PROA Comunicación has organised a new edition of its Current Affairs Dialogues to host a meeting between businessmen and the former minister Jordi Sevilla, who shared the main lines of the manifesto with the main executives. Social Democracy 21, the current of political reflection that it has just launched.
Spain needs to recover the capacity to reach major state agreements to face its economic and institutional challenges and put an end to the current “political abnormality”. This is the idea that has been the focus of the latest Diálogo de Actualidad de PROA Communication, The former Minister of Public Administrations and former Chairman of Red Eléctrica, Jordi Sevilla, held a meeting with businessmen, managers and executives to defend the need to promote “new Moncloa Pacts”. The event is the first public intervention by the former minister since the presentation of his manifesto. Social Democracy 21, The event brought together leading business and institutional representatives for an open debate on governance, structural reforms and the role of civil society in shaping the country's direction.
The event is part of the Dialogues of Current Affairs cycle of PROA Communication, a consultancy firm specialising in strategic communications, corporate reputation and public affairs. During the opening, its founding partner, Lucía Casanueva, He underlined the firm's vocation to actively participate in the public conversation and to create spaces for dialogue where companies, institutions and civil society can exchange ideas on the country's major challenges. “In order to defend our clients” interests judiciously, we must be part of the public debate and listen to those who lead it," he said, highlighting the value of this type of forum to foster consensus and a more constructive conversation.
Declining middle class
During his speech, Sevilla demanded “a temporary moratorium on the partisan confrontation that is leading us to paralysis”, and denounced the situation of “a declining middle class and young people resigned to a worse future than the one their parents had”. To this end, he called for a “national strategy” that overcomes “the greatest political abnormality of the moment we are living in”. Specifically, “the fact that the two major constitutional parties in Spain are incapable, for purely electoral strategies, of agreeing anything at all, about anything, betting on an absurd polarisation that only benefits the extremists”.
In his opinion, the achievement of solid agreements by the two majority parties is not only possible, but “would be backed by almost 70% of Spaniards”, which “would break the current dictatorship of the extremist minorities that take advantage of the situation of polarisation to impose their conditions”. In this context, he called for the implementation of “new Moncloa Pacts” to align administrations, parties and civil society around shared priorities and to recover Spain's capacity to tackle far-reaching reforms with stability and a vision for the future.
Housing, health and taxation in the spotlight
More specifically, the former minister proposed a package of 10 reforms focused on areas that he considers priorities for the country's economic and social stability, such as housing, health, taxation, strategic infrastructures and industrial competitiveness, together with improvements in institutional quality and the fight against corruption.
Among the proposals put forward, he defended a shock plan to build 400,000 additional homes in three years, complemented by another 100,000 for affordable rentals; the implementation of an extraordinary programme to eliminate health waiting lists in six months; the recovery of the purchasing power of wages and the deflation of personal income tax to alleviate the tax burden on families; and a strengthening of infrastructure and industrial and energy policy, with special attention to electricity grids, storage and strategic sectors. These measures would be complemented by a new regional funding model and a boost to corruption prevention mechanisms.
The meeting, held in a closed format and by invitation, brought together businessmen, managers and institutional representatives from different sectors, who participated in a subsequent discussion with the speaker to exchange views on governance, economic growth and the role of business in building state consensus. The session was part of PROA Comunicación's current affairs dialogue series, conceived as a space for reflection and conversation with the main voices of public debate.