Representatives of the candidates for the European, local and regional elections share their proposals

“There are many issues to deal with right now, but it is essential to understand that this system has failed and that we need to build a new model of society, whose central value is the human being. This is how Pablo Martín sums up the proposal of the Humanist Party. He is a candidate in the autonomous elections for the Community of Madrid and has participated in a campaign event in which humanist volunteers have talked to people and delivered materials with the fundamental ideas of a party that is “something more than a party”.

Next to the metro entrance of the Tribunal, a table with hundreds of leaflets, balloons and banners. Diverse people, speak calmly. They are not trying to convince anyone, but to share their point of view. They speak of “crisis”, in several fields, rapid and also unstoppable crises, of not changing direction: with the environment, with migratory phenomena, with work, existential crisis. “We are not apocalyptic when we say that this system cannot be fixed,” says Pablo, “on the contrary, it seems to us that in these crises there is also an opportunity to take a leap in human history, the human being grows, the suit becomes small, and another model of social organization must be built, another lifestyle.

Nothing above the human being and no human being above another.

“Europe can no longer allow thousands of human beings to lose their lives on its borders and in the seas that surround it. If we close the door of our house to people who need help, not only do they die, we are dying too. We have to see how to redistribute wealth on a planetary level. And Europe could take the lead in promoting actions that would help prevent hunger and the difficult conditions in which a large part of the population lives: that would save Europe,” explains Eva Ubago, a candidate for the European elections.

According to the Humanist Party, the response to migrations, the rise of nationalism and the growth of the ultra-right has to do with the vacuum left by the fall of a failed system that some are trying to fill with contents from the darkest past. Arturo Viloria, candidate for the European elections, sums it up: “we are at a crossroads, humanism or anti-humanism. We have to choose between these options, of course not only with the vote, but also with our actions, projects and aspirations”.

Grassroots action

There are people who come to the table and are interested in knowing the proposals of this party that has been running in all the elections since 1984, when it was founded, although it hardly receives any space in the media. A party that bases its action in the neighborhoods, on the social base, on voluntary participation.

“Just the opposite of how it is proposed today. Everything is armed in function of some supra-structures, to which it is endowed with greater capacity of decision and of resources, whereas to the social base, to the city councils and the districts arrive the “crumbs” and many times the politics in those spaces is reduced to see where to build the roundabout…”, assures Gloria Lopez, candidate to the City council of Madrid. “It is necessary to decentralize and prioritize the social base. We don’t believe that a society advances because of the variables of the speculative economy, or because of what the macro-structures say. The advance of a society has to do with human intentionality, capable of opening the way and building. In the neighborhoods the consequence that our actions have is immediate, it doesn’t matter how I treat the one I’m going to see every day and with whom I’m betting my future. For this reason, neighbourhoods and cities are spaces from which to build a new model, based on the reconstruction of a diverse social fabric, united by the glue of coherence and shared projects. That is our proposal”.

You can see the video (in Spanish) here

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Translation Pressenza London