21 Dec 2011 Havel no ha estat un miratge

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought about great hope, much energy but also some disappointments. Although perhaps some did not take full advantage of it, the end of the Old Continent’s central and eastern Communist dictatorships was a joyous moment in which Europeans were able to reunite with one another. From the other side of the old Iron Curtain started to arrive movements, figures and words which, had we paid more attention to them, could have enlivened Western democracies (old ones like the French or the British and new ones like ours). From all the names which sprang up at the time, that of Václav Havel’s was the most appealing, for it encompassed the imagination of the artist, the depth of the thinker, the conviction of the activist and the realism of the politician. As if it were an irony taken from one of his plays, his recent death coincides with a glaring lack of moral leadership amongst European leaders together with a worrying and discouraging tendency to trust blindly in technocrats for whom nobody voted.

Havel, the Czech writer who became leader of the Velvet Revolution and the first president of the new democratic Czechoslovakia, enjoyed the authority of the dissident who had been imprisoned and censored. His attitude was that of a ruler who was very close to the people, of somebody who knew how to smile from his position of power without having to resort to the stiffness dictated by electoral routines. With the usual brilliance of his world political analysis, the former Catalan president Jordi Pujol said of Havel: “We will have to wait some time yet to fully understand him, as happens with most Eastern European politicians, new in their role as free politicians”.

A long time has passed since the early 1990s, when the then president of Catalonia made his remarks. Today we understand better the reasons why Havel was the man entrusted by Czechs and Slovaks to “leave Communism to enter History”, as André Glucksmann appropriately put it. Havel’s ideas and attitudes were those of a humanist who wanted to put power at the people’s service, a free thinker who did not allow himself to feel spite or vengeance because he knew that true freedom needs tolerance, generosity and broad-mindedness.

In November 1989, Vaclav Havel appeared at the balcony of Prague’s Wenceslas Square to wave at a demonstrating crowd which had lost fear. Five years earlier, Mr Havel had summarised as follows the programme for the future: “I favour antipolitical politics, that is,  politics not as a technology of power and manipulation, of cybernetic rule over humans or as the art of the useful, but politics as one of the ways of seeking and achieving meaningful lives, of protecting them and serving them. I favour politics as practical morality, as service to the truth, as essentially human and humanly measured care for our fellow-humans”. Considering Europe’s current challenges, these words by the author of Largo desolato are of extraordinary relevance: totalitarianism overcome, it is necessary to improve, modernise and deepen democracy so that the system continues to serve the full dignity of each individual.

I like to think that Havel was not an illusion nor a single swallow that does not make a summer within the context of a recent history which is crammed with cynics, fanatics, incompetents, opportunists and people full of hot air. I need to believe that president Havel’s lessons have influenced, even if only by chance, the intentions and styles of some of those who here and now aspire to lead their citizens toward new horizons of freedom, welfare and justice in times when this has become more complex and risky. This great man of words and actions always did what his conscience told him, even when he knew that he would be unpopular or that he would not be understood by certain groups. For example, his well-reasoned defence of his country’s NATO accession is one of the most lucid and original reflections on Western values, without keeping to himself the criticism to the malfunctions and excesses of savage Capitalism, which he also fought bravely against.

Much like Mandela or the Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Havel is a great icon of our time. When some of us were just youngsters getting to know the winds of history, he excited us about a new concept of politics, democracy and Europe. But not only his ideas, which were groundbreaking, excited us. Also the attitude which accompanied them and which derived from a resistance based in ethical conviction without getting lost in moral posturing. Today there are many fake prophets around deceiving some of our youngsters with utopias which are nothing but recycled old nightmares. We must, thus, vindicate Havel’s legacy. No, this man was not an illusion: he was an example. At times when true exemplary people are scarce, we need to rediscover the heroes of our time in order to find inspiration and overcome the pessimism overwhelming us.

I treasure a book which Václav Havel himself signed when he had not been long in power. Under his name he drew a little heart, like a teenager would do. How many like him do we need?