For decades, I have dreamed of linking social initiative with the potential of institutions. I am convinced that this is the only way we have to move forward as a people. Our organizations are weak and the pandemic has given us the measure, our society is not in its best, and the pandemic has exacerbated some weaknesses that were otherwise being visualized. Basque society is losing its effectiveness for two reasons: because there are strong inertias that support assimilation and because we do not exert enough force to deal with them. We have to put society, institutions and the people in the same vein so that we can endure.

But for that I still see a lot of suspicions. It is clear that we are not in the situation ten years ago, that today there is more mutual respect than that existing at the time. In public institutions one color prevails and in social dynamics another (the other, more honest) that conditions relations, because prejudices are not sufficiently overcome. It is still common for public institutions to put the social agent in suspicion, and to seek to dominate it through subsidies or contracts, so that it does not deteriorate excessively; and, on the contrary, for the social agent to be afraid of the public body, which can exercise its position of force to fight it.

But please, let us not lose sight. The main problem we have as a people, as a community of speakers, is not a subsidy or mutual mistrust, the risk we have before us is an absolute assimilation, not thinking as a people, not imagining the future of the Basque Country. There we have the common priority. And in order to put an end to this evolution, we have to put aside the small interests, the peripetees and the coppices against the windmills of the house. A strong combination of social initiative and the capacity of the institutions allows us to face the loss. Public-social cooperation is the most powerful, almost unique energy source we have to fuel local development.

I know the processes that are taking place in that direction, which give rise to hope. There are also hindcast fears, but it is increasingly possible to overcome them. The fact is that, over and above all prevention, we have to be clear that we all play survival in this challenge, that not moving forward brings us closer to the abyss. I don't like the apocalypse, but right now I see the most dangerous Japanese.