MADRID. “In a period of great transformations, of the imperious growth of technology, of renewed tensions at the planetary level and of crisis on our borders, it will be decisive to maintain constant attention on the safeguarding of rights, freedoms and protections painstakingly won since the last century. “. This was stated by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella speaking to the Spanish Cortes. For our head of state, rights and freedoms are “issues that national parliaments, together with the Strasbourg Assembly, will have to consider at the center of their agenda”. Each Parliament is, in this sense, a “temple of democracy”. And the comparison between different visions “finds a place there, with a view to a synthesis oriented towards the common good”. For President Mattarella, the Chambers are therefore “the meeting point for all citizens and – at the same time – the starting point for guaranteeing social peace, well-being and development”.
Italy and Spain – the president recalled – are countries between which there is “a natural and fraternal sharing. Our ties derive from history, from the common Latin root of our languages, from belonging to a geographical and cultural horizon that is at the same time European and Mediterranean “. Bonds “that have forged an extraordinary relationship between our populations, with aspirations and visions that have enriched each other”.
“It is up to the Parliaments – Mattarella emphasized – to bridge the gap between the trajectory marked by the aspirations contained in the constitutional texts and the real conditions, through political confrontation”. “Both of our countries – he added – are at the center of an area, the Mediterranean, poised between possible marginality in the axes of global development and incisive integration between two continents, Africa and Europe”. It therefore appears natural to work together, “so that our requests can receive adequate consideration, thus strengthening and fortifying the entire building of the European Union,” added Mattarella to the Spanish Congress.
A long applause greeted the president upon his arrival in the courtroom. “We are happy to welcome him,” said the president of the Congress of Deputies, Meritxell Batet, before introducing the head of state’s speech. “The long experience as a member of Parliament has consolidated my convictions on the irreplaceable centrality of the parliamentary function in the development of a national society and in the ability to transmit a dimension of democratic participation in multilateral organizations in which the international community is increasingly destined to organize itself” . «Here – he concluded – resides the freedom of a people. That freedom that this Chamber has courageously defended, together with the other institutions of the State, in the face of the threats that were brought to it forty years ago ».