The Nobel Peace Prize

This was a very significant event because, due to the suffering and numerous deaths caused by this particular invention, he decided that his inheritance and estate should be used to create a foundation, administered by the Swedish government in perpetuity, to award annual prizes in recognition of the most notable contributions to the welfare of humanity in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, and later also to economics. These prizes have been awarded since 1901 and are widely recognised and coveted as the most prestigious in their respective fields. 

The foundation and prizes survive to this day and, despite not always being very judicious in their choice and awarding among the different candidates, they continue to enjoy enormous prestige worldwide. 

All of them are important, but the Nobel Peace Prize has been, is and will continue to be one of the most renowned due to the impact of the actions of the winners in relation to the fulfilment of the wishes of its founder, according to his will, which reads as follows: ‘Awarded to those who, during the preceding year, have worked most or best for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding or promotion of peace congresses.’ 

Some of the awards were quite shocking and even controversial, as was the case with the then US President, Barack Obama, who received the prize almost as a welcome gift to the White House and was, nevertheless, the first US president to complete two full terms in office while maintaining a huge number of his country's troops involved in direct, intense and active combat on several continents. 

Various sources suggest that the current president, Donald Trump, also aspires to hold this privilege, and there are many references, including personal ones, to the possibility of this due to the existence of major points in his favour, overlooking the fact that his merits are very relative and not so rapid or effective, except, it seems, the actions taken to reduce Iran's nuclear and long-range missile response time and capacity, and he also maintains a number of heated disputes both beyond his borders and close to them. 

Meanwhile, here in Spain, when we Spaniards find ourselves in the depths of lethargy and distraction, forced by the need to hide the tremendous failures and serious corruption that weigh heavily on our president, Pedro Sánchez, he himself, with the help of his new swordsmen or as a result of the intense and prolonged heat of last summer, not least due to his long and luxurious summer stay in La Mareta, a new diversionary tactic has been brought up by Ángel Víctor Torres, Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, to propose nothing less than the Nobel Peace Prize for his boss, Pedro Sánchez. 

As a retired military man, I can assure you that I have spent more than forty years serving Spain on missions and postings both inside and outside the country, directly and indirectly involved in peace operations and many matters related to defence policy and democracy, to the point where, now in my seventies, I can clearly discern and distinguish what is being talked about and what should be talked about when a person, media outlet or institution refers to the merits and efforts in favour of peace, or, on the contrary, is just selling smoke and there is nothing to be gained. 

We must not forget that this character has been pitting Spaniards against each other for years, that he relies on traitors, heirs of terrorists and separatists who hate Spain and who are fleecing it with their ever-increasing and more frequent demands to form squalid and barren governments. He is someone who acknowledges and boasts of having built a wall between Spaniards, who attacks anyone or any region that opposes him in the slightest or does not swallow his precepts; someone who, out of self-interest, overnight and without any explanation or consensus, has abandoned the inhabitants of a region that for centuries has been part of Spain and even a province (the Sahara). 

In terms of real and effective commitment to global defence and security, Sánchez is failing to comply with the agreements of the alliances to which Spain belongs, leading our country to the worst situation of prestige and reliability in its long history as a powerful and friendly nation. We are out of all the important forums and no one believes him anymore because he does not fulfil his commitments or does so late and badly or in the least appropriate way. 

Only the high level of training and personal courage of the members of our Armed Forces sustain a certain thread of hope that we will continue to be recognised wherever we participate, despite dwindling military budgets, the loss of human potential and response capacity, and the inevitable lack of essential materials for the command, control and effective operation of our most sophisticated and precise equipment. 

The latter is a result of its personal and more than unhealthy stubbornness against Israel, to such an extent that it may influence the functioning, defence and future existence of a democratic country which, since its foundation after the Second World War, has not stopped defending itself against continuous and powerful attacks and terrorist actions from neighbouring countries and terrorists that surround it and which have even has raised the flag of a country that does not yet exist to launch its deluded and uninformed citizens and covert specialist puppies against international athletes (the recent cycling tour) and to incite disturbances against the security and law enforcement forces, which it took it upon itself to tie up in the purest style of the confrontations in Catalonia during the recent ‘procés’. 

In short, a person who, in addition to all of the above, is incapable of using all the means and capabilities at his disposal to combat the natural disasters that have recently ravaged Spain in order to call into question the respective capabilities of his political adversaries, and who does not even defend, as he should, the total integrity of women in general and those persecuted by their despicable harassers, cannot and should not talk about peace because it sounds frankly bad coming from him. On the contrary, he should abandon his useless presidential chair as quickly as possible and leave the rest of us in peace.