Valencia at the beginning of the XXI Century

The protagonist of the play the skylight, the playwright Antonio Buero Vallejo, asked distressed at some old photographs of groups of people: "Who is this person? And that way? ?. Time and distance had been blurring the faces of the characters and scenarios made them forget they were located. The uneasiness of ignorance, helplessness and spectators to what is history, leads us to question many times throughout our lives, as did the character Buero: "Who owns this look?, What about those eyes who seem lost, how they behave, what they want, how they feel? ? Sometimes even, the question goes further, trying to figure out the subsequent development of many small individual stories that make up the collective history: "What became of that? How about that? What about that one? Where are they now? ? What we are today is the result of what we did yesterday. "The best prophet of the future is the past?, Said Lord Byron. Hence our need to know, our logic and legitimate curiosity about who and what did what, learn what events and what steps have brought us, them and us, where we are today. That, over large periods of time, is what they spend their desire conscientious historians.

Journalists, more modestly, barely have time and ability to review, to reify, to some extent, small daily events and ephemeral presence in them of who staged many anecdotes inevitably forget at the first bend of the road. What happens is that the concept of time and history has changed dramatically in a very few years. Even in the last century, one of the most prolific Spanish thinkers, Jose Ortega y Gasset, estimated at twenty-five years the time period ranging from one generation to another. Today, however, the generations succeed and overlap each other almost without interruption. The historical tempo has accelerated so that what was yesterday afternoon news today is history and tomorrow morning there will already entered the terrible and muddy terrain of oblivion: "Nobody knows anybody?, I should say, to paraphrase the title disturbing a film by Mateo Gil. He wrote, for his part, the Catalan poet Salvador Espriu that "he who forgets his origins loses its identity?. Aside from the biased and intended applications some make of these verses, it is true that we can only know who we are if not ignorant of where we came from.

Warned us of something similar too, with an ironically prophetic sense, the philosopher George Santayana by his famous aphorism: "The people who know their history are doomed to repeat it." That is, the ignorance of the past inevitably influences us to re-make the same mistakes in the future. Perhaps because, as anticipated this comprehensive and restless connoisseur of the human soul was William Shakespeare, "the past is prologue? everything that happens in our present. To avoid the risk of repeating old mistakes, nothing better, therefore, that the traces that we leave along the way and that forensic patience usually pick up those witnesses who are print pages of the newspapers. Thanks to them we avoid the danger of being buried, to distort or misrepresent the collective memory. The trouble is that, often, the evidence produced in the course of the route only as a fossil preserved in those funeral halls are so rare that the newspaper archives. Therefore, before the next gust of wind will finally remove some traces of the way, I wanted to save those of which I have witnessed and conspiracy in this book.

Not because the view expressed on them are important in themselves, but because the facts and figures referred to are the small inside story "d'un temps d'un country?, As he said, referring to another time, obviously Raimon Pelejero, the singer of Xativa. A tiny sample of the inside story of how it was Valencia, "happy and confident?, The beginning of the third millennium, is contained in the articles of this book. Not that the author is a privileged observer, let alone, make it neutral. He, too, is the product of their time and their history, their personal journeys and their biographical conditions. But this is someone who has tried to do their job honestly and threading their thoughts without too much subservience to political correctness. And so it has gone. Rather, I've done well, regardless of the device language and speak in third person, as many soccer coaches. This volume, therefore, and many others like him, though several authors, which cover all of this evanescent bits allow us to understand better tomorrow, perhaps, what you have just passed, and, above all, have the keys , references and compass to navigate the future better immediately, inevitably, is already beginning to be passed.

To understand this book to finish, if that would make any explanation needed, I will tell more in detail its genesis. One day I was stranded in Valencia, as happened in a different context to that siren play by Alejandro Casona. The fact did not happen suddenly, obviously, because it was three years on this earth trying to push through the paper that I had hired for that purpose. "We have a problem, I was told at the time, so I go there to solve it?. And I went. That is: I came. The company itself never let me do my job as it should. Among many reasons, so erratic in his career at that time and suffered societal swings. But these are neither the place nor the time to get into explanations. These adventures the story, to some extent, in another book that will be released soon. In all that process, which itself came suddenly and unexpectedly was my stop. As starkly says a friend who also ran a similar work history, "what happened is a lot like marital infidelity: everyone knows that your partner is hitting the and you're the last to find out who is leaving for home?.

Serve these shallow lines to understand that I found myself suddenly in Valencia without having to go to the newspaper every morning, as he had done every day. The reaction of most of my friends and acquaintances, in Valencia and beyond, was similar: "Now I return to Madrid, I suppose?. None of them seemed to believe that Valencia can be a destination in itself and not simply the temporary location of a parcel that once completed, even abruptly, requires you to go to other payments to continue developing your career. "There is nothing in Madrid, told them my partners, who can not do in Valencia?. To bewilderment of some, added: "I much prefer this city life is better on this earth and, given a choice, I prefer to stay?. To me, what can I say, my answer seemed obvious to me overwhelming. One has lived on in Bilbao, Logroño, Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Salamanca, New York and elsewhere has made friends and was reasonably happy. Why miss, So now the great opportunity to have met Valencia, its people and its climate, its culture and its history, its industry and its joie de vivre, and not share and enjoy them all you can?

The only paradoxical in that dialogue repeated "Now you go?," No, I'm staying?, Is the attitude of my interlocutors that, instead of believing that live on this earth is a gift from the gods, they think that someone who she accidentally came to what really sucks is to leave as soon as possible. Such an attitude is due, surely, to have some historical fatum border regions with indeterminate awareness about their own identity. Do not really know what they are, if berries or Christian, whether north or south, if this or that, and sometimes foreshadow and absurd underground complex of inferiority to other lands and other people whom have nothing to envy. I have found similar attitudes in other parts of my life adventure. I have also known the opposite: an excessive and exclusive ethnocentrism that leads to underestimate what comes from beyond their borders hypothetical and unreal. Conviction, full of people prefer the uncertainties of certainties, I identify more with those who admire other people's than with those who overstate the same. That is, consequently, another reason to feel at home among the Valencians.

So, again, Valencia did not have to be a transit point for any other party, but a great destination. Few communities like ours it linguistically appropriated me from day one, can boast so much balance and complementarity: the landscape, climate, economy, culture ... The Community has the best beaches in Spain, protected natural areas in mountainous regions with continental climate ... Its productive structure is dealt with harmony between the three sectors, ranging from traditional agriculture to a highly developed service sector. There is a territorial balance unthinkable in other Spanish regions, with comparable endowments from north to south in infrastructure, industrial equipment, cultural investments ... There is a reasonable mix between tradition and modernity can be exemplified on the one hand, in the exhibitions of the religious heritage of the Light of the Images, and secondly, in the bold and innovative Bienal de Valencia. They can criticize me, at this point, saying that I have the enthusiasm of the neophyte and to the fanaticism of the convert. Be argued, even we do not live in the best of all possible worlds, as Leibnitz said, and we still have a lot to improve. Of course.

But let me have wanted to draw with that modest pair of thick brushstrokes an impression that is shared by many foreigners who have made of Valencia, in conscience, our current adopted country. My enthusiasm, who can check on the following pages, it is not now, but almost from the first day I stepped on this land. When I got it free from prejudice, hardly know anyone. Perhaps the only person who was able to penetrate the mysteries of the collective soul of Valencia was my colleague José Manuel Girona. I joined him a long relationship that started in Barcelona in 1970 and extended far episodically in Madrid and then in a place as unconventional as the beautiful Californian city of San Diego, where for the whims of fate came back to match. The other person I had met briefly for professional reasons was the former president of the Community, Joan Lerma, for whom he always felt a strong admiration and affectionate respect. To conclude this brief list of previous contacts, I refer to Jesus Montesinos, a journalist like the top of a pine, with a unique talent and information about entrepreneurship of those who lack the majority of his colleagues.

Sensing and those qualities have not yet fully known, had chosen years before as editor of the daily Mediterranean, Castellon, when I competed in my capacity as those responsibilities then CEO of Grupo Zeta publication. You see how little baggage to jump-start. But my admiration for this land, my boyfriend, so to speak, came next. It is true that one is naturally affectionate and in love with the land and the people not difficult. It can attest to my many friends in Salamanca, my former place of employment, and city that I have been in the soul forever. In one of my frequent trips to the city of Tormes, extolled the qualities of Valencia to people like former Senator Fernando Fernández de Trocóniz or the then President of Caja Duero, Sebastian Battaner. In my enthusiastic preaching, he spoke of the dynamism of their society, that Valencians unique ability to combine work and fun, higher economic growth than the Spanish average and its capacity to create jobs ... In these, Sebastian Battaner interrupted me - Why you do not have all that at a conference in the auditorium of our organization?

I wore only a year and a half in the Community, however, I do not daunted by the effort. Posts and to be pretentious, I titled the talk "The Valencia, spearhead the future of Spain?. Neither more nor less. With a pair of nostrils. (...) There is something to which I pass out before advancing a paragraph or more. In reviewing the index of names that ends with the book he mentions that people are by name, the character who appears sometimes Eduardo Zaplana. The obvious fact is the manifest and justified to spare. The most important person in the Community during the period 2000-2004, which is covered in this book, it was precisely who presided over most of the time. For this reason, the name of which he was president of the Generalitat appears with great frequency. Furthermore, the overwhelming activity of the character it has a necessary and indispensable to many articles, or at least, mere reference in passing to others. Story here an anecdote which I have referred elsewhere. When I arrived in Valencia, a formal visit was made forced the then president of the Consell.

In that initial conversation, I reminded him that we had met once briefly in group: It was during a meeting in Castellón de editors of Grupo Zeta, years ago. At the time alluded to, was still unknown Zaplana PP leader, calling party with perennial opposition. Born of a sincerity that has caused me more of a disappointment in my long life, during that first visit with the president of Palau de la Generalitat, he blurted out: 'The day I met him had not given a cent for their future political. Instead of being upset, and had made some in place, Zaplana chuckled: - Neither you nor anyone else! That was the first of the few meetings I had with the character, bound by my professional work. The good humor with which abruptly took my initial questioning, rather than the sullenness with which others have received such a statement, marked, just to say, the mood of our future relationship (...) (Foreword to Valencia beginning of the XXI Century ARIAS ENRIQUE VEGA .- .- .- Institució Valencia Alfonso the Magnanimous .- 2004 .- 349 .- 12 € pages)