The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 46. Arancha González Laya: The World’s Most Powerful Organisations

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Are increased military budgets needed following on from Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Will Europe take the same approach to regulating AI as China and the US? What is it like being a woman in front-bench politics? Rory and Alastair are joined by former Minister of Foreign Affairs in Spain and the Dean of the School of International Affairs at Sciences Po in Paris to discuss all this and more in today's episode of Leading. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispolics.com. Welcome to the Restis Politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair. And today we are very, very lucky to have with us Arancha Gonzalez-Laya, who was Spain's foreign minister, but has also done an extraordinary variety of other jobs. She was. very senior at the World Trade Organization. She was the senior official at the European Commission, and she is now the head of SciencePur, which is the most famous, probably School of International Affairs, anywhere in the world, based in Paris. And she's also, I think, I mean, we met first in a monastery in Segovia, a monastery associated with a sort of rather sinister man called Torquemada. This was his great home monastery. But she's also the only person I know who seems to speak more languages in Alastah, so welcome very much to the show. Aradha, thank you. A pleasure to be with you. And why were you two in a monastery? What were you doing in this monastery together?

Well, we were debating transatlantic relations. You know, the world is a bit complex today and there is a bit of soul-searching on both sides of the Atlantic, on the US and on Europe, about how we can work together, how we can advance our interests and values together, because let's say that in the last period we've tried, but we've had a bit of hiccups. Remember, there was Trump on the US. There was a lot of preoccupation on the European side about internal domestic politics. We need to get this relationship rights because they are clouds gathering in the horizon. Tell us a little bit about your childhood. Who were your parents? Would they expect you to have become the foreign minister of Spain? What's the story that brought you here?

Certainly not. I mean, I guess my story is the story of so many. many Spaniards that had incredible opportunities when we go back to democracy and the country, and when we had access to an incredible education system, and when we became members of the European Union, this process of modernizing Spain post-Franco meant many new opportunities for people like me. My parents were average Spanish citizens. My father was a teacher. I was born in San Sebastian, but my father was teaching a very rural area in a little village in the middle of the past country.

And my story is that of the opportunities that Spain gave to citizens that were educated and adolescent in the post-Franco times. Where do you think Spain fits in the, if you like, the European Power League? How powerful do you think Spain is? When I think Spain suffers from a complex of inferiority. I think Spain has a lot to say and a lot to bring to the European Union. It's a country where a lot of the values of the European Union are very present. People feel there is a lot of solidarity between people. We welcome migrants. We are the biggest donor of organs in the world. We care about our environment. We are determined to fight against climate change. And yet sometimes I have the impression that Spain punches. below its weight. And I think this is this inferiority complex of having arrived at the European Union after the others, not having shared the dreams of the founders of the European Union, because we did not participate in the Second World War. So we were not part of that reconciliation, although we had massive reconciliation to do in the country post-ta civil war. So always a bit behind,

but I've seen this with my own eyes. When Spain is there and Spain deploys all its force on all its contribution, the others are ready for a more active Spain. And Arancha, just to take us back again one second to earlier life, you presumably have very faint childhood memories of Franco. Tell us a little bit about what that journey was like, what the politics was like through the lens of your own relatives and family. How did all this form you? Because eventually you joined a socialist government, is that right? That's right. That's right. I guess I was born at the tail end of a dictatorship. dictatorship was not a nice place to be. We had a bit of a gray country at that time. Remember also that I was born in the past country that had decided to take terrorism as a form of resistance to dictatorship. It then degenerate it as every terrorist movement does. It degenerated into coercion, corruption and violence without much reason. But at that time, let's say beginning of the 70s, this was a form of resistance.

to dictatorship. What I can tell you of my childhood is that I didn't know what I wanted to become, but I was very clear that for me Europe was this big light that guided me that I thought should guide my country. I was avid reader of Europe and European affairs since I was a child because I thought Europe represented this freedom, this democracy, this community. We needed to be part of off, which is why I decided to very early on that I wanted to be part of that adventure. You mentioned growing up in the Basque region, and we do hear a lot about Basque separatism and about Catalonia. Just give us a set, your sense of what the basic issues are that drive the separatists. Beyond the obvious, what is it that they want and what makes them feel that they're not Spanish

in the way that you feel your Spanish? Well, I think what we have is a country that is very diverse. where feelings of belonging to Spain are diverse depending on the part of Spain you're at. The European Union is diversity, right? So I've always felt that this diversity was something that you could manage to be Spanish and yet feel very strongly about your specific region, that you could speak your regional language, Basque language in my case, the literature, the gastronomy, the traditions, that you could cry with the music of that region and still feel Spanish. And I think that's as perfectly possible because this is what the European Union is also.

It's unity in those diversity. Now, this diversity has different manifestations. We've got in Spain citizens a small part, but we need to be respectful of their beliefs that don't want to be part of Spain. They want to break away. A majority in those regions that want to have degrees of autonomy for their regions. They want to have a say in how they organize their... affairs, including in the bus country fiscal autonomy. And then there is another big chunk of citizens in those regions that feel very strongly that that region has to be part of Spain. So in a way,

we have to learn to marriage the specificities with this belonging to Spain firmly anchored in the European Union. And that recipe is not always easy because sometimes, and this is what we've experience in the recent past, those that want to break away decide to take steps that are dramatic, including organizing a referendum of independence, although this is not unilaterally, although this is not accepted in our constitution. I think what we have is a constitution that gives us the possibility to express their diversity while being part of Spain. And we always have to be trying to accept these differences. Not everyone accepts this. We've also seen, in a way, the rebirth of Spanish nationalism.

And this is our constant quest for diversity within unity. And Arancha, just help us on that one, because both Alastair and I are of Scottish heritage, but obviously live in the United Kingdom. And I was very upset, actually, when Scottish referendum happened, that so many people in England seem not to care. The Prime Minister just said, oh, I have a referendum, no problem. If you get 50 plus 1% of the vote, you can have independence. the whole thing was done in a very sort of laid-back way.

Why do you think in Spain there's a more passionate commitment to trying to hold the country together than maybe felt to be the case with David Cameron's United Kingdom? Well, first, because we've gone through a lot of trouble in our history. The history of Spain is not an easy history and where we've always had to juggle with fitting all different parts of the country together. Sometimes it was the fight between the liberals and the conservatives. sometimes it was between Republicans and Francoists sometimes. So these kaleidoscopic differences that

make the country have been a constant in our history. And I think what we learn after very difficult years of dictatorship that lasted very long, almost 40 years, we gave ourselves a constitution. And it was all of us, giving all of us a constitution, a constitution that represents this desire to overcome the past and build a moment. modern Spain, where the regions have their place, where they've got areas which they manage, where they lead on, where the self-government is a very, let's say, expansive, where it's not independence, it's not a confederation like in Switzerland, it's one country with autonomies in the form of regions. And I guess what we have to preserve above all is the ability to change

the constitution that we have, but to do this together. Rory mentioned there David Cameron's referendum in Scotland. There was, as you may know, another referendum that David Cameron called on June the 23rd, 2016. I've noticed that in every single one of your answers, you've mentioned the European Union, which clearly matters to you an awful lot. I'd just be interested in what you're thinking is seven years on about what the UK did in deciding to leave the European Union.

And what do you think people in Spain think of that and whether there's any desire for Spaniards to leave the European Union? Well, I think for all of us in Spain, it was a very sad day. We've got a very special relationship with the UK. The UK has a big presence in terms of citizens in our country, and we have a big presence of Spaniards in the UK. And I myself, an example of that. I've had a very close association with the UK, going to the UK to learn English since I was a very small kid. and I feel very close to the country. And that's why when the British citizens, with a very thin result, decided to leave the European Union, I was very, very sad.

Not only because I thought this was but for the European Union, you know, it's the first time in our history where we see a member leave the family, but also because I thought this was not a good decision for the UK. This was not a good decision for the UK citizens now. I'm very respectful of the decisions that the citizens have made. But let's say that seven years later, I feel that the UK citizens are looking back at what some voted that day with a bit of regret. And Arancha, one of the things that Alastra and I have noticed is that we feel that the UK's significance, their presence in international affairs, is diminishing. I've been very sad, for example, at the big cuts to the international aid budget. I feel that when people are discussing Africa, the UK seems less relevant. It seemed less relevant at Unger.

Do you feel that by leaving the European Union, Britain, paradoxically, instead of what the Brexiteers hoped that its international influence would increase, in fact, its international influence has decreased? Of course, because we're living in a world of giants. We're in order to be able to shape internationally, to have an influence, to have a say on international trade or to be active in mediating in conflict, you've got to have a size. Now, the UK has an incredible history and lots of relationships with many countries around the world, but in today's world, the UK has become a small country from all points of view.

And this is not me belittling the UK. It's just a factual description of the situation. the UK had an enormous ability to influence internationally through the European Union. I mean, I've lived in the world of international trade for many years, as you know, and I can tell you that the trade policy of the European Union had a lot to do with the British shaping it. Now, can we say that Great Britain has more influence in shaping international trade today, that it's on its own than as part of the European Union? And I think we have to be lucid. It's not the case. It's basically that the attractiveness of a market that is 700 million people is not the same as a very small market that the UK represents in the biggest scheme of things. It's paradoxical. But this is what happens with populists. They give you very simple recipes of taking control when in reality they are taking control. But the country is not. The country is losing it.

You mentioned international trade there, and of course, in a sense, your professional life was set by the work that you did, particularly with Pascal Lamy, as his chief of staff at the WTO. And you wrote a very interesting piece in the Financial Times about 18 months ago now. And I'm just going to read you the first paragraph. The emerging narrative from the war in Ukraine is that the surge in geopolitical risk will compound existing dissatisfaction with the global. trade system and lead to fragmentation. Security will trump efficiency. Integration with like-minded partners will replace multilateralism. This narrative is neither right nor desirable. There is no doubt that the ongoing conflict is reinforcing anti-trade prejudice, but is this a global trend? The short answer is no. Do you still believe that? Do you still feel that that anti-trade prejudice,

as you call it, is being successfully resisted and that globalization, as we understand it, still has a future. You know, I've always thought that trade is an incredible tool. It has helped many countries around the world transform from agrarian economies to industrial and now services economies. It has helped in improving competitiveness, innovation and growth. But it is also fair to say that trade and globalization has created incredible competition forces where they've been losers and winners. And in some parts of the world, we've taken care of the losers in some other parts of the world, we have not. And in the parts of the world where we have not taken care of the losers,

there is a big resentment against trade. There is a big resentment about globalization. So I think what history tells us is that if we want to keep markets open, if we want to keep international trade, generating growth, competitiveness and innovation, we have to do more than simply trade policies. We have to look at social safety nets. We have to look at education, retraining. We've got to look at investments in healthcare. We've got to look at research and development.

We've got to look at infrastructures, housing. All of this has to be. be part of a serious economic policy of open markets. I worry in particular about the US, because I think the US is an incredibly competitive economy. It's incredibly innovative. I mean, technologically, digitally, you name it. And yet, the capacity of the US to remain a market open to its own companies is a risk by the lack of investments in social safety nets, by the absence of a very serious domestic consensus between the two big parties, Republicans and Democrats, that you have to invest in those social safety nets too. Because if not, what we will see is a big backlash against

open markets, a desire to retreat behind domestic borders, isolationist appalions that we already see appearing. So I think it is important to also make the case for open markets, but a strong social safety nets, the two need to be clearly on the table, especially now that we've got this new disruptor called technology, called artificial intelligence, that's going to be an even bigger game changer, which we have to learn also to respond to. We cannot just simply tell our citizens, you know, technology is great, get on with it. No, we need a serious discussion about social safety nets, a new social contract. Your life sometimes feels like a kind of parable of the world's period of optimism and then the period of pessimism.

I mean, you seem in many ways a kind of symbol of what was extraordinary about the 80s and 90s, the emergence from dictatorship to democracy. In Spain, joining the European Union. You were very much there. You were in the commission as the trade spokesman and the age of the great liberal optimism of the early 2000s. So you really saw the kind of positive, optimistic story of open trade, liberal global order, Western values, the spread of democracy around the world. And then by the time you became foreign minister, you were into a much more difficult age. You became foreign minister into the age of populism.

Poland had gone. India had been taken over by a populist. Britain had had a Brexit referendum. Bolsonaro was in in Brazil. Donald Trump was in the United States. What happened in your lifetime? How is this possible that the world went? from the passionate optimism of the late 80s, the 90s, early 2000s, your early working life

into this much grimmer world that you inherited as a foreign minister. He's not blaming you, by the way, around you. He's just asking you to observe. No, no, and I've been observing this. First, there has been a massive redistribution of power in the world. And this redistribution of power in the world, I mean, when I joined the labor market, the beginning of the 90s, China represented 2% of the world economy today. it represents 20% of the world economy. By the way, a world economy that has massively increased.

I'm saying this about China, but I could say the same about Indonesia, about India, about Turkey, about Mexico, about South Africa. The distribution of power in the world has changed. And we've not been too successful in reorganizing the institutions, the mechanisms and the rules that we've given ourselves to govern this international sphere, whether it's the IME for the World Bank, whether it's the World Trade Organization, whether it's the United Nations that still has a Security Council that looks very much like 20th century, in a 21st century where the balance of power has changed. But I think we also have to acknowledge that there's been a big questioning of liberal democracies within liberal democracies. We've seen also the

attempts to hollow out liberal democracies from within, maybe because of the huge changes that our countries have also gone through and are going through, whether it's the changes related to technology, which has changed labor markets fundamentally, whether it's climate change that is obliging all of us to reform the manner in which our economies work and the manner in which we consume. These are all big transformations. And then also probably because in many places, illiberal forces within our democracies have used citizen fatigue with the slow pace of response that democracy sometimes have had to the ordinary challenges of citizens to basically offer magic recipes in the form of direct relationships between leaders and

people without institutions, without constitutions, without judges, without media, which we know is the favorite of illiberal forces. So we've got to deal with these two things. The international reorganization, redistribution of power, and the internal forces push back against the pushback on populace. Aransha, in the context of the European Union, if you think, so the UK has left and at this stage, hard to see how it gets back. France could easily elect Marine Le Penh. Japan, Italy now has Maloney, Hungary has Orban, Poland has moved, Slovakia has moved. You now have these very right-wing parties that are part of coalitions in Scandinavia, which we always used to think were kind of beacons of liberal democracy. You have the AFD now in Germany doing way better than they've

ever done before. Do you worry that these forces are so powerful that they might rip apart the entire European Union. I worry about more than worrying, I'm trying to present a different alternative, which is what we have to do. At the end of the day, in Europe, citizens decide. And we will have a very interesting moment next year with European elections. And this is when citizens will tell us. And we have to be ready for that battle. Last time, in 2019, when we had the last European elections, we had an increase in participation. And this participation was driven by young people in Europe, in the EU. And these young people were basically fighting on one topic

that they thought was existential to them. Climate change. And they told the politicians, this is what we want Europe to do. But the populists have embraced that issue as their latest cause for populism. And we're seeing the impact even here in the EU. UK recently with Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, pushing back on the environmental agenda. And the reason why, for example, the AFD have just done very well in these elections in Bavaria and Hess,

they say is because they're pushing back, including with young people who say they can't afford the transition. Well, let's wait and see what the young people tell us in the next European elections. I mean, I think for sure the conservatives in Europe are trying to hijack the green agenda under the excuse that it's too complex, that it's too costly. Well, okay, then let's have a debate about how do we ensure greater fairness. Let's look at what instruments we can deploy to do that. But let's not stop the fight against climate change because I'm sorry to say, this is an existential fight.

And it's not me saying it. We just need to look around us. It's very clear that this is our collective responsibility. Now, let's discuss with the young generation. I want to see what happens in the next European elections. And in the meantime, I think collectively, we have to have a serious conversation about how we ensure faster pace with more equity. Just a few days ago, here in Sianzbo, we had an incredible discussion with our students that are also debating and discussing among themselves how to do that. but the expectation is not that we do less, Alistair.

The expectation is that we do more. Let's wait and see if the electorate in the British election are ready to row back on the fight against climate change when every citizen in the UK is feeling already the impact of climate change. I want to see that. Okay. I think let's take a short break. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Goalhangers. The rest is science.

This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, cancer research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung Vax, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on TracerX, the world's largest cancer evolution study, which tracked lung cancer cells over many years to uncover the disease's earliest warning signs. Lung Vax is designed to train the immune system to spot these. signs early on, destroying 40 cells before cancer develops. So it's not treatment, but preventative,

with the potential to stop lung cancer before it starts. The first stage of the trial starts this year focusing on people at higher risk. It shows what long-term research makes possible. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancer research UK.org forward slash the rest is science. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Zavarach here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest is History,

which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. People are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the trade unions. And we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all.

So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alastair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time,

to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for the rest. is history wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things you haven't talked about is immigration. And it's possible to argue that really the reason why right-wing populists have got so much momentum is because of a perception from many voters in Europe that the old ruling establishment did not address their immigration concerns properly.

and that unless the moderate politicians come up with a solution to immigration, then the Orban vision of the world, this vision of a world dominated by authoritarian populists, is going to become ever stronger. Totally agree. And I think, again, it's a bit like with climate change, we've got to fight this battle with arguments. Europe and the UK is in Europe from this point of view is demographically in decline. This means that we will need migration in our societies. And this is already a reality.

The alternative, therefore, is not between migration yes or migration, no, but rather how do we do the migration? How do we manage it? Do we let the mafias control migratory flows into our territories, or do we organize this migration working with countries of? origin, devising mechanisms to train the people that we would need in our own labor markets in the countries of origin. Will we organize social security, proper contracts, proper salaries?

So what we need to do is manage the migration. And frankly, this can be done when I was a foreign minister working with my colleague, the minister for migration. We started doing that. We started doing agreements with countries. We did this with Senegal. We did this with a couple of Central American countries. Arancha, sorry, just to interrupt for a second.

So one of the ideas we've been discussing is whether the UK, for example, could say we will accept a certain percentage of our population in asylum every year. So let's say 0.05, maybe the UK takes 40,000 people a year. But it returns the people who cross on boats from France because France is a safe country. There's no reason for us to be taking people from France. instead we should be negotiating with the European Union to take people who are in genuine need and sharing the burden fairly. Maybe every country should try to agree a percentage of the population they take. What do you make of this? So we were talking about migrants, but there is a category of migrants called refugees, asylum seekers, that have internationally recognized protection.

These are the people that are fleeing wars, conflict, persecution, political, sexual, etc. Very soon we will have in that category too those that are fleeing the impact of climate change because we are seeing countries will disappear as a result of climate change. The rise in the level of the seas will lead to countries disappearing. And we will have to deal with those climate migrants or climate refugees. But refugees and asylum seekers have a special international protection and all our countries have agreed to respect international rules on asylum seekers and refugees. So let's not put all of this into the same bag. We've got one part where we've committed

to taking them because it's our humane responsibility. And then there is others. Now, it is true that when they get to the border, sometimes we don't know in which category they are. And it's fair to say that many asylum seekers come into our borders ask for asylum. In reality, they don't fall into that category. But I think we have to make a very serious distinction. And in that distinction, obviously, internationally, we have to look at how do we share the responsibility of welcoming these citizens, again, that are fleeing conflict. And frankly, with the multiplication of conflicts around us, thus, task is going to be a more complicated task, which is why we would do well also in working towards managing conflicts as opposed to fueling them if we were responsible.

So you spent six years of your life as an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, and you mentioned earlier that the United Nations at the moment feels very last century, hasn't really caught up with a lot of the geopolitical, geostrategic changes that have happened. So both based on your experience at the UN and your experience now looking at it from the outside, as it were, is it fit for purpose and what possibly can replace it when we have these massive international challenges? So I think there are different parts of the UN. Well, first, the UN is the members that make the UN, sit it around the table making decisions.

They are the shareholders of the organisation. And frankly, because they are at the moment, they are not in a very healthy shape. They are not. At the moment in a very cooperative mood, the situation of the UN is not good. Now, the UN is also the thousands of people. that work in the UN. The UN is also the humanitarian agencies that today are in the front line of all the conflicts that are happening in the world, including in Ukraine, including in Gaza, including in Myanmar, including in Sudan. These are the men and women that fight for all of us

every day for giving shelter, giving food, managing humanitarian situations. But it does it despite the reality of the politics. Exactly. And this has obviously limits. And we are seeing some of these limits on the ground. Now, there is the other UN, the political UN, the one that has a Security Council that is responsible for managing the solution for providing solution to today's conflict. This is highly dysfunctional today. This is where we need a reform of the political structures and the political compact in the UN. The Secretary General has launched this summit of the future for next year, where he is advocating for addressing some of these challenges.

I don't think we can replace the UN with something else. I think the hard reality is that we have to work to change what the UN is today in a manner that is more inclusive but also a bit more efficient. Would you change the Permanent Five structure? I mean, I think we need to add others into that mix. Clearly, these five permanent members don't represent the world of today. Your life is spent at a lot of these very grand meetings. You know, you were senior at the EU, you were senior at the UN. I imagine you go to the Munich Security Forum, the World Economic Forum. When you're sitting at all these things, what is your sense of this international conversation sitting there listening to all these presumably predominantly men chit-chatting about the state of the world? Is it a very depressing experience to spend years doing this? Well, first I would tell you that I've also had another part of my life, not just in senior positions in the UN, but also working on the ground, heading the International Trade Center, which is a development agency of the UN and the World Trade Organization working to help informal entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises, women in business, participate in international trade. And I've done this in Liberia, and I've seen this in Afghanistan, and we've done this in Palestine.

and in so many other parts of the world. So let's say that I've also seen the realities on the ground. And, you know, what I would tell you is that what I have learned, and this is the school of Jacques Delors, the incredible president of the European Commission, he always said, never choose between being an optimist or a pessimist, choose to be an activist. And this is what I try to apply in my life, be an activist.

Of course, if I sit in some of these conversations, I would be totally depressed, but I always have to think, what can we change for small that this something is? Where can we have an influence? Where is there a space for small little progress, a dialogue, a cooperation, which is why today in this very fractured world, in this very polarized environment, I keep on insisting that we've got to keep bridges open for dialogue and cooperation. And Laurentia, tell us a little bit about feminism. Tell us about whether being a woman matters in these contexts and what you think your perspective as a woman brings when you're listening to these conversations or indeed when you were for a minister of Spain. No, I would tell you that when I was young and when I entered the labor market, I was not a feminist because I thought that you would get there for your merits and a bit of luck.

I mean, luck is always very, very helpful. But when I got into the labor market and I started working first as a lawyer and then in the European Commission, I realized that there were systems where power was not distributed evenly, where there were discriminations overt and sometimes more subtle that didn't make it easy for women to advance. So I guess that I've grown to become a feminist. And if I may, the two things that I've learned in this journey, one that the advancement of women and the empowerment of women will not happen automatically, that we will have to push. And especially now when there is a big pushback, because feminism has also been captured into ideological fights on the right and on the left, we have to push to make this an issue of societies, not an ideological issue. It's fundamentally in our countries, which are democracies, is a democratic issue. But the second thing I've learned also is that this is not a fight of women working with women to advance the cause of women.

This is about men and women working together. And it's not going to happen if we are not convinced that this is not a zero-sum game, that this is positive for men and positive for women. The task ahead of us is huge, which is why Alistair and Rory, I hope, we can agree that we have to work together men and women to advance more equal societies. You've now got this senior role at Ciance Poe, which is one of, as Rory said earlier, one of the most important kind of educational political institutions in the world. And I spoke there, I think this was before you took over, but I spoke there a while back.

And there's some very, very clever people there, but I sort of sense that even in that younger generation, there's a cynicism about the capacity of politics to make proper change. And I wish I'd spoken to you before I wrote my last book, which is about being an activist, because I thought what you said there is not a pessimist or optimist, but activist. I think that is so important. But how do we fire up a generation that has grown up in this populist world actually knows no other world and knows no other world than social media and disinformation and all the other stuff that we know about? I really like this question, Alist, because this is a question that I got from one of my students last year at the beginning of the academic year.

A student asked me, if the world is broken beyond repair, why should I care? So we have to be very careful with the young generation, not to give them the impression that they are powerless, not to give them the impression that they are disempowered, because they are not. So the response was look at all these many cases where people, people like you, have had an impact. When people took to the streets in Fridays for Future, they made climate change a political issue on the agenda. When people went out on the streets in the Me Too movement, they created an incredible cascading effect that started to break this. very anti-women attitudes in many parts of our society. So I guess what we need to be clear with our young generation,

thus is what I tell them here in Sianzbo. But this is what I tell every young person that I meet, and I meet many of them because I'm passionate about talking to them and making them activists and ensuring they become activists because they are the legitimacy basis for our democracies in the future. I tell them that they are leaders, that they are leaders, leader with little L, but with a capacity to shape realities around them, that they've got to find the spaces where they can exercise this leadership, but that they are not powerless. The last thing we want is to tell a young population that whatever they will do, it wouldn't matter. This is creating an army of nihilists.

Oh, I should, I definitely should have had you in the book. God's sake, Roy, why didn't you introduce it before I finished it? Honestly, this is so on message. It's ridiculous. Presumably, there are moments, if you look, for example, at the current conflict in Gaza and the standoff between Hamas and the Israeli military. I mean, is it really possible for you to feel hope that this situation can be resolved, that we're going to end up in a better situation in Israel, Palestine, after everything that's happened since 1967? What do you do about these extreme situations? How do you give hope about them? We've got to talk about people and we've got to talk about their. dignity. When I got up this morning and I was listening to the radio, I heard this woman from Palestine, this lady that was talking to the presenter of the program from Gaza. And she said,

and I quote, we are not just news. We are people. In Gaza is about people. In the kibbutz, in Israel, where the terrorists from Hamas murdered is people. In Ukraine is people. In Myanmar is people. So we've got to go back to people and their dignity and their rights and our collective obligation to defend and stand up for them above distinctions of race, religion, political affiliation and the rest. We are people. So we've got to go back to that. And I know it's tough and I know that in the case of Israel and Palestine, this conversation about people is rendered more difficult by radicals, and we also have to deal with that, but I think the majority of us care about people. Oh, well, as we get to a close, I wonder

if I can, this is quite a big question. When you said earlier that you think Spain has a sense of an inferiority complex, you think Latin America has the same? And could you just reflect for us on Spain's relationship with Latin America, how important that? That is, how it works and also where it's heading. No, Spain has an incredible relationship with Latin America because history made us together. And if I look at the number of Latin Americans living in Spain, if I look at the number of Spaniards living in Latin America, if I look at the fact that we speak the same language and in reality we respond to the same codes, the relationship is incredibly rich.

It's true that Spain has been very preoccupied with sorting out. its own difficulties, the difficulties of a post-2008 crisis that left huge economic scars in the country, the difficulties of the unilateral referendum for independence that Sam pushed in Catalonia, the difficulties of coming together. So we've been a bit preoccupied with ourselves. It's also fair to say that in Latin America, there's been a number of political forces that has led many of the countries to be more inward-looking, more introvert. I think we have an opportunity now. We've got in Brazil a president that cares about Latin America and cares about Latin America having a say in international affairs. We've got political forces in Spain at the moment

that understand the importance of working together with Latin America so that together with Spain and Portugal bringing the EU and Latin America closer together can help deploy our forces for what people care about. Is there a Latin American, leader that we perhaps don't know that much about. We know about Lula, we know about some of the others. But is there a Latin American leader about whom we don't necessarily see as a huge figure in Europe that you think Rory and I should maybe be getting onto the podcast to talk about Latin America? Are there new political forces there that are interesting? I mean, there are many different political forces in Latin America. They all have different

political also perspectives. I listen a lot to President Borage in Chile, who's heading a a coalition that he has to keep together to advance the country. I listen to Gustavo Petro in Colombia, who is also heading a coalition government, more to the left of Borage, that has to provide for solutions to its citizens. I listen to the new president of Guatemala, human rights activists, that is having a lot of travel, getting some dark forces in the country to accept that he will be the new president of the country. We have to listen to all of them because they make for what Latin America is.

which is also a plural and diverse political space. And Aronshire, finally, just to bring you back to a more internal, personal note, you've been very optimistic and you've been talking about hope and activism, but can you reflect a little bit on some of the personal challenges when you became the Foreign Minister of Spain, when you went from being a lawyer and a senior civil servant to really being in the heart of politics? Tell us two or three things maybe that listeners don't really understand

about the reality of being a politician. What makes it tough? Why is it that so many people don't want to go into politics or leaving politics? What is the negative side as well as the positive? Yeah, domestic politics is tough because I was already doing politics, but I was doing it internationally where the, let's say, distance between the electorate and the politician is much wider. At home, you have a very close, intimate relationship with your citizens, with those that you serve in your capacity. And that has very good sides, but it also has. also has very negative sides in terms of intrusion, including into your own private life. You stop having a private life. But I would say, I mean, for me, public service has been a constant in my life. I've done it at the European level. I've done it at the international level. And doing it at the national level was a huge privilege. But it's not easy. Imagine that one month and a half after I had taken oath, I was confronted with COVID. And one of the

most difficult things that politicians have to do is having to choose between terrible alternatives. Very often you are confronted with having to choose between a very, very bad and a very, very, very, very bad. Not between a good and a bad, but choosing between very difficult tough decisions. This is what we had to do when we accepted to lock down the country and limit what's most sacred in our citizens, which is their freedom to move. I mean, these were big decisions. So I guess in this political world of having to sometimes choose between very, very difficult choices, you have to be able to explain to your citizens why you do that.

And the second thing, therefore, that I've learned in domestic politics is that you have to keep very close to your citizens, that you've got to tell them that our citizens are intelligent, they understand. And when difficult times come, if you make the right pitch and if you make the right explanations and if you go and be sincere with them, at the end it's going to be easier to manage the tough times. But there's been lots of sleepless nights, let's say. Well, Aransha, I'll be honest, I could talk you all day. So thank you for your story. Thank you for your frankness. And thank you for some really fascinating observations. Well, thanks to you. And thank you to the listeners.

Thank you very much. Speak soon. Thanks a lot. Bye bye-bye. So, Alistair, what did you make of that? Well, Rory, as you know, when you came back from your monastery and said, honestly, this woman, she's so interesting. And I'm saying, for God's sake, we're trying to get, you know, Obama and what do we do, Trump, I don't know. But, you know, all these sort of huge names. and you've got some former Spanish foreign minister,

but I thought she was great. I thought she was absolutely great. I could have talked to her all day. Yeah, because she's had a lot of different experiences, isn't she? She's been the politician. She's been the bureaucrat. She's been the person on the ground.

She's now the educator. And I guess she was saying the sorts of things that we kind of talk about the whole time, but it was a slightly different perspective. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't quite tempt her into the thing, but what I observed, this thing that we did in the monastery

was a kind of mini version of the things she must spend a lot of her life doing, which is lots of grand, former European and American politicians and policymakers sort of bloviating about the future of the world and China. And I just thought she was actually quite tough and quite good at calling out bullshit. But I would have been interested actually to really get it,

to be honest about it. And I felt the site with Theresa May, what it feels like is quite a serious woman sitting there endlessly in these rooms with people pontificating grandly about international affairs. Well, there is a whole kind of, of industry, there's a network. I mean, you mentioned the Munich Security Conference. I'm not saying they're not important these events, but there is a kind of certain style of person that you see

all of these events that literally just thinks that the world is made of them having very, very high-level conversations about issues that they're not fundamentally going to be in the position of addressing, where she has done both. She does the ploviating events, but she's also done the kind of on the ground, and she's done the policy stuff. I did think there's something very interesting about growing up under the Franco dictatorship in the Basque country with a father who presumably was a Spanish school teacher teaching in Basque schools. And I guess a bit like with Theresa May, she didn't seem that comfortable or confident getting on to her personal life. I guess she's not been a professional politician. So maybe she's not so used to working at how to use stories

from her own life. But I imagine there's something very interesting. We didn't hear much about her mother either. What is it that forms her? But I guess, presumably a relatively modest background, and then this kind of stellar grow, which she says is a sort of symbol of modern Spain. That's the way she feels better. And also her, I mean, yes, she has an accent, but her English is just phenomenal. And she speaks Basque, German, French. I think she speaks Italian as well. Italian's well, yeah. No, I thought she was very impressive. And the thing she said about Spain having an inferiority complex, I mean, you know, if you think about it, okay, the UK's left, But there was, I remember when we were doing European summits,

and there was the sense of being a big three, which was essentially UK, France, Germany. And then Spain was sometimes just below and sometimes, you know, in the kind of second league, sometimes third league, and so much dependent upon who was in charge at the time. You've mentioned Gonzalez before. I think when Gonzalez was in charge,

people felt Spain was punching above its weight, maybe when Asna was in charge as well. Whereas other times, Spain has just felt, you know, just not being a top table player. But it was interesting for her to say that comes from an inferiority complex. And I also love the fact that you got her on to Latin America because I think, of course, Spanish politicians speak with such fluency and knowledge about Latin America in a way that British politicians don't talk about any region of the world.

Anyway, Alistair, thank you. Thank you for coming along. And thank you for doing this before you jump on your Eurostar. Absolutely. See you later. See you later. Bye-bye.