Last November 21 marked 25 years since the murder of Ernest Lluch by ETA. For this reason, various remembrance events were organized in Barcelona and other places. I had the opportunity to participate in some of them talking about their moral legacy and their validity for the current moment. I think it may be interesting to reproduce some of those reflections here. Unlike other indiscriminate murders by ETA, whose objective was to “socialize the pain” of their terrorist actions, that of Lluch was a murder with a clear motivation: to get rid of an intellectual who had the moral courage to publicly denounce ETA. His words of denunciation still resonate today in the act of support for the mayor of San Sebastián Edón Elorza in the first democratic elections, when the shouts of ETA supporters tried to silence him: «Scream more, because you shout little; because while you shout you don’t kill.» It is not that he had the makings of a hero, he exercised what he considered his moral obligation as a public intellectual committed to the defense of young liberal democracy and a pluralistic society. Lluch did not become a moral reference for Spanish society because he was murdered, but rather he was murdered for being one. His murder shocked Spanish society, which took to the streets en masse. Lluch’s legacy is extensive. In the academic field, it inspired a school of history of economic thought in Spain that had its sources in our common teacher at the University of Barcelona, Professor Fabián Estapé. While Estapé recovered from interested oblivion the figure of Idelfonso Cerdá and his decisive role in the design of the “extension” of Barcelona and in the construction of the modern theory of urbanism, Lluch brought to light the enlightened Catalan economists of the late 18th century who had had a decisive importance in the configuration of modern Catalonia through the defense of industrialization and liberalism, but who had been relegated by the Catalan medievalist vision. In the political sphere, as a deputy of the Partit Socialista de Catalunya (PSC) for the province of Girona in the first democratic elections, he actively participated in the negotiation of the Moncloa Pacts of November 1977, essential to clean up and reform the inflationary economy inherited from Franco’s regime and a precondition for the approval of the Constitution the following year. As Minister of Health in the first government of Felipe González, he achieved the approval of the General Health Law of 1985, which universalized access to health. But, in my opinion, Lluch’s main legacy is moral, as a public intellectual. The assumption of this moral responsibility was a conscious decision. An anecdote will help me document it. The day he was replaced as rector of the Menéndez Pelayo International University of Santander—of which I was one of its vice-chancellors—he asked me if I was going to have lunch with the new rector. I told him no, that I planned to eat with him. We went to the Edelweiss restaurant, behind the Congress. Sitting in one of the alcoves overlooking the street, while we waited to be served, he told me: “I want to tell you something, but please don’t tell me I’m wrong.” And he continued: «Today I close a stage of my life. I feel happy with my dedication to politics. I will continue to be active in the PSC, but I will not assume political responsibilities of any kind. From now on I want to feel free to say things that due to political discipline I have until now remained silent.» As the years have passed, and especially since the moment of his murder, I have remembered those words as the moment when Lluch decided to assume the role of public intellectual and moral reference. He reflected this in a brief and lucid manuscript written for the Rafael Campalans Foundation, linked to the PSC. The manuscript, written presciently a few months before his murder, was his answer to the question of what socialism meant to him. His answer combines the principles of the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, the values of early Christianity, and the influence of liberal socialism: “Socialism is bringing maximum freedom, maximum equality, and maximum fraternity to people living in society.” Its moral dimension appears when it addresses how to achieve these objectives: “To achieve this, public policies are not enough, but it is necessary for people’s morals and ethics to change in parallel.” After defending individual responsibility in improving the living conditions and dignity of all people, he ends with a defense of freedom: “We must do all this by looking around us, but looking at the entire planet that we want to preserve and where the vast majority live in conditions and in a freedom that is an end in itself.” Lluch always rejected any type of determinism. He considered that the area in which human beings exercise their freedom is limited by history, genetics, psychology and by various economic and geopolitical forces. But, at the same time, he recognized that there is also a universal moral language that is also a feature of human nature. We are the only beings with the capacity for moral choice. We are not simple puppets at the mercy of external forces, but people with free will and autonomy to make decisions. He thought that determinism and skepticism are excuses to avoid committing to the defense of freedom and a pluralistic society. This is, in my opinion, the most important moral legacy of Ernest Lluch, fully valid for today’s totalitarian times. He knew the potential consequences of his defense of a pluralistic liberal society. Shortly before his murder, after an academic event at the University of Zaragoza, we went to eat with the organizers. Seeing the place where he sat, looking towards the restaurant door, we told him that it was his job to preside over the table. He told us: “No, I want to sit here because I know that at some point they will come for me, and I want to see their faces.” He did not adopt a hero’s attitude, he was simply aware of the personal risks he faced as a consequence of his moral commitment as a public intellectual. A bad omen that came true. We are left with his moral legacy.
