When the economic system threatens democracy

When in some French cities they have banned demonstrations or when the Paris government wants to control the networks because that is where the agitation orders pass through, it is because social unrest has definitively infiltrated the heart of the system of freedoms, with a capacity for penetration capable of rusting all the parts of a democracy's engine.

When the system has to protect itself to such extremes in a republic that was the beacon of people's freedoms, it is because it no longer works, and it is not strictly the machine's fault, which is good, but rather the conditions of pressure and ambient temperature of the market economy in which we want it to continue functioning. Coexistence is only possible through the recognition of the other, and it is a fact that in an economy where workers are becoming impoverished, young people cannot become emancipated, and tenants are being expelled from cities, the basis upon which respect for the norms is sustained fails, which is that we all have a lot to lose.

In Catalonia, one in three children lives in poverty. There are many whose only hot meal of the day is at school. It is evident that the material conditions of the parents will condition their personal and professional future, no matter how brilliant their teachers are and no matter how many resources we put into schools and institutes. Equality of opportunity has always been imperfect, but now it is beginning to be an impossibility, and this state of malaise threatens democracy itself in a way that may be irreversible.

The right tiptoes over this reality and pretends that these are nothing more than economic cycles and that the fat cows will return. And the left tends to increase the tax burden on what remains of the middle classes and to keep approving aid and subsidies. Europe is facing a revolt and the old recipes will not work.