Speech by the President of the Government of Spain for the event '14 March The day we began to win', for the fourth anniversary of the declaration of the state of emergency to fight against Covid

Cervantes Institute, Madrid

SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF SPAIN, PEDRO SÁNCHEZ

Good morning to you all. To the vice-presidents, the Minister for Health, also to the Mayor of Las Palmas, who was Minister for Health, to the Director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis. Friends.

Thank you for being at this very special event for all of us, for Spanish society as a whole and, above all, thank you to Carmen, Inés, Lourdes, Isabel, Kim, Jorge, and also to Marta, the moderator. Thank you for sharing with all of us your experiences of a time that marked our country and the whole world forever.

And above all, this is a day, as you said, to remember. First to remember those we lost in that fight against an enemy we knew so little about, but this is also a day to remember how we came through that tremendous ordeal united and united in the determination to beat the virus to get our lives back.

Luis, director of the Cervantes Institute, I would like to thank you for hosting this event here, in this space, in this temple of the languages of Spain. It is an ideal framework, perfectly suitable for remembering the role that culture played in the harshest part of lockdown, as Isabel Vidal recalled. Culture helped us in many areas, it helped us to overcome boredom. I remember that at the beginning I enjoyed the lockdown because everyone would make videos about how they discovered their house, their home, but as the days of lockdown progressed it wasn't so funny anymore. And instead, culture in all its spheres allowed us to do just that, to overcome boredom, to expand our lives with our minds, since obviously physically we could not do so.

It also helped us to overcome uncertainty with a lot of hope, to dream, in short, of a return to a normality that we then saw as almost unattainable. We were very uncertain as to exactly when we would be able to resume our normal life.

Well, four years have passed. I don't know about you - if you will allow me - you probably have the same experience as me, the same feeling, but it feels like 100 years have passed, like a long time has passed. But that 14 March four years ago, the day on which we decreed the state of emergency and the start of the lockdown, obviously, as has been said here, many things changed.

And with the benefit of hindsight, we know today, as Marta said earlier, that top priority decision for the experts - and here we have my dear friend and an extraordinary professional, Fernando Simón - was fundamental in bending the curve. One of the few certainties we had at that time was that social distance, that limited mobility saved lives; that they were, in short, our best asset, almost the only one we had, as the experts constantly reminded us. Only in this way could we slow the spread of the virus, avoid saturation of our health system and save time. We necessarily had to buy time for science and knowledge to come to the rescue of the world's population as a whole.

We were not even thinking about a vaccine then, but about some kind of treatment, some kind of drug that would reduce the death toll, that would at least allow us to live with the virus. The vaccine, it was said at the time, would take years of work and analysis; that was the uncertainty with which people were working at the time. Fortunately, that would not be the only gloomy prognosis we managed to overturn. Many more were to come in science and economics, although we were obviously not yet aware of this at the time.

But let's go back to that Saturday in March, just four years ago, because I have been asked about it many times in the media - and also in private - and yes, I have no doubt, it was the most difficult speech I have had to make as president of the Government of Spain.

And obviously it was because of the social implications, because of the impact on an economy that, let's not forget, had not yet recovered from the hard blow of the financial crisis. And also because of the philosophical and moral consequences. Because a democracy is required to do something else that can never be demanded of an authoritarian regime, and that is, when it comes to adopting decisions as severe as lockdown, such as isolation, we are asked to convince society that what we are doing is proportional, that reason is on our side, that we are on the right side of history, that it is worth the enormous sacrifice we have to make in order to defeat the virus, in this case, COVID-19.

I remember Fernando, that some leaders at that time talked about achieving herd immunity - herd immunity, they said - which was better for the economy than lockdown , they said. And that brutal logic that we also saw in leaders in other parts of the world, that brutal logic of saying well, we have to immunise ourselves from a group point of view and, therefore, we cannot conform, implied sentencing hundreds of thousands of human beings and, above all, our elders, many of whom we lost during COVID-19, and who gave everything for our country, for our society, for ourselves, at very difficult moments in our history. And those who defended it soon backed down because of the tremendous human cost involved, and because of what it meant in terms of turning our backs on science, the only light we had amidst so much darkness.

Throughout these years I have to tell you that I felt very proud of Spain on many occasions, and never as I did then, because we discovered our collective strength, our determination. It was the whole of Spain rowing as one, giving a unique lesson in civic patriotism.

One of my biggest concerns in those days, obviously, was the impact that lockdown could have on our younger people, because we were asking them for a tremendous sacrifice that I also experienced at home with my teenage daughters. Just at an age when every weekend, every missed music festival, every getaway, is seen as a unique and unrepeatable treasure.

Young people like Inés, an elite athlete who overnight put her career and her passion for rhythmic gymnastics on hold. And she was risking something very important, risking a lifetime of sacrifice and training, as she told us. Today we know that Inés is going to be in Paris, in the Olympics, and that she is going to fight for a medal representing her country, Spain. Your victory also belongs to society as a whole. You belong to an extraordinary generation, Inés. Some call you the crystal generation. I don't think they have the faintest idea what they are talking about, because you are the generation that overcame the pandemic, the one that grew up with precariousness after the crisis and the one that tomorrow, I am convinced, will find the answers to every challenge, from education, science and knowledge.

And it will be possible thanks to the work of teachers who, like Lourdes, have left their souls on the screens to continue educating their students. So do my daughters. Lourdes, you made reference to the digital divide that we all suffered during lockdown, to your efforts to avoid not having a computer or a good connection to the internet, which unfortunately in our country is also quite common, from being an insurmountable barrier to learning for our young people. And thanks to professionals like you, those months were the opposite. Rather than a tremendous standstill, they were an accelerator for advancing the digital tools so necessary to meet the challenges of the education of the future. So thank you for everything. Thank you Lourdes, thank you for your commitment to the education of our sons and daughters.

Those were very hard days for all of us. Also to those of you who were on the streets looking out for our safety, Jorge. The hardest thing to do was to ensure that no one would throw away the sacrifice of an entire society. And I think it is a source of pride to hear you talk about all your colleagues, to say that you really felt you were a team and that you felt you were on the front line before the health professionals arrived. Of your commitment, in short, as public servants, of how not a single service was left unfilled despite the infections in the workforce. Of your emotion at seeing that the applause from the balconies was also for all public servants, also for the State Law Enforcement Forces and Agencies and for the Local Police of each and every one of our local councils.

So thank you, Jorge, because thanks to you and all the members of the Local Police, of the Armed Forces, which I also see some representatives at the back of this forum, and of the State Law Enforcement Forces and Agencies, we were able to take better care of those who had to take care of all of us, our health professionals. Those we had been applauding every day at 20:00 in the evening, recognising their titanic effort to save their lives in very hard conditions, very exposed to the virus.

Health professionals such as Carmen, the woman who administered the most widely seen jab in the history of Spain. I believe that 27 December was a day in the history of our country. You did more, as Marta said, than just give a vaccine, you gave us hope that day. We knew then that we were going to win and that we were going to do it by taking care of those who were most at risk because of their advanced age, because that I think was also one of the achievements of our health system. That the first to get the vaccine were not those with the most economic resources, but those most at risk, those most vulnerable to COVID-19.

In short, the generation that, as I said before, supported their grandchildren with their pensions through the financial crisis, the generation that overcame a war and a post-war period, the generation that contributed with its efforts and commitment to bring democracy to our country. That day, Carmen, you administered the vaccine, of course, but it was the whole of Spain that held your arm and Araceli's arm while you gave her the vaccine. And I was thrilled to learn a few days ago that Araceli had here 100th birthday, and I don't think there is a more powerful image to celebrate that collective triumph in the face of the pandemic than seeing her reach a century of life. And, moreover, as we had the opportunity to see in the media, to do so as she is, in top form.

We finally had the vaccine, but even so, the same people who doubted that we would get it were quick to raise another doubt, namely that we would not be able to administer it quickly. I remember that Europe was criticised, and a lot, for being behind, lagging behind other countries, other continents... the United Kingdom, the United States, in short, we all have it in our minds, but we did it. We did so and had to overcome fears and suspicions, some of them legitimate. It was necessary to combat something very surprising and that is the unreasonableness of those anti-vaxxers who wreaked havoc in many countries around us, not far from here, very close, on the European continent, to the point of jeopardising the vaccination campaign. And here I would also like to pay tribute to the media, which did a great job in terms of education, information, transparency and the effectiveness of the vaccine in the face of the denialist discourse that was rampant on social networks at the time. Our country was once again up to the task. Our health system responded once again and so did society, because we took a step forwards to make Spain not only a European, but a world benchmark in terms of vaccination rates.

And because of this, we reopened to the world as a safe destination. And there are the figures: more than 85 million tourists arrived in Spain from abroad in 2023. Let us remember what the horizon was for a sector as important as tourism during the pandemic in 2020. Well, then, the absolute record in our history, leaders in the whole world.

And finally, Kim, your testimony gives a voice to Spanish society as a whole. This is the voice of, I believe, a responsible and supportive citizenship, and I am also very grateful to you for speaking in this way about your country, about Spain. Because that vast majority that took a step backwards to protect the most vulnerable, and above all our elderly, must also be valued, and then took a step forwards to recover in record time all the lost ground and drive a vigorous economic recovery. Citizens of Spain, of course, but also, like Kim, migrants who came to Spain to build a better life and who faced the pandemic with the added pain of nostalgia for your homeland and the uncertainty of knowing what was going to happen to your relatives in Latin America. On your behalf, I would like to recognise many of your compatriots, as you well remembered, who performed essential tasks during the confinement, from transport, food, agriculture, public services, in short, the word essential never had so much meaning as it did then.

On 14 March, we began to beat the pandemic, even if we looking at the evidence today, we did not realise then that we were going to do it. In the first 100 days of lockdown and the months of uncertainty that followed, we reinforced some certainties and learned many things, as mentioned here. We reinforced our confidence in expert knowledge, in informed judgement, in the contribution of science. I believe that this country owes a lot to science, the world owes a lot to science and we will continue to support science, investing more in science.

We also reinforce our faith in the role of the state as an instrument of solidarity and a powerful safety net in the face of misfortune. And we reinforce our conviction that a good public health system is the safest investment.

We discovered, didn't we, vice-president, that the ERTEs were an instrument that saved many jobs. The ICO credits also saved many companies, they put wages in pockets for more than 3 million workers during those long months and that we brought forward the minimum basic income, as a strategic tool of solidarity.

We learned that Europe can deal with crises in an effective, coordinated and united manner, unlike during the financial crisis; that its response can be humane, that it can alleviate suffering and not add to it; that aid is always better if we do it together, as we did with the joint purchase of vaccines, as opposed to the response we got from the men in black during the financial crisis.

We learned that we are a mature and responsible society, as has been said here before. A free but disciplined society, in solidarity because we know that our security depends on collective security, when circumstances require it. A society that protects the vulnerable and does not give up in the face of adversity.

We learned many things, but I would also like to say that we learned something that sometimes in our country we do not claim more eloquently: we learned to trust ourselves more, we learned to look at ourselves as the extraordinary country that we are and that we are recognised as such when we go abroad.

On that 14 March four years ago, the good today was anxious, tomorrow an uncertain chimera. We didn't know it then, but that was the day we began to win, with very tough decisions, with confidence in science, with exemplary behaviour. Society as a whole defeated the pandemic. And today, four years later, I would like to vindicate this collective achievement before the whole of Spanish society, an exemplary citizenship, which at the hardest time in recent years showed commitment, maturity and temperance, as no one had ever been able to imagine before.

Thank you very much, Spain.

Non official translation