The collapse of our economy is already here . This is not an alarmist message but the plain description of the state of health of our country. And it must be said without balms or euphemisms, because only from the awareness of the seriousness of the worst emergency that we have had to live in our democracy can we adopt measures of a magnitude and forcefulness enough to mitigate it. The image of paralysis in which the Covid-19 has plunged all Spaniards, manifested in streets without life, already has data to reflect on. And they show the origin of an economic pandemic whose emergence is much more abrupt than the great recession of 2008 was.

This is the dramatic conclusion that is drawn from the labor market statistics published yesterday by Labor, according to which the coronavirus crisis, since the state of alarm was decreed, has wiped almost 900,000 jobs from the map. This is an unprecedented figure in the series that does not even admit a comparison with the crack of 2008: then Social Security also lost 900,000 members, but in 100 days. In terms of registered unemployment, the increase of 302,000 people makes this March the blackest month in the history of the labor market, also above January 2009, after the bursting of the housing bubble. And a note that has not been formally included in the balance of the ministry is still mandatory: the very strong impact of the special ERTE, which already affects more than 620,000 workers. That that figure still falls far short of the 1.8 million estimated by unions reveals to what extent yesterday's job picture is just the beginning of the catastrophic job storm ahead .

Protecting all workers is a useful chimera only for demagoguery, but cushioning the blow must already be the only task to which the economic policy of this Government must surrender. Being one of the countries most exposed and vulnerable to the coronavirus, Spain is also one for its effects in all areas. However, with the same recklessness with which its health consequences were underestimated, it did not react with the required economic diligence. The crash plans came with an incomprehensible delay, despite the fact that Sánchez announced on March 9 to the employers that he had been working on them for weeks. And once they were applied, they suffered from an unwarranted lack of protection towards particularly fragile groups, such as the self-employed . Run over by events, Moncloa tries to ride the juncture when what she must do is anticipate. The crisis has long been sufficiently warned by international and domestic organizations. The delay in acting has generated mistrust whose full footprint is still unknown, and the measures taken have shown its limited scope to help the real economy. At the origin of this national weakness is the great negligence of not having taken advantage of the boom season to contain spending; the deficit was shot up with the tap on electoral fridays and all reform of our productive system was renounced. Today, our economic structure faces the new crisis in worse conditions than those of its environment, without having dedicated credible debt reduction efforts for Europe and the markets.

The situation is extraordinary. And the solutions must be too. It cannot be postponed that the Government stops temporizing and obeying its partisan strategy. This emergency is a necessary and sufficient condition for Sánchez to promote a political pact comparable to those of Moncloa during the Transition , which requires arranging measures in a spirit of national concentration. Only from unity can we face the greatest health, social, economic and political crisis that has plagued us since the Civil War.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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