STF na Mídia - MyClipp

to commemorate their respective Constitutions, "Spain
has failed. We could have used it as a way to bring us
closer to Latin America. The Foreign Ministry has done
nothing, neither has the Instituto Cervantes. They
consider the Constitution of 1812 more important in
Mexico than over here."
He blames the previous two national administrations of
Prime Ministers Zapatero and Rajoy for failing to plan
ahead. "It's our first Constitution!" he shouts. "An
opportunity for us to say to the world, 'Listen, we were
already democrats, 200 years ago. We're not
newcomers to this.' I think that we have thrown away a
golden opportunity. We have failed to take advantage
of this, something that could have captured the world's
attention this year. And why? Laziness and ignorance.
The previous governments just couldn't be bothered.
There was nobody with the talent or the energy to
make something of this."
There are plenty of people in Cádiz who agree with
León, and think that the bicentenary could have been
put to greater use in helping the city and its province's
economies; that it could have been what the Expo was
to Seville or the Olympics to Barcelona in 1992.
The widely held view is that things have been handled
El País/ - Internacional, Sex, 30 de Março de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)
badly. Some point to the consortium set up to organize
the celebrations; others to the political fighting between
the Socialist Party-controlled regional government and
the Popular Party administration in Cádiz that has
seen both sides organize their own events.
Leaving aside the squabbling and petty fighting
between politicians, García León highlights one of the
Constitution's more attractive qualities: "It insists on the
importance of happiness. This is something that
seems very modern to us, very new, and this is
something that Brazil's former president, Lula, has
talked about. It is a bitter irony that the century and a
half that followed was so violent and unhappy," he
says.
"The objective of the government is the happiness of
the nation, given that the goal of all societies is none
other than the wellbeing of the individuals it is
composed of," reads Article 13.
With an electorate looking at a future that is going to
get a lot worse before it gets better, and with a raft of
highly unpopular cuts still to implement, perhaps it is
not so surprising after all that today's government
decided to play down the celebrations.
29