removed books from municipal libraries and censored concerts, films and plays.

Ladies and gentlemen, all of this, by the way, at the same time as they have raised their salaries, increased the number of advisors, exercising all kinds of nepotism, demonstrating...

(President of the Lower House of Parliament: Ladies and gentlemen, please be quiet. A bit of seriousness and a bit of respect).

My speech is going to be very long, ladies and gentlemen.

... demonstrating that the problem, ladies and gentlemen, was not that the State was large or small, central or autonomous. The problem is that they did not occupy it.

It will be said, ladies and gentlemen, that there is nothing definitive in all of this, in all this reactionary agenda that the Partido Popular has set in motion together with Vox, and it is true. But history teaches that this is always the case at the beginning of reactionary waves.

If we continue to normalise the far right, if we continue to give them power, they will increase their aggressiveness, the policies they are implementing, and they will mimic their international references.

They start by dismantling collective bargaining and end up cutting unemployment benefits, facilitating dismissal, increasing the temporary nature of contracts as countries governed by the right and the far right in Europe are doing.

They start by suspending licences for renewables and end up going back to coal, cutting down 10% of forests and increasing CO2 emissions as right-wing European governments are doing with the far right.

They start by associating migrants with crime and end up denying help to hundreds of human beings caught up in deadly shipwrecks. They start, ladies and gentlemen, by denying access to certain media and end by muzzling the judiciary and censoring the press, as is also happening in countries governed by the right and the far right.

They start by questioning the European institutions and end up campaigning for an exit from the European Union and the closure of borders. And if not, ladies and gentlemen, look at what is happening in other European countries.

And yes, ladies and gentlemen, in our country these movements have not gone further in dismantling constitutional and democratic values, not for lack of will, much less for political or moral limits. Nor, unfortunately, because the conservative right has demanded that they desist.

The only effective wall against the policies of the far right in communities and municipalities has been the progressive coalition government in Spain. Because it was a progressive government in Spain that was able to put a stop to the institutionalised blackmail which the Partido Popular and Vox wanted to impose in Castilla y León on women who wanted to terminate their pregnancies.

Only a progressive government in Spain was able to approve emergency regulations to prevent the outbreak of bovine tuberculosis that appeared in the same community, in Castilla y León, thanks to the policies of Vox, from spreading throughout Spain.

Only a progressive government in Spain was able to appeal the educational censorship that the right-wing and far right government in the Region of Murcia tried to legalise.

Only a progressive government in Spain was able to appeal and overturn the veto of the euthanasia law, which the regional government of the Community of Madrid was trying to establish, where the Partido Popular is indistinguishable in both substance and form from the most rampant elements of the far right.

And only a progressive government in Spain, with the support of the European Union, ladies and gentlemen, has been able to defend our greatest natural heritage, the Doñana National Park, in the face of the proposed law, from the Partido Popular and Vox, which threatened its demise.

A progressive government, ladies and gentlemen, that defends equality between Spaniards with deeds. For what does it mean to stand up for equality? To defend equality between Spaniards is to raise the minimum wage. It is to approve a labour reform hand in hand with the social partners that has given workers back their rights and recognised new ones. It is to reverse the cuts inflicted during the financial crisis and the neoliberal response to the National Dependency System. It is to do away with pharmaceutical co-payments for the most vulnerable classes and also to restore the universality of the public health system that you broke when you were in government. Equality among Spaniards is one million students with scholarships that can go to school on free public transport. It is raising pensions in line with the CPI. It is also approving taxes on large fortunes, on the big banks, on energy companies, in order to be able to pay for this immense network of social protection.

And in the case of all these measures, ladies and gentlemen, the far right and the right have systematically voted against them. Shall we translate all these measures into people's everyday realities? Equality, ladies and gentlemen, is the 23,000 young men and women from Extremadura who will be able to study this academic year thanks to a grant. It is the almost 60,000 women in Castilla-La Mancha who will be able to pay their bills, take out a mortgage, thanks to the fact that they now have a permanent contract that they did not have before.

Equality is the 264,000 Andalusian households with a social discount rate on electricity bills who will be spared the cold this winter. Equality is the 2.3 million Spaniards who were previously unemployed and now have a job. It is the 2.5 million wage earners who have seen their incomes rise from €735 per month to €1,080 per month on the minimum wage. Equality, ladies and gentlemen, is the 9 million retired men and women who have not lost purchasing power thanks to the pension increase and the reconstruction of the Toledo Pact. It is, in short, the 14 million workers who have regained rights with the labour reform.

Equality, ladies and gentlemen, is these figures, but above all the people behind these figures. Does this mean that inequality has disappeared? Far from it. Much remains to be done, ladies and gentlemen, but the direction we are heading in is the right one. The only equality in danger is that of women, as a result of the Partido Popular's agreements with Vox.

If there is one thing the reactionary right has made clear, it is that it will not stop. That is why in this debate, ladies and gentlemen, we are making a very important choice. Either we put up a wall against these recurrent attacks on the values of democratic and constitutional Spain, or we give them safe conduct. And I would like to announce a commitment to all of you and to all Spaniards: as long as I am President of the Government, the full force of the State will be dedicated to defending democratic values, freedoms and rights. Not a single setback, not a single regression, not a single step backwards will meet with the approval or indifference of the Spanish Government. Not one.

Therefore, here today, in this session, ladies and gentlemen, it is up to us to choose our path, to choose our way.

Either we open the door to this movement, or we stop it in its tracks by erecting a wall of democracy, coexistence and tolerance.

Because these same currents, these same alignments that are expressed in other European countries and in other Western nations are also present in this House and reflect two ways of understanding politics that transcend, as I said before, the axes of the left and the right. On the one hand, there are conservative and reactionary forces represented in the Partido Popular and Vox that clearly want to go backwards, that believe that everything we have done during the last four years is worse than bad, it is pernicious. And on the other hand, there are the parties that want to move forward, in different ways, with very important differences, but that want to, want to move forward. What is being decided today is to whom we hand over the reins of government for the next four years and which of these two opposing paths we take.

What will be expressed in this House today and tomorrow also has the utmost legitimacy, since it derives from the democratic will of the citizens of our country as expressed by their vote. But it also coincides with the even greater majority of Spaniards when polled on their specific preferences. 75% of our compatriots think that the welfare state should be strengthened and that to do so we should increase taxes on large fortunes and big business. And that view is both the majority and dominant view, even among right-wing voters.

However, where the Partido Popular and Vox govern, they do just the opposite: they eliminate inheritance tax for those who inherit more than 1 million euros, they challenge the wealth tax that only affects those who have more than 3 million euros, and at the same time they saturate health services and leave thousands of children without places in nurseries and public schools. And this is just one example. We could list many more. 92%, ladies and gentlemen, 92% of Spaniards want renewable energies to be promoted, and the Partido Popular and Vox cut aid and even imposed a tax on the sun when they were in government. 75% of Spaniards support the social shield created by the government to deal, in this case, with the effects of inflation resulting from Putin's war in Ukraine. And the Partido Popular and Vox oppose this. 91% of Spaniards, ladies and gentlemen, so that we can see how great our country is, how good our country is, 91% are in favour of LGTBI people having the same rights and visibility as the rest. And the Partido Popular and Vox are inhibited and still feed discrimination and hatred.

In short, ladies and gentlemen, the majority of Spaniards do not share these ideas and these reactionary positions. They share neither their values nor their goals. Spain is indeed a tolerant country, an open country, an egalitarian country, a country that is aware of climate change. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am here before you today.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am appearing at this investiture session to propose the path of advancement, the path of the majority, the path of progress. I am here to advocate that we discard the politics of insult, hatred and tension. That we put climate denial, classism, sexism and xenophobia to one side.

I am here to propose that we give Spain four more years of stability, coexistence and progress, and that we say no to reactionaries whose only aim is regression and confrontation. I am here to propose that we continue along a path that we started five years ago, five years ago, and which I believe has been a positive period for our country and for the vast majority of our citizens, whatever they voted for.

A period in which, I also recognise, and I have said it on many occasions, we have made mistakes and have sometimes come up short, as with any human action.

Unintentional errors, ladies and gentlemen, for which we have apologised; shortcomings that we intend to make up for in this new mandate. But I honestly believe that, on balance, it is unquestionable that the achievements stand out, or rather, it is only questionable from the point of view of extreme partisanship or bad faith, and these are achievements that have particular merit, because they have also been achieved within a terrible international context, the most difficult of the last few decades. And despite all the constant harassment from the most sterile and angry opposition that our democracy has ever known.

A Spain that today is a more prosperous country than when we came to power. Of the large EU economies, we are the one which in this complex international context, with multiple crises and also with wars on the Eastern front and also of course in the Middle East, is growing and the one that is going to grow the most in 2024 according to the European Commission's economic outlook. The European Commission's Economic Commission has one of the lowest inflation rates in Europe. We have the cheapest energy, record levels of foreign investment that demonstrate the confidence of investors in the possibilities and capabilities of our country and the best employment figures in our history, with 2 million more people employed than when the Partido Popular was in power. And all of this, ladies and gentlemen, with social peace.

Today Spain has a broader and more robust Welfare State than when the Partido Popular was in power, and I gave some examples earlier: we have restored the universality of the National Health System, which had been broken under the governments of the Partido Popular.

We have more healthcare centres. We still need more, but we have more healthcare centres than in 2018. More professors, more teachers, more scholarship students than four years ago. And the money that the State invests - this is the figure that I would simply like convey to the citizens who are following this debate - the money that the State invests in the welfare of each of our citizens has risen from €6,300 a year to €7,600 a year.

Today, therefore, Spain is a slightly fairer country. There is still a lot of inequality to be eradicated, but it is a lot, it is a little fairer, because we have reduced inequality and the number of people living at risk of poverty. And I believe that it is incumbent on this House and also, naturally, on the Government, to have been able to confront and buffer the harmful consequences that the pandemic would have had on inequality in our country, with a different response.

We have improved equal opportunities in schools, we have cut the gender pay gap to one of the lowest in the OECD. We have also made great strides in sustainability. In just four years, ladies and gentlemen, we have increased our installed renewable capacity by 40%.

We have decarbonised entire phases of our production processes and have managed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 14%, with the economy growing. And while doing so, we have become an even more robust and influential democracy. Much is said about dictatorships and democracies, but over the last five years, ladies and gentlemen, we have improved our position in all the international rankings of democratic quality and the rule of law, and we have gained prestige and international influence, which unfortunately we did not have before and which is allowing us to better defend our values and our interests.

In short, the results are there, they are there for all to see, ladies and gentlemen. There is still a lot to be done, but I think the balance is very positive. This is recognised by the European Commission, the OECD, the International Monetary Fund. All in all, the progressive coalition government's measures have worked over the past four years.

There remains, as I said before, a great deal to be done. We will not settle for where we are at. We know the problems and needs of the middle class, the working people, the ordinary people of our country. But for its resolution, I honestly believe that the direction taken over the last four years is the right one and I therefore come today to ask for your support to continue on the path that we started five years ago and with the government, four years ago.

The leader of Sumar, deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz, and I, as leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, presented the terms and conditions a couple of weeks ago, in the agreement between the Socialist Party and Sumar. And here I would like to share with you what I see as the main objectives. Eight commitments that we made to the citizens and, of course, to their representatives, who are all of you, all the Members of Parliament.

The first, naturally, is the public's main concern, which is, in the economic sphere, to complete all the modernisation that we set in motion during the last legislature, to achieve the green and digital transformation of our productive fabric from a perspective of social and territorial inclusion.

We are therefore going to redouble our commitment to innovation, training and digitalisation. And we are going to deploy, fortunately, those 115 billion euros of European funds to help ensure this process of change reaches all parts of our country and also our SMEs, the self-employed and the social economy. And all to achieve two goals that I would like to share with the public.

On the one hand, to have more and better jobs, more and bigger companies, more start-ups, more social economy. We are going to continue creating quality jobs, ladies and gentlemen, helping young people, the unemployed, to join the labour market, until we achieve full employment. An ambition always dreamed of but never achieved in our country.

And hand in hand with social dialogue, we are also going to promote a different working culture, which will allow us to better reconcile the unresolved issue facing all citizens in our country, which is joint responsibility for work, family and personal life, so that Spain becomes one of those countries where people work to live and not live to work.

And that is why I am announcing that this legislature will be the legislature of the new Workers' Statute, the legislature in which we are going to guarantee by law that the minimum inter-professional wage will continue to increase every year in order to remain at 60% of the average wage. The legislature in which we will push for a reduction in the working week to 37.5 hours, incorporating incentives for companies to offer more flexible working hours and to promote teleworking wherever possible.

Our second goal will be to ensure that the purchasing power of Spaniards grows again. Together with France, we are the countries that have recovered the most purchasing power in recent years since the pandemic. Our country has one of the lowest inflation rates in Europe, but I am well aware that this does not mean that the problem is over. I know that life is even more expensive, that there are many citizens who find it difficult to pay the mortgage, to save, to go on holiday or simply to fill the shopping basket. We in the government are very conscious of this and we are going to work hard, as I said during the pandemic and also during the war with its economic effects, and effects on prices; we are going to work hard to reverse this situation. With measures in the medium and long term, undertaking reforms that I will mention later to improve our country's productivity, but also with short-term measures to help solve the problem tomorrow, not in ten years' time.

In particular, I would like to announce that in the coming months we are going to approve three major actions. Firstly, we will extend the lowering of VAT on foodstuffs until June 2024. We are going to raise the average income threshold from the current €30,000 to €38,000, so that more families can take advantage of the mortgage relief measure in force, which consists of freezing the monthly payment for one year and extending the repayment period to seven years and, in addition, from 1 January next year, public transport will be free for all children and young people and also for the unemployed.

We have already committed to maintaining the reduction in the price of transport season tickets until 2024. But we want to go a step further, in coordination with the autonomous communities and the municipalities. We want this free public transport policy to be permanent and to be consolidated in Spain as a benchmark for environmental sustainability.

Together with the economy and employment, ladies and gentlemen, our second great commitment will be to continue strengthening the welfare state in order to improve people's lives, starting precisely with the National Health System. It is unacceptable that a citizen, ladies and gentlemen, should have to wait more than three months for an initial consultation with a specialist doctor or 200 days for an operation for a hernia that prevents them from getting out of bed. I am aware that this competence is in the hands of the autonomous communities, but we, as the Spanish Government, cannot stand idly by. That is why we are going to implement, with the regional governments that wish to do so, a plan to achieve a drastic reduction in waiting lists.

We will continue to strengthen primary care, which is one of the pending issues in our system. We are going to expand the portfolio of public services, to include dental and eye care for our young people. And we are going to promote, ladies and gentlemen, a great State pact for mental health, which will increase the number of psychologists and psychiatrists in public centres, reduce waiting times and guarantee, ladies and gentlemen, that in Spain there is not a single citizen who needs psychological help who cannot get it.

And this improvement in people's lives will also extend to the most important thing, which is the education of our sons and daughters, with quality public education, cutting-edge science and a culture that is free and accessible to all. For this reason, in this legislature we are going to continue to improve the training conditions for teachers, we are going to extend canteen subsidies, we are also going to increase aid and the availability of extracurricular educational activities, and we are going to increase the number of grants and reduce the price of university fees.

We will increase funding for our proud research centres. We will encourage greater public-private collaboration in R&D&I and we will improve the working conditions of our scientists through the statute for teaching and research staff. And we are going to bring back all those Spanish brains that had to go abroad as a consequence of the Partido Popular's abandonment of our national science system.

And we are going to approve, ladies and gentlemen, a law on Cultural Rights, which guarantees access to culture for all people and all territories. We are going to expand the presence of culture and creative arts in primary schools and high schools. We are going to give more aid to creators and we are going to maintain the Bono Cultural Joven, the youth culture discount scheme.

And we are going to improve the lives of older people, ladies and gentlemen, because it also means providing them with certainty and assistance, and it is a matter of simple justice after a life of effort and work. In order to safeguard the dignity and well-being of our older population, I would like to announce that, without a doubt, as we did during the last legislature, it is already written into our law, we are going to continue to raise pensions in line with the CPI, we are going to increase the resources allocated to dependency. Yesterday, at the last Council of Ministers, we injected 1 billion euros into the National Dependency System, through the autonomous communities, and we are going to achieve this better quality, more personalised care model that prioritises home care.

And we are going to do something very important, and that is to comply with the mandate of the Toledo Pact, in which you told us, ladies and gentlemen, that naturally pensions should be raised in line with the CPI, but also that 5 billion euros each year should be allocated to the Social Security Reserve Fund, so that today's workers have decent pensions when they reach retirement age.

Ladies and gentlemen, improving people's lives means helping those who need it most. And in recent days many things have been said, many things have been proclaimed on the streets of our country, but we have heard an extreme right-wing leader in another part of the world, in Argentina, say the following. From the right of the Argentine far right, by the way, supported by the conservative and traditional Argentine right. In short, Mr Feijóo, you should take note, so that Mr Rajoy supports candidate Milei, to be president, to take on the presidency of Argentina.

But look, we have heard a leader of the Argentinean far right say the following, and I quote: "Social justice is an aberration and is unjust because it implies unequal treatment before the law". Close inverted commas. Something that here in Spain we are now immune to, because it does not surprise us, were it not for the fact that the intellectual leader of the Partido Popular, Mrs Ayuso, already said this a few months earlier, when she said, ladies and gentlemen, and this is no joke. She said that social justice is an invention of the left to promote the culture of envy.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is where we are at. This coalition government that I represent does not regard social justice as an aberration; on the contrary, we regard it as the very condition of life in society. Because that, ladies and gentlemen of the right and far right benches, is what patriotism is all about: knowing that we are linked to each other, that we are all in the same boat and that the well-being of each of us depends on the basic well-being of every member of our community.

That is why we will continue to give more support to those who need it most, at home and abroad. That is why we will continue to bolster the minimum living wage, simplifying the eligibility requirements so that more households can receive it and our levels of inequality and poverty continue to fall.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am aware that very often, if the Welfare State does not serve us citizens better, it is because the administration is slow, excessively bureaucratic and probably cumbersome. And we will seriously tackle this problem during this legislature. That is why I am announcing that in this legislature we are going to continue simplifying all administrative procedures, that we are going to put the interests and needs of the user at the centre of the system and, for this reason, we are going to establish a new model of face-to-face attention for citizens, with flexible hours and without obligatory appointments. And we are going to set a legal maximum of 30 days for the receipt of benefits such as dependency allowances.

You see, we intend to drastically improve the way our welfare state operates. And we want to do so while continuing to reduce the public deficit, because this is a government committed to fiscal discipline. And how are we going to do that? By improving the efficiency of public administration, by tackling the hidden economy, by broadening our tax bases, increasing the progressiveness of the personal income tax scale, by guaranteeing an effective minimum tax rate of 15% in corporate taxation. In short, what we need to do is to put an end once and for all to these channels of tax evasion, if not tax avoidance, by the super-rich and large multinationals.

The rich, I'm sorry, but they have to pay more taxes than they do now. What is more, as long as we govern, they will pay more than the rest, because what is fair, what the Constitution mandates, is that those who have more should contribute more.

And speaking of the Constitution, ladies and gentlemen, let us see if this legislature is finally the legislature in which we amend article 49 of the Constitution and constitutionally recognise the dignity of people.

A better life depends first and foremost on a roof over one's head. And that is why our third priority is going to be to improve access to housing, because this is currently, perhaps the biggest problem facing many citizens in our country, particularly young people.

Rising rents, higher mortgages as a result of the tightening of the European Central Bank's monetary policy. The difficulty of saving money has made it increasingly difficult for many citizens in our country to get on with their life projects . In the last legislature we took some incipient steps in this respect, but we know that we still have a lot to do, following a very simple premise, which is to help tenants and small landlords.

So, what are we going to do? We will support young people who want and can and should become independent at an earlier age. That is why I am announcing that we are going to increase the rental subsidy. I hope that the regional governments of the Partido Popular with Vox will implement this policy. We will create a line of guarantees that will allow them to cover up to 20% of their mortgage, as I announced during the election campaign; and we will commit to providing 183,000 public housing units for affordable rent as we also promised a few months ago.

We are also going to support all those middle-class Spaniards, also workers, who have housing as their main savings instrument and also their safety net. Consequently, we will help them to refurbish and modernise their homes with a legal framework that protects them and with tax incentives so that those who wish to do so can rent them out.

The basic premise of striving for a better life, ladies and gentlemen, is to defend the life of the planet. That is why our fourth priority will be to drive a green transition that helps us to mitigate and adapt to climate change, protects our biodiversity and generates wealth and opportunities across the territory.

We are going to continue to deploy renewable energies, ladies and gentlemen, and we are going to do so in a responsible manner; and I would like to say this here, before you, in a coordinated manner, involving our neighbours in the decision-making process and also in the distribution of the benefits of this expansion of renewable energy.

We are also going to promote energy communities and triple the installed self-consumption capacity. The aim is that by the end of this decade, half of all the energy consumed in our country will come from renewable sources.

The challenge of the energy transition also requires an independent and specialised regulator and adequate technical resources to prepare the energy system to achieve this ambitious goal we have of climate neutrality.

And that is why I would like to announce that we are going to re-establish the National Energy Commission, abolished by the Partido Popular government, which will be key to guaranteeing and improving the functioning of the energy sector and the diversification of its operators.

We will continue to combat the threat of drought, expanding and modernising infrastructure, modernising the resources of water agencies, closing illegal wells and irrigation, helping farmers to improve their farms. Because we are well aware that Spain is a global agri-food power and we want it to continue to be so, and for this reason we are going to dedicate a substantial part of the European funds to modernising the sector, to promoting organic and regenerative agriculture.

And I would like to announce that we are going to pass a law on family farming that will favour this type of agriculture, which will generate added social value and links with the territory. And we will deploy a National Food Strategy for Spain to develop the entire food supply chain, promote rural employment and improve food quality.

And we will continue to promote efficiency gains and circularity in our society, with the ambition that, in the end, the productive fabric will end up being a symbiotic system in which nothing is wasted and that, therefore, the waste of one sector becomes the productive resources of another.

I know, ladies and gentlemen, we in the Government are well aware that sometimes the urgency and scale of the ecological transition overwhelms us and even scares us; but, believe me, I believe that we can succeed without wasting time, without leaving anyone behind, no person and no territory, taking advantage of this opportunity to generate new jobs, new industries for the whole territory, improve our cities and also take care of our health. For every euro we spend now on this ecological transition, we will be saving ten euros in damages in the coming decades.

The fifth priority, ladies and gentlemen, is going to be to ensure that Spain continues to be a European and world reference in terms of equality. To improve life is to improve the living conditions of half of our society; it is to improve the lives of women; it is to achieve, as a consequence, real and effective full equality between men and women.

"Feminism is a cancer".

"If I could I would take it out of schools and replace it with a sewing subject because it is more empowering to sew on a button".

No, we should not laugh at this, ladies and gentlemen. We should not laugh. We should not laugh.

"We don't hate women. In our party there are many women of great value, almost as many as men".

"If women are paid less, it is because they choose to be paid less".

"If there are jobs with more men, it is because men are genetically better adapted to them".

These statements, ladies and gentlemen, sound like something out of a manual of the Women's Section of Franco's Falange, but they are public statements made by Vox leaders in recent months. Leaders who, it should not be forgotten, have acceded to regional and local positions of governmental responsibility thanks to the favourable vote of the Partido Popular. And I quote them here because they are a living testimony to the problem we face.

Because despite the many advances made in recent years in our country, prejudices and sexist behaviour still persist. Women still face unequal treatment in many areas, earning lower wages than men for the same type of work responsibilities.

And this lack of effective equality is an injustice that goes against the principles of parity, for example, of our Constitution, that is making us worse as a society and that is preventing us from reaching our full potential as a country, which is immense and formidable.

Therefore, we must correct it and, to this end, I am announcing that we will approve a law on equal representation that will definitively help us to break the glass ceilings. Because if women represent 50% of our society, 50% of political and economic power belongs to them. And we are going to make it easier for fathers and mothers to reconcile work and family life by extending paternity and maternity leave to 20 weeks. Bring in universal education for children aged 0 to 3 ; in this case, from the age of two. And we are going to give single-parent families with two children, headed mostly by women, as they well know, the same level of protection that large families enjoy.

A better life, ladies and gentlemen. A better life is a life that eradicates the scourge of male violence. For every euro, ladies and gentlemen, this is what I want to say to the citizens and, above all, to the women of our country: for every euro that a reactionary autonomous municipal government takes away from the prevention and elimination of this social cancer, we are going to dedicate ten euros to the fight against gender violence. And for every minute of respect that Vox politicians deny to the victims of gender violence, we devote all our time and effort to them.

We will continue to act, just as we will continue to act against child sexual abuse, including abuses committed within the Church. The report, ladies and gentlemen, presented by the Ombudsman reveals the magnitude and seriousness of this problem and challenges all public institutions, especially the General Courts and the Spanish Government.

That is why we are going to strengthen the legal framework so that crimes of sexual assault and abuse of minors are not limited to a specific moment in time and civil liability is not subject to a statute of limitations. We are going to create a state fund for the payment of aid and compensation to victims in line with European standards, and we are going to urge the Catholic Church, ladies and gentlemen, to commit to recognising and making reparations to all those who, unfortunately, suffered sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy, including the victims of historical and also prescribed cases. But, above all, we will put in place the measures needed to ensure that this aberration is not repeated.

That is why I am announcing that, following the recommendations of the Ombudsman, in this legislature we are going to reinforce the mechanisms for monitoring and supervising the Law for the Comprehensive Protection of Children and Adolescents, providing them with more staff and also more resources.

We are going to reinforce the inspection work in schools to make sure they comply with the established protocols and that their professionals receive adequate training on sexual abuse. And we are going to establish by law that these same prevention and training protocols be followed in all religious institutions.

Ladies and gentlemen, providing a better life for Spaniards means not only reducing the differences that exist between provinces, but also strengthening the territorial cohesion of our country. And this will be the sixth priority of the government that I intend to form if you give me the confidence of the majority of the House.

During the Transition, ladies and gentlemen, Spaniards opted for a State of autonomous communities that brought public administrations closer to the 52 provincial capitals and also encouraged the creation of companies and economic and social development in hundreds of medium-sized municipalities throughout the country.

Unfortunately, in recent years this trend has been reversed. Today, Madrid and other big cities have, not surprisingly, become all-absorbing giants and the differences between provinces have consequently increased.

The demographic challenge needs to be tackled by all public institutions and also the Spanish Government, as we were able to begin to do during the last legislature. In the last legislature we took some steps: we opted for a decentralised, polycentric model, which our Constitution postulates; we tried to seek an equitable and intelligent distribution of opportunities throughout the territory. I believe that European funds are helping to achieve this: we are seeing gigafactories for electric vehicle batteries in different parts of Spain that are not concentrated in the traditional industrial sectors of our country, or public institutions that are being set up throughout our country.

And in this legislature we will continue to move in the same direction. We are going to devote the bulk of European funds to creating new industries and also new opportunities outside the big capitals. We will create better infrastructure and also rail links. They are included in the government agreement between the Socialist Party and Sumar. We will guarantee by law access to basic public services for all municipalities within a radius of less than 30 minutes so that no one has to leave their village because there is no ATM or healthcare centre nearby or because opportunities are not being developed in their municipality.

I wish we could count on the majority support of this House to make this objective of guaranteeing access to basic public services within a radius of less than 30 minutes a reality.

We are also going to extend the dialogue between administrations, we are going to strengthen co-governance between them and promote a new model of regional funding, which guarantees the economic resources that the autonomous communities need, based on the principles that you know, because it has been referred to on many other occasions: equity, financial autonomy and, by the way, also fiscal co-responsibility, because it is curious that regional governments of the Partido Popular with Vox lower taxes for the richest and then ask the General State Administration for more economic resources.

But, in short, what I want to say, ladies and gentlemen, is that the cuts that were applied to our welfare state, as you know, which are in the hands of the autonomous communities during the period of government of the Partido Popular, effectively left many autonomous communities without the resources to meet the most basic needs of their citizens and consequently forced them to go into debt. In those years, the debt of the autonomous communities, just so you have this information, ladies and gentlemen, almost doubled.

And what has this government done during these last four years, in particular? Well, I think we have helped the autonomous communities. We have delivered more resources than any other government at any other time in our democratic history. In five years of government with me at the helm, in four years of coalition government, to be exact, the autonomous communities have received 40% more than in the last five years of Mariano Rajoy's government; 40% more. To give you an idea, we are talking about 180 billion euros more. And all this without taking into account the European funds, which are also being managed by the autonomous communities.

This has obviously helped us to deal with the pandemic, to rebuild everything that was dismantled during the financial crisis and the neoliberal response of the PP government at the time. But from the point of view of fiscal consolidation, it has done something very significant, ladies and gentlemen, and that is that, thanks to these funds, debt has been reduced in relation to Gross Domestic Product and cuts have been able to cease in many areas despite the irresponsible and unsustainable fiscal policy that the right wing is once again deploying.

What are we going to do now? Well, what we are going to do is to continue along this path of fiscal responsibility, but also of solidarity; and to take on part of the debt of the autonomous communities, which they contracted during the Partido Popular's period of government.

This measure will be applicable and extendable to all autonomous communities, regardless of their political colour and whether or not they are members of the Autonomous Liquidity Fund, created at the time by the Partido Popular. Doing so will allow us to do many things, ladies and gentlemen, but above all it will allow us to finance ourselves at lower costs. It will alleviate the interest on the debt payments that many autonomous communities have and, consequently, it will help to ensure citizens have quality public services. I say this cautiously because we do not know exactly what the governments of the Partido Popular and Vox are going to do, although they are already hinting at it.

Ladies and gentlemen, the seventh priority will be to make progress on the reunion agenda to ensure better coexistence in our country. I think we all understand, every citizen who sees us, that in discord there can be no prosperity. Our fathers and grandfathers knew this and that is why they made coexistence one of the guiding principles of the Constitution and the Transition; and now we must do the same, which is to promote coexistence and also forgiveness, not only to win a legislature of progress, which is also true, but also to commit to a future of reconciliation and harmony.

We are, of course, talking about Catalonia. But let us be clear, ladies and gentlemen, in Catalonia and in other parts of our country there are citizens who believe that they would be better off being independent. The progressive coalition government I intend to lead does not share this view. We believe that a united Spain is a better, more prosperous and stronger Spain.

What is more, we believe that the national realities that these pro-independence citizens legitimately call for are better expressed in a European Union that, as the years go by, moves towards closer integration through the autonomous-community structure of our country, recognised in our Constitution.

But the question we have to ask ourselves, and which I also believe deserves to be answered before our citizens, is how we guarantee that unity. Roughly speaking, there are two alternatives: it can be attempted by means of imposition and social tension, or it can be attempted by means of dialogue, understanding and also forgiveness.

The Partido Popular has already tried the first of these options. All it achieved, ladies and gentlemen, was to push the number of Catalans in favour of independence to historic highs. To set the streets of Catalonia on fire with the whole world looking on in astonishment at the images that were broadcast of our country in those years, above all and in particular, in 2017. The result was the biggest territorial crisis of our democracy. The biggest institutional, territorial and constitutional crisis of our democracy. In short, I believe that the Partido Popular's approach led to disaster and it is not advisable to go down that road.

What have we done? Well, I think we have done the opposite. We have opted for the path of dialogue, we have opted for the path of forgiveness, we have opted for the path of understanding, even though it is very difficult because the positions are very different. We have put negotiation before imposition, reconciliation before revenge; in short, unity before fracture. Where before there was a breakdown of the Constitution in certain territories, in the last five years, ladies and gentlemen, the Spanish Constitution has been complied with in each and every one of the territories of our country.

I believe that there is no surer path than that which is geared towards understanding in order to re-build the political bridges that should never have been broken and which have been broken, ladies and gentlemen. That is why we pardoned the leaders of the procés. And that is why we have supported the use of the co-official languages in the Lower House of Parliament, we have promoted the use of the co-official languages in the European institutions and, what is undeniable, ladies and gentlemen, is that this path is working, with difficulties, but it is working because coexistence has returned to the streets; you only have to look at what is happening in many of the streets of Catalonia.

I don't know, maybe they think that coexistence was to see Barcelona burn back in 2019 or 2017, when the Partido Popular was in power. I don't think so.

In short, coexistence has returned to the streets, dialogue has returned to the institutions, ladies and gentlemen, with many difficulties, and our country - it is curious because everyone was paying attention to this part of my speech, but they don't stop talking - our country, ladies and gentlemen, has been able to focus its energies on tackling extraordinarily difficult challenges such as, for example, COVID or the response to the economic and social consequences of Putin's war in Ukraine.

What do the vast majority of citizens prefer: the Catalonia of 2017 or the Catalonia of 2023? Which policy is more beneficial to the people: the policy of confrontation advocated by the Partido Popular squared, also with Vox, or the policy of understanding advocated by a broad majority of parliamentary groups in this House?

There is no need to speculate about it. I think we know the answer. Moreover, the opinion polls reflect the coexistence and social peace on the streets of Catalonia. This is reflected in the way the Catalans themselves voted on 23 July: 50%, ladies and gentlemen, supported the parties that formed the progressive coalition government over the last four years, 50% in Catalonia, and only 20% supported the regressive right-wingers. 50%-20%.

Therefore, I believe that dialogue, generosity and forgiveness have worked and have helped with something very important, which, of course, has not been resolved, which is to heal the wounds of our society. That is why we intend to continue to apply them over the next four years.

It is clear that the existing legal framework sets binding conditions. That's the way it is. But that cannot be the only argument in favour of a united Spain. We need many more reasons and, if they are not there, we must have the courage to build them. Because it is possible and because, as the brilliant Antonio Machado said: "Today is always still".

And since it is still today and dialogue is still possible, we are going to commit ourselves to it, following the advice given by the great Salvador Espriu to the whole of Spain: dialogue to achieve an idea that is expressed in exactly the same way in our four languages, that of Machado, Espriu, Aresti and Castelao, which is Concordia, concord or harmony.

That is why we will continue to push for reforms and improve our State of autonomous communities. That is why we will continue to attract foreign companies and European institutions to Catalonia and to our country as a whole, instead of driving them away, as was done in the bad old days.

And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, in the name of Spain and in the name of Spain's interest, in defence of harmony among Spaniards, we are going to grant an amnesty to the people prosecuted for the Catalan process. We will grant this amnesty.

Please note, ladies and gentlemen. This is a measure called for by a very significant part of Catalan society, approved by 80% of its political representatives, as well as by a broad majority of the forces present in this House; and it is also a measure that may or may not be shared by many citizens. I am well aware of this and I would like to say to all of them that I greatly respect their opinions and also their emotions, but circumstances are what they are and we must make a virtue out of necessity. Yes, make a virtue of necessity.

For two reasons of general interest - calm down, ladies and gentlemen. First, to consolidate the progress achieved in the last four years and to continue on the path of coexistence and progress.

I believe that at this point in our democratic history and after all that we have experienced and heard during the last forty-odd years of democracy, we citizens should not, cannot, be naïve: the problem for the Partido Popular with Vox is not the amnesty for the leaders of the procés, the problem for the Partido Popular with Vox is that they do not accept the electoral result of 23 July.

Therefore, I would ask the citizens of good faith who are listening to this debate that, however much fuss they make and which we are also going to hear - , I am over my fears, because I come from a previous legislature where I have been insulted and have been called all sorts of things, but well - however much fuss they make, ladies and gentlemen, however much they wrap themselves in the flag, which belongs to everyone, including us, ladies and gentlemen, however much fuss they make, however much they try to patrimonialise the flag, which belongs to everyone, and the constitutional symbols, which belong to everyone, we know that the reactionary right cares very little about the amnesty. The economic powers that sponsor and protect the right and the far right are not worried about the amnesty; in fact, they know that it will be good for the country's economy.

What the right-wingers really do not want is for us to continue improving the working conditions and salaries of working men and women, for us to continue raising pensions in line with the CPI, for us to continue strengthening health, education, the National Dependency System, for us to continue promoting the ecological transition, for us to continue defending the rights of migrants, the LGTBI community and women... That is why they do not want us to govern.

Look, ladies and gentlemen, the last time the Partido Popular was in power, not so long ago, until 2018; the last time the Partido Popular was in power, it was legal in Spain to dismiss a worker while they were sick. It was legal to pay 700 euros a month to someone who worked full-time to do their job. It was legal for public housing paid for with everyone's taxes to be sold to vulture funds and privatised. It was legal to charge the most vulnerable patients a pharmaceutical co-payment that this government abolished when it came to power.

We, well, we put an end to these injustices, we tried to ensure, within our powers, that public goods were not turned into businesses for the few.

And right-wing MPs voted against this. That is why we need to continue governing in order to consolidate all these advances for four more years.

To prevent Spain from going backwards, to ensure that our country continues to move forward and that it is also an inspiration for many other European societies that see how the reactionary wave is advancing, also backed by the People's Parties of these other countries.

While this argument is important, there is one that I believe is also very relevant when it comes to explaining why we are going to push for this amnesty.

This pardon can help us overcome the rift that opened up on 1 October 2017. To continue moving our positions closer together. And to persuade, even I may be naïve in this, but I am going to try, to persuade those Catalans who are pro-independence and also those from other territories who are pro-independence, that our country is a good country for them too, that Catalonia is ready for total reunion and that we must have the courage to take a step forward.

Ladies and gentlemen, the amnesty we are proposing is perfectly legal, it is in accordance with the Constitution. In fact, it is a measure that is being applied in other countries, in consolidated democracies such as France, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. Just a few months ago, an amnesty was also approved in Portugal. And the Spanish Constitutional Court, by the way, has signed it.

I would therefore like to ask you, I know it is very difficult, I would like to ask the Partido Popular for a minimum of responsibility. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, not to continue along the path marked out by Vox in its Trumpist drift, feeding conspiracies and anti-democratic behaviour that brought, for example, a great democracy like the United States to the brink of collapse. If the Partido Popular still considers itself, and I stress still, a party of the state, it cannot act at the dictate of a far-right organisation as we have seen in recent weeks.

You cannot go back to sowing discord. Do you remember when you advocated boycotting Catalan products? I insist, Catalan products, not pro-independence products, Catalan products. What they did was stoke the fires of hatred, ladies and gentlemen. That is why I ask the Partido Popular for responsibility and a sense of State. I don't ask for your support, I know I won't get it. All I ask for is common sense and coherence.

And, I stress, coherence. Coherence because it is worth reminding the public, who are astonished by all the proclamations and sophistry we are seeing. Yes. It is worth remembering that nothing of what we are experiencing is unprecedented in our democracy. Everything was done before by governments of the Partido Popular.

Ladies and gentlemen, you may be blushing today, but I am sorry to tell you that the governments of the Partido Popular granted 1,400 pardons in a single day. In a single day. I am sorry to inform you, ladies and gentlemen of the PP and Vox, or at least of Mr Abascal, who was then in the Partido Popular, that governments of the Partido Popular pardoned members of Terra Lliure sentenced for terrorist offences during an investiture. What a scandal, Mr Feijóo. What a scandal! What a scandal!

I am sorry to inform you that the ones who launch proclamations and slogans saying that the whole of Spain should mobilise against this evil Sánchez, well, they handed over numerous powers to the autonomous governments of the Basque Country and Catalonia when they needed the votes of Catalan and Basque nationalists to avoid stalemate and ensure the governability of Spain.

And just so you know, none of these concessions weakened Spain, broke our democracy, or led us towards a dictatorship. In short, they turned us into what our country really is, a composite state, a decentralised state, as are, by the way, many other countries, probably the most advanced in the world, with consolidated democracies.

So then, what is the difference? Well, when the right reaches agreements with nationalists, that is a gentlemen's agreement. And if it is the left, then it is a betrayal of the homeland. Be a little more coherent and do not insult the memory of the Spanish people.

I ask them not to make the same mistakes they made, which they have always made, by the way. I ask you not to try to take advantage of this situation to set the streets on fire, to question what you have always done, ladies and gentlemen of the PP and Mr Abascal's party, which is to question the legitimacy of any government that is not led by the Partido Popular.

And do not worry, ladies and gentlemen, and above all those citizens who are watching this debate and who, well, in short, the amnesty is going to be approved in the light of day, with total transparency. Yes, it is to be debated here, is that not enough for you? It will have all the legal guarantees, with the majority vote of this democratically elected chamber.

In other words, the amnesty is not going to be an attack on the Constitution of 1978, as you all say, but quite the opposite, it will be a demonstration of its strength and its validity.

And this amnesty, so that the citizens who are watching this debate are also aware of it, is obviously going to benefit many people. Political leaders whose ideas I do not share and whose actions I reject. But it will also help hundreds of citizens who were dragged down by the procés, including national police officers and Mossos d'Esquadra, who suffered the consequences of a political crisis of which no one can be proud, ladies and gentlemen, not even those of us who lacked government responsibilities at the time.

Ultimately, we are pushing for this pardon in the well-founded hope that it will help us overcome a crisis of which no one can be proud. That it contributes to improving coexistence in our country, to channelling each other's political aspirations in a healthier, yes, healthier and more peaceful way.

Ladies and gentlemen, Europe must be our government's eighth priority. I believe that in the last four years Spain has gained an international prominence that it has never had before. Even before holding the rotating presidency of the Council, our country was already leading debates in Brussels that were very important for the day-to-day lives of our fellow citizens, such as the reform of the electricity market and the common agricultural policy. And it is now a continental benchmark on issues such as strategic autonomy, green and digital transition, immigration and asylum policies.

In the coming years the Union will have to take crucial decisions. It will need new ties with the rest of the world, especially with the Maghreb and with Latin America and the Caribbean. It will also have to consolidate its technological and scientific leadership on a global scale, or at least achieve it.

It will have to address challenges such as migration and also the consequences of climate change. It will have to undertake very important debates such as enlargement towards the Western Balkans and towards Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, an enlargement that responds to a moral duty without any doubt, to a geopolitical interest for Europe, because it will bring more resources, more resilience and more market to the Member States. But it will also entail national challenges and a major overhaul of the functioning of our EU institutions.

Spain, ladies and gentlemen, I can guarantee that it will not be a mere witness to these processes, we will be among the countries leading them. We will be analysing the challenges. We will also be looking for opportunities, proposing solutions, which is what citizens want. We will defend European values. We will promote dialogue and respect for plurality on the continent, as it does within its borders.

All of this, I insist, with one objective, and that is to improve the lives of Spaniards. This is the purpose that has guided and will guide the action of the progressive coalition government. To ensure our citizens lead a fuller life, a life of certainties, of security, with more and better jobs, with more and better public services, with more affordable housing, more environmental sustainability, more equality, more territorial cohesion, more coexistence and more Europe.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are the eight priorities of our government with which we present ourselves to you so that you can give us the confidence of the majority of the House.

And I would like to conclude, ladies and gentlemen, by saying the following: I believe in Spain, I believe in our citizens, I believe in the enormous and great potential of our country.

Look. The 18 million Spaniards who voted in the first democratic elections back in 1977 would have found it impossible, and they will agree with me, to imagine the levels of development and welfare that we have today. It would have been impossible for them to believe that a backward and isolated country would become in just four decades, a mere heartbeat in historical terms, the fourth largest economy in Europe, the sixteenth largest economic or rather trading power in the world and one of the most fully-fledged democracies in the world.

What would our grandmothers have thought, for example, if we had told them that the sexist society in which they grew up would become the fourth most egalitarian country in Europe? What would those homosexual Spaniards who had to hide to kiss their partner have said if they had known that Spain would end up being the third country in the world to approve same-sex marriage and the first to recognise their right to adopt?

How would any of these pioneers of ecology - I am thinking of Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente - have reacted if they had known that Spain would become, as it is today, the seventh most sustainable large economy in the world and the second country in the European Union for the most kilometres of protected natural areas? They would have seen it as an unattainable utopia, of course. But we did it. And now we can do it again.

Spain has talent, it has workers, companies, public institutions and infrastructures. And, above all, with civic values and principles, with the international prestige necessary to become one of the most prosperous and socially advanced nations not in Europe, but in the world.

Because our country, Spain, is a formidable country. And it can be even better. I believe that it will be even better. It will be better, ladies and gentlemen, if we strive for a better life for all. If we feel bound to each other's fate. That is the purpose to which I want to dedicate myself, body and soul, for the next four years. That is why, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to vote for me, that you put your trust in me.

That's all and thank you very much.

(Transcript edited by the State Secretariat for Communication)

Non official translation