The virus not only leaves thousands dead - the most painful and serious - but also leaves a trail of physical and mental destruction, creating such uncertainty that there is no future. The most optimistic speak of a very different future, a very new one, but perhaps more supportive and ecological. The apocalyptic ones see an immediate future of unemployment, business closures, hardship and pain. There will be all sorts of things in this future that we are unable to sense or understand, but the key to making it better than we expect lies in just one attitude: confidence.
The work of individuals, institutions and enterprises will have to be based on the premise of building trust. Trust between people to overcome the barrier created by the threat of contagion.Trust in institutions based on the credibility of the data and the solutions provided to overcome the great crisis; trust in the world of work to generate the appropriate consumption of goods and the provision of services that make us a secure society to create that future that has now escaped us.
Many things will change, others will return to what they were because we are highly evolved societies, much more so than the doomsayers of the day, whatever the sign they may be. The best thing about the future is that it is yet to be created. And perhaps we will emerge from the great crises with fresher, more positive and freer attitudes to forge a new life adventure. Having been confronted as a society and as individuals with the certain threat of illness and even death, indiscriminately and without any logic, may make us more respectful of the simple, everyday values that we sometimes overlook. Will we be more spiritual, more respectful, more aware of human limitations? Surely yes. We will therefore have a more humane society, and our political and business leaders will have to be more dedicated to the virtuous. In this way we will be able to build trust between all of us.
Right now we have been denied the ability to move and we have learned what some societies have suffered for other reasons, usually political ones, that the greatest value of human beings lies in their freedom, and that this is where their best abilities are born. We have limited ourselves - no walking, no travel, no consumption, ... - in order to win the future. We will only achieve it when the ways of travelling, of relating to others, of working are actually safe. When we have achieved the confidence that they are.
I don't think there is any other issue more sensitive and important to working in the field of communication than the creation of that supreme value that we need for exchanges of all kinds, and on which is based everything from the exchange of knowledge to economic exchange. Let us create the foundations of security, and from there strengthen the mechanisms that restore our confidence as free societies.
Citizens and businesses have lost confidence in the future. That is why from now on it is essential to reinforce the communication mechanisms that give it back to us. Self-confidence, without predetermining whether the future will be like this or another way, because if we have confidence we will also have the freedom to make it the best of futures.
In the case of Spain, the trust that nearly forty million visitors placed in us - as a cultural and leisure space - may have been shattered with a temporary scope that can destroy an entire industry. This is the most striking example. If we once sold the world that "we were different", perhaps today the value of trust is to restore that "we are all on the same level". Only then will we find ourselves safe in a once again prosperous future.
Javier Martín-Domínguez
President of the International Press Club. Correspondent in Washington, New York and Tokyo for Radio Nacional, TVE and La Vanguardia de Barcelona. Master's degree in Communication from The New School for Social Research, New York University. Film and television producer, communication consultant and senior executive of audiovisual companies, he was director of thematic channels and general secretary of TVE. He has directed the Seville Film Festival.