There are institutions whose function is not to avoid disagreements, but to allow them to be resolved. That is what they exist for. For more than 30 years in educational centers, I learned a simple rule: a meeting can end without agreement, but it should not stop being held because someone decides not to attend. A difficult faculty meeting, a divided school board, or a tense evaluation session do not belong to those who sit around the table. They are convened to make decisions that affect other people.
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This week, the 11 autonomous communities governed by the Popular Party decided not to participate in two different cooperation meetings between the State and the autonomous communities: the General Conference on University Policy (CGPU) and the Sectoral Conference on Education. Their absence prevented the necessary quorum from being reached and neither of the two could be held.
They did not lose a vote. They prevented the vote from taking place.
At the CGPU, the distribution of 149.6 million euros from the María Goyri Program was to be agreed upon, aimed at financing the incorporation of about 3,400 assistant professors, renewing the staff of public universities, and reducing their high temporality. In a second meeting, the Education one, the allocation of more than 31 million for the promotion and improvement of Vocational Training was to be approved. Other matters related to educational cooperation were also left pending.
In total, more than 180 million euros were blocked. But reducing what happened to a discussion about amounts would be superficial. The most serious thing is not only that some funds are delayed, but that the bodies created to resolve differences between administrations begin to be used to worsen them.
Politics consists of disagreeing, negotiating, presenting alternatives, winning votes, and also losing them. An autonomous community can reject a ministerial proposal, demand more funding, claim a different distribution, or vote against it. All that is part of democracy. Preventing the competent body from even meeting responds to a different logic, because the content of a decision is no longer discussed: the institutional space in which that discussion must take place is made impossible.
The absent communities justified their decision due to the emergency caused by forest fires. No one should downplay their severity. Fires threaten lives, destroy homes and farms, and require mobilizing all available resources. But the two meetings were telematic. It is hard to accept that 11 autonomous administrations could not designate a single person to participate in them and defend the interests of their universities, their vocational training centers, their faculty, and their students. Governing also means attending to an emergency without abandoning other public responsibilities.
In recent days, moderation has been called for regarding the fires, and rightly so, the damage caused by polarization has been warned against. But polarization is not only expressed through insults. It also appears when each institution becomes an extension of the party struggle; when attending a meeting is interpreted as a concession to the adversary; when preventing a decision seems more important than defending those who depend on it.
Sectoral conferences do not belong to the central government nor to the party that temporarily holds a ministry. They are instruments of the autonomous state to coordinate competencies, distribute resources, and resolve differences between administrations of different political affiliations. They exist precisely because disagreement is normal. When their operation is subjected to the tactical convenience of parties, not only the government of the moment is harmed: the capacity of institutions to provide public services is weakened.
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Those who pay for that strategy do not sit on a Council of Ministers
Young researchers who have been chaining contracts for years pay for it; universities that need to renew their staff and guarantee the continuity of teaching and research; vocational training students who expect better equipment and new opportunities; educational centers and families who depend on decisions that were not made. These are not collateral damages of a political dispute. They are the people for whom those institutions were convened.
Madrid shows this contradiction particularly clearly. Its six public universities suffer from serious funding problems and high levels of temporality. The regional government initially expressed reservations about the María Goyri Program but ended up signing the agreement. Giving up hundreds of positions largely funded by the State would have seriously harmed Madrid’s universities. However, Madrid now contributed to preventing the meeting that was supposed to continue the program.
The Madrid government can question the model, demand a different distribution, and vote against the ministerial proposal. What is not coherent is to state that the region’s universities need more resources and at the same time participate in a strategy that delays their arrival. As the Education spokesperson in the Madrid Assembly, I am especially concerned about the actions of my community’s government. But what happened goes far beyond Madrid and the specific conflict of this week. It forces us to ask what place we want to reserve for institutions in an increasingly polarized democracy.
A democracy does not deteriorate only when a law is broken, a right is restricted, or the legitimacy of the adversary is questioned. There is also a more silent deterioration: the one that begins when institutions cease to be places to resolve differences and start being used to worsen them; when dialogue is interpreted as weakness and blockage as a demonstration of strength.
A democracy does not deteriorate only when it stops voting. Also when it stops meeting.
Meeting does not mean that all parties must reach an agreement nor that those who sit around a table have to give up their convictions. It means accepting that there are shared rules to express disagreement and make decisions that affect millions of people. The Popular Party is wrong not because it disagrees with the government — it has every right to do so — but because it turns common bodies into instruments of partisan confrontation. Institutions do not belong to those who convene them nor to those who govern them at any given time. They belong to the citizens they serve.
After more than thirty years in public education, I still believe in a simple rule: everything can be discussed, but there are meetings we are obliged to attend, not because of who convenes them, but because of those who expect us to do our job.
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