Speech by President of the Government of Spain at annual gala of Spanish Olympic Committee

Good evening, dear minister,José Manuel, dear President of the National Sports Council (Spanish acronym: CSD), Irene, dear Alejandro, medal winners, presidents of federations, and all the guests.

2020 is coming to an end, as mentioned before, a year that we will never forget, a particularly hard year for all areas of our society, and the Government of Spain has not forgotten that this also includes our athletes, for those athletes present here today.

The Olympic Games have only ever been cancelled, which the President of the Spanish Olympic Committee (Spanish acronym: COE) - Alejandro - mentioned, on three occasions ever before: in 1916, in 1940 and in 1944, all of them because of world wars. That gives you an idea of the gravity of the pandemic we are facing. The blow has clearly been tremendous for everyone, but particularly for those who have spent years preparing for the Olympic dream, which is what you all represent. It is not easy to recover from a disappointment like that. This has been a time of terrible uncertainty. It is also a time of disappointment, exacerbated by the situation we have been going through and yet, despite all that, the world of sport, and I would like to underline this, once again gave the whole of Spanish society an unforgettable lesson, and I saw this on as a source of inspiration, because during the lockdown we had the chance to see the messages from many of our athletes that were shared in videos on the social media. We listened, for example, to such stars as Saúl Craviotto, Mireia Belmonte, Sandra Sánchez, Albert Torres, Lydia Valentín, Ana Peleteiro and Julia Figuero, not only call for us to stay at home, but also propose challenges to us and encourage us to train at home, as they did during those tough times of lockdown.

We found out, for example, about how Ricardo Abad kept his promise to run 112 kilometres on a treadmill and of how his mother recovered from COVID-19.

Or of how Javier Castroverde ran 61 kilometres in the living room of his home in 10 hours, in tribute to the healthcare workers and COVID-19 patients.

And the stories of hundreds of other men and women athletes. Many of these people are here among us. Whether they were great champions like you or just enthusiastic participants, our athletes gave an unforgettable example that greatly inspired the whole of Spanish society. You taught us that values such as prudence, passion, solidarity and empathy were and remain the best instruments to prevail at such difficult, complex times that are hard to explain, as those we are going through in societies where we thought that we had everything under control, in a situation where dying is not the normal outcome and yet, in contrast, we have realised over these such tough and complex months just how vulnerable and weak we are really are.

That is why I would like to start by stating my admiration and gratitude for your conduct, your actions and your responses to the worst calamity in a century, the worst pandemic in 100 years to hit all of mankind.

Thank you for keeping the flame burning because it is true that the Games were cancelled, or rather postponed, but sport kept the spirit alive that you gave it. You are a source of pride for Spain, you show this every day and you will show this next year, finally, in Tokyo.

For all of you and for what sport means in a society like ours, the Government of Spain and its institutions wanted to react with the utmost ambition in this area as well, with the same determination with which you have continued working in very precarious circumstances, which we are all aware of.

We are not alone in this task; we are accompanied, as the President of the CEO mentioned, by the drive of the European Union, which places sport in a leading position in the framework of the recovery it is heading up. What is the goal? The goal is to make the sporting sector more dynamic, restructure it and modernise it, adapting it to the new socio-economic realities.

This is a sector that has undoubtedly suffered the devastating consequences of the health crisis very directly, and hence we must adopt extraordinary and urgent measures to reactivate it.

These measures acknowledge sport as an essential element in the maintenance of key questions for the co-existence, prosperity and well-being of our societies.

Physical health, mental health, are two of the key elements at this time of the consequences brought about by the lockdown and the pandemic on a sizable part of global society. These are also based on criteria of sustainable development with which this government aligns the 2030 Agenda - on social cohesion, on job creation, on reactivating the rural environment, on care for vulnerable groups, territorial balance and digitalisation, which is one of the challenges that also affect the world of sport.

In other words, in line with the main pillars that will decisively transform our world, which they will do in the coming years at an increasingly faster pace.

The Government of Spain has it very clear, dear president, that sport is a public good that forges communities and strengthens the country. We also know that we are at a decisive crossroads with the opportunity to design the future society we want, which is highly motivating, very exciting and the source of the greatest hope we have. That is why we need to make a special effort and, furthermore, do so now. We now have the part that corresponds to us, the political element, through the government, through Parliament, by pushing through a National Budget after a two-year stalemate, which sees the greatest investment even made in the world of sport in the public accounts in the history of our democracy. Specifically, a 22.5% rise to amount to 251 million euros.

This includes European funding, as the President of the CEO mentioned before, provided for in the Recovery and Resilience Facility, of approximately 300 million euros for the period 2021-2023, of which some 50 million are for next year, for 2021.

In this major effort, the National Sports Council is closely aligned with the Spanish Olympic Committee, with the National Paralympic Committee, joining forces for a year that will be decisive. The Government of Spain has placed its hopes in this union, and I am convinced that Spanish society and thousands of Spanish athletes have also placed their trust in this union. We want male and female athletes to attend Tokyo with all the resources available to you.

To that end, we have strengthened the budgetary allocation to the Spanish Olympic Committee by 400% to 4.7 million euros, and the National Paralympic Committee by 375% to almost 2 million euros. Specifically, the Budget, as the President of the CEO mentioned before, provides for an allocation of almost 6 million euros - 5.7 million to be precise, for the ADO programme, just through public funding and clearly, as the President rightly mentioned, we must talk about the participation of the rest of the companies that co-sponsor ADO. What will this allow us to do? Well, it will allow the National Sports Council to cover 67% of the sponsorships next year which, as you know, have been decisive for the recent success of Spanish Olympic sport and will continue to be so, which I feel is the good news that we are sharing here today. Because when faced with the uncertainty and upheaval stemming from this pandemic, and hence the situation we are all faced with, your public institutions must offer support, confidence and certainty, because this is the only path possible for maintaining this series of successes underway that we have seen in these videos and at this event.

The commitment is thus decisive and determined. Our sport will not be left behind because it symbolises health, the impetus of an inclusive, winning, supportive society like Spain's, because it represents the fruit of teamwork and also individual constancy, because it underlines unity and sacrifice and is a source of pride for the whole of Spanish society, because we need sport as a way of life and as a goal.

But all this effort cannot just be a response to a clearly unexpected crisis and we hope that we can prevail in the near future thanks to the contribution from science. Despite the suffering of recent months, the pandemic has opened up windows of opportunity to us, as unexpected as they are precious. And we will harness them. I am convinced that as a society we will learn to harness them.

The pillars we are building are those that will pave the way that our societies, and the whole world must head, over the next 30 years. And sport will not only not be alien to these transformations, but rather we want it to be one of the main contributors in your case.

With the collaboration of the Spanish Olympic Committee, we will lay the foundations for sport to be present as a social reality, transcending purely competitive aspects, which are also clearly important, but not the only ones when we talk about sport.

So, for example, it is essential to foster even greater inclusion of sport in the field of education, from grass-roots sport to university sport. This is a profoundly virtuous synergy, in my opinion, that influences such key aspects as the early detection of sporting talent and the use of sport as a powerful factor in social integration in societies like ours that are unfortunately suffering from social exclusion and social inequalities.

Furthermore, we want to harness the capacity of technological innovation and entrepreneurship that are increasingly more present in the world of sport. An effect that, if we find a way to harness this, could amount, in my opinion, to the creation of an important source of job creation and to enhancing companies associated with sporting activity. All of this will also contribute to another fundamental issue, which is the integration of athletes in the job market during and after their competitive lives.

I believe that this is one of the main achievements of the President of the Spanish Olympic Committee, of Alejandro (Blanco), and I believe that this is also worthy of support for the integration of athletes in the job market during and after their competitive lives from the public institutions and from the Government of Spain.

There is one absolutely essential element of this brief meeting left, which the President of the CEO mentioned and which I would like to refer to in concluding my speech: the full development of women's sport as an essential future element.

In short, the figures Alejandro (Blanco) has given us are revealing and show many things. The fact that 70% of the athletes that compete at Olympic Games are among the eight best in the world is truly impressive.

And this, when speaking with the team with which I was writing this speech, well… One of my colleagues referred to some unfortunate statements by a world surfing champion - Damien Hardman - who was asked about his opinion of the women's circuit, and he not only subscribed to the opinion that women will never be as good as men in sport but added that the only things women can contribute to surfing is "to look pretty and dress well".

Fortunately, that response from 30 years ago sounds grotesque and absolutely pre-historic to us. This shows us how revolutionary and far-reaching the path towards equality has come in recent decades - a process that is as essential as it is irreversible.

But that should not lead us to think that we have reached the end of this path. That we have reached this finishing line… Talking about surfing, one of the newly incorporated sports at Tokyo 2021, we should not forget that bringing prizes in line between men and women in the World Surf League did not become a reality until 2018. Just the other day.

So we must continue to tirelessly move in that direction. To ensure that some of the situations of gender equality that we still see today seem as pre-historic in the years to come as the one I have just mentioned in this speech.

We are all absolutely committed to this goal at the National Sports Council - the minister, the Government of Spain… The changes we need to make are still many and far-reaching, but I would like to reiterate my commitment to address them in my absolute and decisive conviction that we will achieve this.

A great benchmark in Spanish sport - Juan de Dios Román - said that defeats are not celebrated in the same way as victories, although they teach us more. And I want to latch on to these words to pay an emotional tribute to him, on behalf of the whole of the world of handball and all of Spanish society.

He was undoubtedly right. And much of that, of what adversity teaches us, we have learned in these months of the pandemic we have had to go through.

But I also believe that women athletes have already learned everything that was necessary, and much more. They don't need any more defeats.

What they now need is to celebrate the victory of equality. And all of us with them, because we all come out on top through full and effective equality between men and women.

Let's make sport a mirror in which we can see a society like ours, that is profoundly supportive, empathetic and a lover of equality. Let's use it to help us build the world we want and the country we deserve.

You have shown us that this year, and you will do so next year, which will undoubtedly be a golden year for Spanish sport, particularly for women's sport. I am absolutely convinced of that. My best wishes and good luck!

Thank you very much.

(Transcript edited by the State Secretariat for Communication)

Non official translation