012D5VP2_1.jpgNicolás Sartorius is a lawyer as well as a professional journalist. Yet, something he is very well-known for is his fight for freedom during Franco’s dictatorship. He founded the Workers Commissions Union (affiliated with the Communist Party), but he is no longer dedicated to Politics, although he continues participating, but from a different position, in the defense of social reforms.

“Dear friends” is the beginning of his speech, which clearly reflects what one of the principles of his ideology is: equity, in every level. Therefore, his discourse could not lack an explicit reference to poverty. “You can ask me if humans live well. I can say that 3,400 million people live with 1 or 2 dollars a day whilst 800 million do so with 75 dollars… What do you think about that?” While his speech is interesting, it is easy to get lost in figures about wealth, life expectancy, and immigration which precede the known conclusion about “the growing gap between the rich and the poor.” We were all expecting different contributions on the subject; we agree on the fact that we are “richer and older”, but were asking ourselves about the topic of his speech: “What can we expect and what choices do we have?”
In his own words, “the solution is globalizing wellbeing in the world through the four virtues: Democracy, Social Cohesion, Sustainable Development, and Free Circulation of people and goods,” that is, “the European model.” Sartorius believes in the big success of the model of Europe. “We have gone from constant wars to democracies, liberty… it is possible to live well in Europe nowadays,” he argues, “and this model should be exported to other regions of the world.” According to his idea, exporting the model would benefit the poorest countries, but also the richest, for “development of least-favored economies will turn them into new markets.”

“Europe has the responsibility of leading the process of change, which has already begun, because today multilateralism is defeating the hegemony of the United States,” he tells us convincingly. “We must teach the world what we have learned, for the solution is not bombing but supporting peoples to end with tyranny.”

Sara Domínguez Martín
Translated by Cristina Crosby