Years ago my father did not remember that he had been a minister or mayor of Madrid, although he still knew that he had been a notary. And this despite the fact that together with a small group of people of his generation, he played a fundamental role in the Transition, perhaps the most important achievement of Spain in the 20th century and the starting point of the greatest period of peace and prosperity in our history.
His concern for the Spanish social and political situation led him to form part -and be one of the main authors- of the Tácito Group, a group of professionals who published articles with concrete proposals for Spain to go from a dictatorship to a democracy comparable to the European, and that decisively influenced this process.
When the Political Reform Law signaled the start of the Transition, he co-founded and was general secretary of the first Popular Party, which later became part of the UCD. His interest in serving Spain and his extraordinary capacity for work and organization were combined with a lack of personal political ambition and a certain inability to understand the partisan struggle, as this anecdote he told me when he was older shows. After UCD won the first elections, a friend and fellow party member told him that Suárez was going to call him and asked him what position he was going to ask for. My father told him that none, that he had only participated to help create parties, which had not existed until then, and that he had no interest in continuing in politics.
-“But José Luis, you can’t say that!”
-“Because if it’s the truth?” .
-“Well, because he’s not going to understand, he’s going to think that the position you want… is his.”
The truth is that he did not actually participate in that first government. But he was still willing to help and later accepted the appointment of mayor of Madrid on a temporary basis until the first municipal elections, leaving his notary office. He carried out the position with enthusiasm and youthful energy, working tirelessly and developing new initiatives, from the creation of dozens of small neighborhood parks to Bicycle Day or the first marathon. He was the candidate with the most votes in those elections, although the pact between the PSOE and the PCE gave the mayoralty to Tierno Galván.
He was later Minister of Transport with Adolfo Suárez, a time also of intense work and difficult both because of the violence of ETA and because of the political and economic problems. Despite this, I always remember him as enthusiastic and optimistic. That summer he decided that he should spend at least two weeks in the company of his wife and his five teenage children, whom he saw so little at that time. After three days of “living together” -he told me years later- he came to the conclusion that he had made a mistake: one son did not show up for lunch, others arrived late for dinner, all of them ate breakfast at the wrong time -some of them returned directly from leaving …-. More than quiet conversations, what there were were discussions, answers and absences. It had come, he thought, the time to return to the ministry, where he had mountains of things to do. However, during a walk he suddenly understood that his real life was that, not the ministry where everyone said yes to everything. And he lasted the two weeks. With Calvo Sotelo he was Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, where we saw him even less (I remember the concern about the drought and the difficult fishing negotiations with Morocco).
The fall of the UCD was perhaps his biggest disappointment, but it did not affect his will to serve his country and consolidate democracy. As an opposition deputy he was able to contribute his legal knowledge and his love for Art and Culture to the elaboration of the Historical Heritage Law. Without a doubt, his technical competence and his capacity for dialogue contributed to the fact that this law remains in force with hardly any changes almost 40 years later. The words he said in Congress at the presentation of that law, addressing the then Minister of Culture Javier Solana, are revealing -not only of his character but also of an idea of ??doing politics: “I want to publicly acknowledge the work done in Ponencia and Commission, which has served to enrich and improve the content of the project, because it is the first time in this legislature that an attempt has been made to examine the amendments in depth without considering where they came from.If this attitude were extended to other projects, it would have repercussions for the benefit of our laws”. Words from 1985, but so current in this era of blocks and bad legislation.
After completing his stage in active politics, which he always considered transitory, he returned to his notary’s office with the same dedication as always. She did not go back to her old friends because she never had others than the usual ones, although she saw them less at one time. As Borges said, friendship, unlike love, does not require frequency. He continued studying art law, and the book he wrote on the Historical Heritage Law has become a classic. He collaborated as an expert with Unesco and the Council of Europe and never stopped showing his concern for public affairs, now from civil society and the press.
Shortly after his retirement he began to suffer a slow and inexorable cognitive decline. He was assuming his limitations with the same ease with which he had received his many successes and few setbacks. He continued to show, in this process that was clouding his clear intelligence, his most valuable qualities: kindness, common sense and love for his family, in the case of his wife it was a true and unfading devotion -which she has reciprocated admirably in her illness-. He was exemplary in the two aspects that he considered central in his life: his family and his profession. Precisely because he considers politics as a very important public service, but temporary and accessory in his career, he is also a politician. Paraphrasing Jorge Manrique, the memory of him leaves us a lot of consolation.
José Luis Álvarez was born in Madrid in 1930 and died in Cartagena on August 23.
*Segismundo Alvarez Royo-Villanova is a lawyer