Fernando Savater: "The question is not when I became right-wing but when the socialists became like Pedro Sánchez"

It is fascinating to interview Fernando Savater (San Sebastián, 1947), a man who has experienced it all, but who now cares just enough about life. Philosopher, writer, professor, debater. Anti-Francoist, reference of the democratic left, scourge of ETA and Basque nationalism, man of the right. He faces old age with sarcasm, but does not hide that it affects him. He sees poorly, it is difficult for him to move and he longs for the life-long man he once was, however his brain does not show any cracks. Not all of your answers correspond to the question received, but they are all interesting.

Is it possible to make a brief diagnosis of the country's situation?

We have been quite out of the ordinary for eight years. The Sánchez Government has been stepping on the lines that it had set for itself and we have entered into a very anomalous situation in the sense of breaking the rules, confronting the Government with institutions such as the judiciary and generating a confrontation among citizens. It is true that Europe is very upset throughout, Spain is not the only thing that is strange, but things like the train accidents or the invasion of Ceuta cannot, should not, be taken as something normal and reduced to human failures, migratory crises and things like that. These are situations that break normality and compromise the health of the country. You cannot simply say that these are things that happen. We are truly in a deep puddle. No, more than a puddle, we have fallen into a well.

Is it all Sánchez's fault? Haven't the rest contributed?

He has set the new rules of the game. Society is not polarized for anything. It has become polarized precisely because the Government's discourse has been contrary to a large part of the population. It is a Government that openly confronts a high percentage of the country and is proud of it. That's outrageous, you can't govern against the people. That compromises the normal filming of the country. Now we are, finally, facing necessary elections, although I am not as optimistic as others. It is an important step and, of course, we are not going to get worse, but I do not believe that the elections in themselves are going to automatically solve all the problems we have. In any case, obviously, I will be happy if the right wins.

In his work he has always fiercely defended secularism and anti-nationalism. However, due to Vox's push, the right that will surely govern does not fit that portrait.

The Constitution already takes care of secularism. Nationalism is a magical solution to problems. Nationalists believe that by applying more nationalism everything will be resolved in an almost miraculous way and, evidently, in Spain it has been shown that nationalism not only does not solve anything, but is the focus of serious problems. After so many years of democracy, it seemed to us that, at least, there were already a series of things that were clear and achieved that are now, suddenly, being called into question by these new nationalist outbreaks in Catalonia and the Basque Country that are still absolutely valid. Nationalism has been the real problem that Spain has had during democracy. The constitution of a fluid and plural country is fine, but a country cannot become entrenched in its confrontations. Countries are not made to fight between neighbors, but to collaborate with each other.

He haggled me...

Look, those of us who have lived through the years of extreme nationalism in the Basque Country know how to put Vox in perspective. I will never compare any political movement to the harshness that it still makes me know that active terrorism has been maintained in Spain for so many years. That's not a joke. Terrorism is an element to be eradicated and we cannot compromise or create a kind of more or less false harmony. Terrorism is radically extirpated, we cannot live with it. The idea that we will more or less appease the wild beasts by giving them yogurt instead of fresh meat, unfortunately, does not work. We must put an end to terrorism and the remnants of terrorism, otherwise we are lost.

Are you referring to Bildu and its pact with the Sánchez Government?

Of course, it's indecent. Bildu is nuanced terrorism. Now it is a terrorism that tries to obtain advantages without going through extreme violence, but living in the Basque Country you realize that circumstances still exist that are very close to violence. It is not, of course, the violence that we unfortunately knew so well, but in the Basque Country there is no normal situation. In short, the fact that Catalonia and the Basque Country continue to talk about how they are not Spain is an attack on the citizens. That at this moment, with the freedoms we have, there are still autonomous regions that pride themselves on not belonging to the rest of the country is a very anomalous situation that, if allowed to prosper, can become very dangerous.

As a prominent anti-Francoist that you were, how do you value the extreme right entering the Government of Spain?

Well, what scares me is not the extreme right, it is the extreme left. I don't buy that myth that the extreme right is coming and is going to destroy everything. Unfortunately, what these eight years of socialism have shown us is that the danger is the capricious left. A left with pretensions of regeneration that then does not respond in the daily lives of citizens. The real problem in Spain is the extreme left and not Vox.

Spain may have various problems.

I understand that it is not incompatible because all bad politicians are, those who have ideas that can harm the country as a whole, but I sincerely believe that, at this moment, the real problem is an anomalous situation that has lasted for eight years and has a culprit. Even the most supporters of Sanchismo are beginning to recognize that it was already an unsustainable situation. Spain is badly hurt by the abuses and transgressions of this Government. Francoism has not been a problem in Spain for a long time. Today the problems we have are those created by this version of socialism 2.0 that has fallen on us and we are suffering.

For many years you were a moral and intellectual reference of the Spanish left. How do you explain your ideological evolution?

Spain has been living a democracy for 50 years with all its ups and downs. Democracy is not a pond of oil nor does it have to be, it is an effervescence in the country. And in that permanent movement, many of us have been in one circumstance and then in another because history changes. We are not static dolls that represent the past but rather we are trying to evolve in some way. The Europe we knew, the one we dreamed of and desired, the one we entered so excited, is not the Europe of today, the Europe of Brexit, immigration and so on. We have to adapt to current circumstances and it is not about whether in another era we were heroes or leaders. Citizens have to modify themselves according to the challenges they face at all times and the individuals, too. It's what I've done.

What do you think made him a right-wing man?

In the Transition we dreamed of a democracy in which we all fit, not with a pure and dogmatic left nor with a right that accepts opposing positions. We believed in the combination between social liberalism and a constituent right and in coexistence as a fundamental driving force. That is the Spain that we all wanted, not a pure regime in which the other side was excluded. And, yes, I was convinced leftist, but the Basque Country was very educational. Those of us who have lived there have realized that we cannot play with that and the left played. To say that in the Basque Country the problem was the right, obviously, is lying. The problem was a left that forced 200,000 people to flee their land, which is said to be too soon.

You were threatened with death by ETA for more than a decade. How do you live with that permanent fear?

Most of all, you are afraid for the people who depend on you. I have never been very fearful regarding myself, but I have been very fearful with my wife and my family. I have worried about the family. You experience strange and difficult circumstances in which you were late at mealtime and found a drama when you got home. It wasn't just apprehension, it was that things were really happening and they might have killed you. I still remember that when Fernando Múgica was killed, on the corner of my house in San Sebastián, I was outside, my wife heard that a Fernando had been killed on San Martín Street and, of course, there was a reasonable probability that it was me. Murders were constantly passing us by.

Can someone who has not lived there understand what ETA meant?

Difficult. It was an anomalous situation and it took a long time. I don't know, you can have a general opinion, but the real understanding lies in the small details. For example, there were elegant stores in San Sebastián, that when you bought something and wanted to take it, they would tell you: "No, we will discreetly take it home for you so that you don't walk down the street with a package from an expensive store under your arm because that could mark you as a target." We have all experienced that and they are not situations that one should get used to, although we did. And the children, the worst was for those who had small children. Fortunately, mine was already older and it is not the same, but those who were little growing up hearing threats and seeing graffiti on the door of the house. These are pretty tremendous things. Look, before we were talking about Vox...

Yes, Santiago Abascal was a child in that Basque Country.

Indeed. I have known Santi since he was 16 years old and, when he joined the PP, they painted threats and insults on his father's horses. So, Abascal will have his defects, which he has, and political ideas that I do not share in many cases, but I am not going to compare him with Otegi because Otegi is a man who could be waiting for you at the door with a gun. They are very different things.

What has been the great mistake of the left of this country in losing that clear social hegemony that it had for so long?

It has simply changed, it has become something else. A while ago you asked me when I became right-wing and what I think we should ask ourselves is when socialists like Sánchez and the Government that exists now became. Is current socialism that of Felipe González? Now Felipe, he is a president who ruled for the entire country, they don't like him and he is not leftist. Many of us have always moved within the progressive and socialist factors of a developed and advanced democracy. That was Spain. Now it is difficult for us to believe it seeing things like Ceuta or the train, but Spain has been a very envied country. How we went from a dictatorship to a democratic transition with a terrorist threat to a much more normalized situation was an important and admirable process.

A Transition that, in recent years, has begun to be discussed. Is it unfair? Is it idealized?

The thing is that you get used to everything, including democracy, and that scares me a little. It scares me that people forget how difficult it was to consolidate it and it scares me that they forget that San Sebastián, a glamorous and tourist city, is the city where the most people have been killed in Spain. You came to Madrid and they told you: "That's calmer now." That meant that they had not killed anyone in a week and that was already interpreted as normal. No, listen, in normal places they never kill people, coexistence is not based on the fear of being shot. Many things were done well during the Transition, but nationalism in Catalonia and the Basque Country have not given democratic Spain a real opportunity. Spain was always something that had to be looked at with suspicion, a thing of appearances. You wear the flag on your lapel and it immediately looks like you're provoking someone.

Lately, he has been called a scumbag frequently.

Man, of course, it is part of the perverse game of polarization that this Government has set up. The only thing I want is to be comfortable in my country. We already know that problems such as housing or education will exist and will not be resolved overnight, so we are going to try to live with those problems in the best possible way, but right now it is impossible. If you don't align, you're a fascist. Well, look.

How do you remember, personally, those 80s and 90s beyond ETA?

The Democratic Transition was a time when every day the newspapers brought good news. Now we are more accustomed to alarming news, but back then an exile had always returned, a political pact had been reached or situations that seemed distressing had been resolved. Truly, in the 80s Spain was a country worth living in, it was worth finding paths in and we were all thinking that it was going to get better. Nobody thought this was going to happen and everything was going to get worse.

When do you think it started to get worse?

With the return to civil war. Spain has had a curse that is the Civil War and the Civil War has become the shield of many to take advantage. They have exploited to their advantage the idea that you have to live permanently pulling out your nails and confronting others. That, absolutely valid now, has been a drama for Spain because the lack of coexistence ends up seriously hurting the countries. It creates a deep antipathy between sides that is dangerous in the long run.

And at what moment do you place this return of civil war?

Zapatero was very responsible, but I can't say that he was the culprit either. Something like this does not depend on one or two people but on an environment in which, perhaps, we have all collaborated at times. We are not going to blame anyone now. A political leader is a guide and the path that Zapatero marked was deeply wrong and radicalized, but it has been getting worse. I am hopeful that the elections, although they are not going to solve everything as we said before, can at least take away this permanent anxiety and give us a veneer of tranquility for a while.

Call me crazy, but I'm starting to suspect that you're not going to vote for Sánchez.

[Laughs] No, no. The truth is that Pedro Sánchez is a truly fascinating case and you only have to look at the number of books that are written about him. I'm not going to tell you to read them, but sometimes I look at the table where I leave the books they send me and say: "Now? Three more?" It is a case study and its relationship with Europeans is proof