Yesterday offers a lesson for today

Adolfo Suárez, the first elected Prime Minister of Spain after the Franco dictatorship, died on Sunday. Countless people have praised the former leader in a nation very familiar with sees in death what nobody dares to acknowledge in life, which often raises individuals to mythic status. Suárez made mistakes, but made more good decisions at a time when Spain was going through a massive political change.

Although circumstances then do not compare perfectly to today (things were a lot worse after Franco), his legacy offers several lessons for today. If most Spaniards respect Suárez, it's because he was honest. In contrast, most citizens today worry that politicans are increasingly corrupt and out of touch with their interests. The first Prime Minister of Spain's modern democracy was courageous when he pushed to oust Franco and promoted reforms that transformed the country. Reforming the tax system or public administrations is hard work, but it was even harder to create a personal income tax from nothing (in the era before Suárez, nobody in Spain paid income tax) or shift the government model from a dictatorship to a model more akin to Spain's democratic neighbors.

People are remembering these achievements and others now, but in his own day they wanted to push him out of office. Still, there was a constant dialogue between the parties and regions. Honesty, courage to change, speed to effect that change. Suárez had all these qualities, and invoking them now could help us get out of our crisis.