Pedro Schwartz: A Life in Spanish Liberal Thought | The Scars of Freedom

In this episode of Somewhere, Anywhere, we step outside the studio and into the home of one of Europe’s most important classical liberal thinkers: Pedro Schwartz. What follows is less an interview than a conversation across generations about freedom, institutions, and the intellectual life of modern Spain.

Schwartz’s life traces the arc of European liberalism in the twentieth century. As a young Spaniard coming of age under Franco, he left a closed country and found himself at the London School of Economics, studying under Karl Popper and alongside some of the great figures of modern economic thought. Those formative years exposed him to a cosmopolitan intellectual environment that would shape his lifelong project: bringing the traditions of classical liberalism —Popper, Hayek, Friedman, Robbins — into Spanish intellectual and political life. 

Over the decades, Schwartz became not only a scholar but also a conduit of ideas. He translated, introduced, and debated liberal thought in Spain when it was still intellectually marginal. His influence extends through generations of economists, journalists, and policymakers, many of whom first encountered liberal ideas through his seminars, essays, and public interventions. 

The conversation moves fluidly between intellectual history and lived politics. Schwartz reflects on the intellectual atmosphere of the LSE in the 1960s, the role of the School of Salamanca in Spain’s liberal tradition, and his encounters with figures such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. At the same time, we revisit decisive moments in modern Spanish history: the democratic transition, the 1981 coup attempt, Spain’s entry into NATO and the European project, and the reformist wave of the 1990s. 

Schwartz also speaks candidly about his own brief experience in politics —founding a liberal party, serving in parliament, and influencing the policy debates that helped shape Spain’s market reforms. Yet he ultimately returns to the role he values most: that of the public intellectual who helps societies clarify their principles.

Throughout the episode, one theme recurs: liberalism is not simply a set of policy preferences but a civilizational inheritance. It requires institutions, intellectual seriousness, and a broad cultural horizon — one that ranges from economic theory to philosophy, history, and literature.

At 91 years old, Pedro Schwartz remains engaged in that project. This conversation is both a reflection on a remarkable intellectual life and a meditation on the enduring challenges of defending freedom in democratic societies.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

So, welcome everyone to yet another episode of our Somewhere Anywhere podcast. We are coming to you from Madrid, but not from our studio, but rather from the residence of our very distinguished guest in today's podcast recording. So I'm joined, of course, by my co-host and friend Rashid Griffith. Rashid, how are you? Hello, Diego. How are you doing? Very well myself, excited about today's recording. And well, we are about to host an interview with Pedro Schwartz, who is one of the most relevant thinkers of the classical liberal world in Europe and obviously in Spain. And it is truly a privilege for us to be speaking to him today, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Yes, I'm very excited. I'm looking forward to the conversation. It's surprising how many people I come across in my kind of liberal life in the US or the Caribbean that actually know of Pedro's works. I think from his Cato publications, actually. So I think it's gonna be good to hear him in person now in English.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Well, before we introduce Pedro formally, although he's sitting right next to us right now, let us just tell everyone that uh Pedro had a very remarkable career as an academic. He was also involved in politics at some point as well. And of course, his voice is one of the more popular in the classical liberal sphere, and he has been instrumental for the diffusion of liberal thought. He was a student of Karl Popper, he was a president of the Montpeler Society. His credentials are certainly those that you only come across once in a lifetime. We are truly honored to be here with Pedro. I don't mean to extend this too much because Pedro is blushing right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

But yes, Pedro, welcome to the interview on the Thank you very much for this interview. I hope to be up to standard.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Regil, let's jump into it. By the way, we will be using Pedro's Picatrices de la Libertad, his biography, as kind of a guiding point. So for our Spanish audience or Spanish reading audience, that is a good companion to today's interview.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Don Pedro, I wanted to focus initially on your time in England. Of course, me coming from the Caribbean, I have a much more vivid appreciation of England during this time period in my own history. So I'm curious, I believe from your book, your first time in England was around 1953-54, when you went to learn English, I believe. What was that experience like for you for the first time?

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Well, it was a big change of surprise because I came from Spain. At that moment there was very little freedom in Spain, and I was sent by my father to live in Spain because he wanted and I wanted then to be a diplomat. But when I passed the exams which I passed them, they were difficult, but I passed them, those exams. I was told by the people on the examining board that they very, very sadly couldn't have me as a diplomat and because I wasn't enthusiastic about Franco. And I it was well known that I had been activist student, and then I went to perfect my English in uh the United States, not you know, in the United Kingdom. And then after I was here for many years, because I was a student at the London School of Economics, then it turns out that I am very, very much pro-English. And you can ask me questions, I'll tell you what I think.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

In reality, we very recently held an interview with Esperanza Aguirre, and she signaled that in the 1980s when she became involved in politics, and she of course considers herself to be a student of yours, she also referenced the influence of the British tradition. You were a student there in the London School of Economics under Karl Popper, nonetheless. I was indeed. That was very lucky.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

I found very good teachers there at the London School of Economics when I did my PhD and stayed there at the London School of Economics, I think it's seven years. Because I worked with Karl Popper and also I was pretty active there. So I'm both Spanish and British.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

I'm curious about your intellectual growth at the time of LSE. So in the early 60s in LSE, that was when Sir Arthur Lewis was there, that was when a lot of the changes in the imperial system of the UK was happening, and the entire colonial experience was very actually heated up in London. I'm curious how did that affect you when you're thinking about economics and those topics?

SPEAKER_02 4:37

The way it affected me was because I learned my economics and also my politics from the people I met at the School of Economics. And there I was pretty active because I was for some time I was ahead of the students there, and therefore I was very active. And I admired what I found there and thought I would apply it in Spain if I could.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

It should be noted that today ideas travel very fast. But we have to put ourselves in the shoes of someone that 70 years ago was traveling a world from a closed country, traveling away from it, and setting himself in the centre of European cosmopolitanism like London. So it was definitely a culture shock, but one that you fully embraced because you had that inherent drive for freedom here internally.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

Indeed. And what I found is I could apply the things I was learning in London, could perhaps apply them in Spain. Because at the moment we didn't have freedom, political freedom in Spain, and it was easy for me to translate, let's have the same thing there. And indeed went. Well, I went to I even became an MP at the Spanish Parliament, and in general was very clear that I wanted freedom for my country, and I was then, how could I say, a little more in favor of socialism than I was there? Tell us about this.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

And I believe John Stuart Mill plays a key role in your thought at this stage of your life. How did Stuart Mill's thinking influence you and how did you later drift away from some elements of it?

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Well, I studied John Stuart Mill and decided to write a thesis about him, which I did and published. It was Karl Popper who told me, why don't you do something on Mill? Why don't you do your study your thesis on John Stuart Mill? And I did, I followed the advice he gave me, and I wrote a book and published it on John Stuart Mill. And I found very many things to learn and to imitate about John Stuart Mill. And with the help of Karl Popper and also Lionel Robbins, who was the head of the board that gave me the PhD. So in the end, both I learned from Popper, from Lionel Robbins and many other people there, and also I learned from John Stuart Mill, who is a very liberal thinker, and I think there was lots I could learn there and apply in my country. Not only my country, but in general to organized things in any country.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Why did Popper give you the advice to study Mill?

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Well, I remember I saw Popper's The Open Society, the book, at a bookshop here in Madrid, and bought it, I bought the book, read it, and didn't understand really what she was saying. So at one point I was going to have lunch and at one door I saw a little name, A. R. Popper. So I come in, went in, and said, Are you the book of the Open Society? I said, indeed, can I come to your lectures? He said, Yes, you can. And so I indeed went to his lectures and followed, studied a lot of Karl Popper's thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

For many of us today, which we consider ourselves to be students of the liberal tradition, these authors obviously are unfortunately long gone. But the truth is that you were not just a very intellectual thinker through the years, but also someone who was acquainted with many of these individuals. For instance, you brought Karl Popper's ideas to Spain, facilitating his translation. And him physically, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

And uh I remember how I drove a little set and took him to different parts of Spain.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Yes, north of Spain, I believe, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:36

That's right, that's right. And in general, it was not only learning what no Popper and John Sormille had to say, because those things could be or transformed the way I saw the world. Well, I had many very good teachers. I was very lucky in the people I studied with, not only Karl Popper and also Leonard Romans, but many others at the Land School of Economics, who changed my view, and little I moved away from sort of interventionist liberalism to become a real liberal, a classical liberal in a sense.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

I'm curious about call it the critical intellectual distinction between your training in economics and then law when it comes to adopting a more liberal approach to politics or to society.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Yes, well, I studied law, was bored by it. Now I repent because law is very important, and we know it from Hayek's books too. Law is very important, so slowly I moved to study law more deeply. Then as I went to the le through Karl Popper's lectures, also I had an influence by him about how to organize a country to organize my thoughts as a liberal person. And so I didn't look back after that. I remember Karl Popper's lectures very well. And they were very, very interesting. In fact, Karl Popper, perhaps I'll show you later, his piano is at the house because it was given to my wife by him, by Karl Popper. And we've just repaired the piano. It really was a very important person. I should say a friend. He met my children, our children, met, of course, my wife, left the piano in his will, and here we are, the piano I don't play. She does. My wife does, and also my daughter who's a singer, and so there's a lot of music in this house.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

One thing that I shall say is that beyond bringing that British tradition to Spain, Pedro was also instrumental in channeling other ideas from the liberal realm into the country. Because in Pedro you have not just a thinker with his own entity and body of work, but also someone who was a student of the public choice school, of the Chicago and monetarist school, and also a very acquainted intellectual in regards to the Austrian tradition. So you have a little bit of all of those, and you have played a role of a curator of sorts by not just developing your own work, but also facilitating the importing of this art into Spain.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

Indeed, I was instrumental to bring here many ideas. Not that I thought of them, because I learned them, but here we are. We have a great deal of influence of all these thinkers whom I've diffused here in Spain, and have become a sort of instrument to discuss of and discuss liberalism.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

I must say that I myself was a regular attendee at Pedro's seminars at the university back when Pedro was finishing up his more active years in academia. So I also consider myself to have learned a lot from Pedro, being one of the youngers from that club. But if we think of the list of people that have been influenced by Pedro in Spanish academia, intellectual life and policy, of course, I'm just the final name there, because you have names such as Carlos Rodriguez Brown, names such as Francisco Cabrillo, names such as Maria Blanco, like some of our most cherished and relevant scholars in free market thinking and open society ideas, were also students of Pedro. So you imported that LSE, that London School of Economics intellectual climate of ideas, into Spain through many decades. And you touch on different generations with your work.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Yes, indeed. Many people consider me as one of the influential liberals here in Spain. And as time passes, I become more deep in that kind of thought. So not only deep in learning thought, but also has some consequences for my life. As I told you before, I wanted to be a diplomat. I passed the exams, and they told me, no, we don't want you as a diplomat. And then thank goodness I became a student, I became uh somebody, a philosopher in the sense of freedom, and that has played with me forever and influenced me a great deal. So it's not only at the London School of Economics and the kind of liberal thought that you get at the London School of Economists that I learned and then passed on to Spain. All those wrote their thesis with me. So I'm very proud of all the people who followed me at the time.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

So beyond the simply academic intellectual aspect of politics and freedom, you were active a part of the Congress of the Parliament here in Spain. Why did you decide to actively go into politics?

SPEAKER_02 13:54

Well, it's a question I asked myself. And now that time has passed, I think it was a mistake. In a sense that being a politician is a very special thing. You have to how could I say, bow to ideas that you may not want to? And so I became an MP here and very vocal indeed. Even founded a party here, a political party, and that stayed with me because I was one of the members of the Conservative Party here in Spain. And they those ideas clearly. And now well the thing is that with the passing of time, I have become a sort of figure in uh liberal economics, in liberal political thought, and that I think has been my main contribution to Spanish life, indeed not only Spanish life, because also I was at the lawn school uh at the at the Montperon Society. There's this if you take that there, take it down.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

We're looking at a Pedro's just asking us to Yeah, that's that one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Yes. Take it down, take it down.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Take it down. Right? A portrait or no, have a look. What is it? It was taken. Okay, so we're looking at a Liberty Fund meeting, a picture of it. It was organized by Kurt Leube in the late 1980s. And we see a young Pedro Schwartz wearing a red vest. And besides him it's Peter Bauer, Kurt Leube. Look at those. Friedrich Hayek, Ronald Cosey, George Stigler. My goodness.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

So it's a very special photograph of one of my activities as a student of the law of liberalism.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

We shall add this picture to the podcast so that everyone can take a look. I always think you're a bit too critical of your time in politics. Let me tell you why. I obviously understand that it is certainly not the place for someone who wants to keep his independence, especially certainly not in Spanish politics. But I don't know where the center right reforms from the 1990s would have come if there had not been an intellectual structure that ingrained itself into the popular party machinery. So, in a sense, I think that what Aznar culminates in the 1990s, it's a byproduct of you setting up a small liberal party which then became a founding element of the new popular party. So I understand your hesitations about that period of time. I agree with the self-criticism, but I think you're leaving out of the equation some very important contributions. Where would the Spanish right wing be economically speaking if it wasn't for that?

SPEAKER_02 16:39

Well, not only that, but I voted for NATO at a time when there was a lot of discussion about NATO. And I voted for it, and in fact was punished in the right wing of Spanish politics because of that.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

For context, they wanted to abstain for tactical reasons, just because they wanted to hurt the socialist government. But Pedro said, well, based on principle, we can't be tactical about something so relevant as NATO accession. And this led to your demise in politics.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

It led to my device, and I'm very proud of that kind of kind of I foresaw some of the things that are happening now. So I was very much for NATO and the sort of politicians who was in favor of defense, in favor of attacking or uh setting aside the people who were socialists, and we wanted to establish freedom not only personally but also militarily. I'm proud of that moment of my political life.

SPEAKER_03 17:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

By the way, there was a certain woman in your party. Of course, she was not known at the time, but she has become a towering figure in Spanish politics. Your disciple and friend, Esperanza Aguirre. Esperanza Guir, I chose her.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

I pointed at her when I was the head of a party. I said, Esperanza, come with us. And she worked for the party here in Spain. And ever since, very kindly says that I was her teacher. And so we're very much, we're very, very, very proud of that.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Well that seems like a really accomplished entry into politics, very successful when you think of the general calculation one can make on that. Imagine you founded the party, the Union Liberal Liberal Union. What was this particular reason at the time when you said we need to have a different kind of party in Spain? Why you do it?

SPEAKER_02 18:41

Well, I was very much had very much at the end of my time at the LSC, a believer and defender of economic freedom. And so I wanted the new party that was being organized by Assam to become a defender of freedom. They did, and he still remembered somebody who changed the way that we see economic policy here in Spain. So I was very much in favor of economic freedom, which is something that many people didn't accept here. And they did once I founded this small party, and then it has fused into a conservative right. And so if I mask, what things did I achieve as an politician? NATO, economic freedom, and also the influence on the conservative right.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

There is one element here that is interesting to note, very hard to think about it these days considering the way our current government is operating. But at this time, in between 1982 and 1986, there are some reformist policies being enacted by a socialist minister of finance, Miguel Boyer, who was later known for being married to Julio Iglesias's former spouse and whatnot. But at the time, between 82 and 86, he did approve some reforms that in principle resonate with the ideas you were defending, like liberalization of business hours, liberalization in housing, which were later taken down by his own party, of course. But this was an interesting situation in which we have probably the more liberal socialist ever in Spanish Parliament competing with the more liberal MP from the opposition conservatives.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

And indeed, I remember well when Bollier, who was in the Socialist Party, defended the idea of freedom of shopping hours and freedom of rental housing and other reforms of the kind. And I was across on the other side. I was within the Conservative Party. And so what I did after he'd spoken, I crossed the floor and congratulated him and said, Finally we've done something very good. And that congratulation wasn't quite popular with some of my friends.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Okay. I want to go back a few years before that, which is the transition period in Spain. And of course, now from the outside, inside even, there's still a lot of debate about the correct way it should have happened, the different counterfactuals. I'm curious from your perspective, living through it, participating, helping, how did you see the process of a transition being productive?

SPEAKER_02 21:19

One thing I saw, or one thing that explains it, is that I was a monarchist. And I defended the idea of a king because I thought it was a defense against many mistakes that could have happened. And indeed, again, uh, well, if I want to pick up the things that I did right, one of them was to defend the idea of a king, which we did. And now he really has made a difference in Spain. So I was also in favor of the king. I had met him and uh tried to help him whenever I could, and he now still calls me Pedro. And it's something I remember. But as you see, I'm picking the good thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

King Juan Carlos has been, of course, involved in some scandals. But at the same time, this last week, as we're recording this, the papers from the 23F, which was an attempted and failed coup d'etat that happened in 1981, one year before Pedro became an MP, have been released by this government. One could speculate a lot about the reasons why they are declassifying these files now. But beyond that, these files leave Juan Carlos and paint him in a very positive light, which sort of resonates with the idea that yes, we can second guess some elements of the transition now, but most people that lived through it are actually pretty proud of what was accomplished at then. And we're sitting here with someone like Pedro, who was essentially not allowed to pursue his own career as a diplomat by the regime. And for someone like him to question the role of the monarchy as a facilitator for democracy would be a no-brainer, because indeed it brought forward freedom.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Indeed, and uh I well remember when that coup happened. I was in Barcelona putting forward the idea of my party, and I was giving a lecture. I suddenly saw people listening to the radio. Said, Come on, please you be a little polite to me. What are you doing? And they said, There's been a coup. I remember well how King Juan Carlos appeared on the screen of television, telling his officers, the officers of the army, obey me. Don't you dare go against democracy. And so I was very much in that in that sense. And I remember saying to myself, Oh my goodness, not again. It couldn't happen again. We had Franco once, we didn't want him again. And there he did. I remember in full uniform, telling the officers who were staging the coup, telling them, Will you please go back to barracks? And the tanks were there, the tanks were in Valencia, so it wasn't an easy thing to do, and this was a very big step for us. We now are a democracy in Spain. You may criticize some of the things that people do, but we do need to have the voice of the people heard, and that is something that happened there, and that King Juan Carlos defended.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Both Rashid and I are supposed to have an episode at some point about the monarchy. I just want to throw out there that the two biggest attempts against Spanish democracy were de facto stopped by the monarch. It was King Juan Carlos in 1981, and it was King Philip, the current king, in 2017 when the attempted separation happened by Catalonia, which many would consider included elements of a constitutional coup as well. So I think that there are great elements or arguments that one can put forward in theory. In practice, however, the monarchy has remained an instrumental for freedom in Spain, or at least that is my take.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

But I'm curious at the time of the transition, why did you support the monarchy as a tool for democracy? It would seem a bit counterintuitive.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

Well, in part, it was an influence of my family who had led the monarchy group in Switzerland. So there's one and also because I thought in Spain we needed to return to something that wasn't, I'm gonna say wasn't an absolute way of considering the Spanish politics. We needed to have somebody who would put together the people who had been in favor of republic in this time and so on. So that was something that we were a small group of people who thought the monarchy is the kind of thing that you the kind of institution that you need in a country that is at loggerheads with itself. And indeed, yes, we have a king. It's been we can see that as something very lucky, very good thing. And so that's another good thing I did.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

A lot of people are actually fascinated about the process that leads to political change in the 90s. Even Rashid and I, alongside Manuel Jamas, are currently doing a lot of research and perhaps preparing a book about these specific years. And your name has come up when we talk about who was involved in the closed door discussions on how to articulate a center-right free market alternative policy. Can you walk us through this time in which in the Fundacion Faes, in the circles of PP, in 1994, 95, you can smell that political change is coming, but you need a plan, you need a program, and you were involved there as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

Yes, indeed, and I think that we don't underline how wonderful it was that we had a change. After all, a king is a funny thing. And you want a king when you have a democracy. Having a king and a democracy seemed to be a log ahead. And what we needed is somebody who's above, above the fights, the political fights that had happened in Spain even during the Republic in the 30s. And there were a number of people who thought that if we had a king who was above politics, that could make for us stop fighting each other. And that I think has proved to be so. Well, people have criticized Franco very much, but he was the one who wanted a king here in Spain. And he was quite right. It was a good thing to have somebody above politics. Well, it seems that Franco was talking to one of his ministers one day, an economics minister, and the king said to the minister, don't get into politics.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Don't go into politics. That's how Franco saw himself as being above politics. But in a way, when politics are very partisan, very divisive, like this may not resonate with audiences from some countries, like where coalition agreements and whatnot can be formed. But definitely in a country like Spain, where unfortunately there is a lot of partisanship, that mediating factor has remained relevant. But I don't know if you want to keep this a secret or you forgot to answer my specific question. But I am very interested to know about your involvement with the Aznar preparation of government. Because I know you played a role there. It's come up in discussions with with the men himself.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

Aznar was somebody we backed because we thought he could do the right things, which he did in fact. He did. He did and established here many democratic things, but mainly he was in favor of the sort of institution that is above politics. The king today is not really above politics because he intervenes from time to time. And that is something that you have a lot in Europe. If you look at Europe, good gracious there are so many kings that are there trying to show an easier way to get on, and this was very important in Spain. So again, defending the king was a great achievement, not only for me, but for many people.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Another way in which Aznar wanted to take out too much policy making from the partisan sphere was by joining the Eurozone. Now you have spoken a lot and written a lot about monetary policy. You acknowledged A, that for Spain joining the Eurozone was a net positive, and at the same time you also argued that for the UK they should be considering a common currency but not a single currency. Because that all obviously depends on your relatives, on what can you expect from the domestic. Can you walk us through this distinction which you made at the time?

SPEAKER_02 29:33

Yes, the idea for Spaniards was getting into Europe would solve many problems, in the sense that for many people being pro-European was a way of saying pro-freedom and pro-democracy. And that was very much the attitude of the opposition here in Spain. The idea that it was by joining Europe that we forget about, how could I say the the less wonderful parts of our politics. And that was indeed what happened. So being pro-European was not only something that Aznar wanted, but many other people too wanted to join as something that would be a safeguard for what we were doing.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

And in fact, today, if you look at the economic freedom rankings, Spain's best scores come in those areas where economic policy is not decided strictly domestically, but also jointly. Take the case in point of financial freedom, freedom to trade, or monetary stability. Also, another question, Pedro. When Aznar comes to power in the mid-90s, he obviously has a plan. He has a plan for liberalization in telecommunications and energy and airlines and privatization of government-owned enterprises. He has a plan to cut spending and cut taxes. How do you remember your role as an intellectual in these years trying to influence that process?

SPEAKER_02 30:58

Well, not only an intellectual, but also a friend of Afra. And I think that many of the things he proposed and carried out were necessary for Spain and still have left sort of tradition that we have in Spain for economic freedom. Whatever the present socialist government does, that has stayed. People really remember the time of economic freedom, and I think we shall go back to it when the time passes. And so Aznar was for many of us a hope and a realization. He really went really far in what he did. And now we go back to him, we hope, not to him because he left politics, but we go back to his ideas so that we change the way we do politics and economic policy in Spain.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Why do you think Aznar was so committed to these ideas of liberalization of Spain and actually was able to push it through into Parliament?

SPEAKER_02 31:59

Well, I don't know. We don't know why where he got his ideas from, but he certainly got them. And I think the influence of his wife too, and also very important wives are important.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

They are indeed. One question I wanted to also ask you today is the times in which your student, in a sense, Esperanza Aguirre, becomes the governor of Madrid. Now, while she is in office for a very long period between 2003 and 2011, she accomplished a successful tax cuts, spending cuts, deregulation. There's an all across the board agenda of freedom. You were also once again very involved with her, and the net results have been amazing. They are still in place today.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

So indeed, yeah. The influence on the Madrid politics was pretty important too. And it's still still with us. People still refer to that time of economic freedom as I hope given the t the time we're going through at the moment. So we did influence her. She has said very often that I taught her, I influence her, and she indeed in that sense became very pro-economic freedom, and that's saying, and I think we'll go back to it.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

So I'm going to change the gear a little bit to the more intellectual aspect of your career again. So you made many remarks about how the Anglo-Saxon view of liberalism, the LSC influenced your thinking, and you had brought that to Spain. But at the same time, you're also well known for your work on the School of Salamanca type histories and work. I'm curious also how you see that aspect of liberal thinking. How is it related to how you learn about liberalism in England?

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Well, liberalism in England is in a difficult time, I should say. Therefore, the influence of economic freedom or the school of Salamanca and other things which we could refer to as Peran Sagir about it, many but many others in the liberal school, that has come to say. And that is something that has influenced the politics of Spain much more than people think. And I think we'll go back to at least people are so impatient, voters are so impatient about the kind of mistakes that this government is doing. And therefore I think that period, not only San Sadir, but also of the Liberal Club and other other ideas in defence of free free trade and free economics is something that thank goodness is here to stay. And we'll go back to them as soon as this very difficult period we're going through is something that finishes.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

That anchorage effect that the school of Salamanca, it's relevant because at the end of the day it is a way for Spanish liberals to not just simply accept foreign thought, which of course is far superior in many cases, but also to anchor your own intellectual history to some elements that came before you, such as the Cortes de Leon or the writing of the scholastics back in the day. But it should be noted that this tradition has been rediscovered. Because, for instance, the Marjorie Grace Hutchinson book about the School of Salamanca, it's from the 1950s, which is when Pedro is essentially stepping out of Spain to learn at the London School of Economics. So it's interesting to see how today a Spanish liberal can refer more to 16th century Spanish liberals, more than they did back in the time. So that's also been another discovery.

SPEAKER_02 35:59

Indeed, the liberal thinking, liberal economics, competition, an open system is something that is here to stay because of the that period when we helped introduce those ideas into Spanish life. I remember the great fight that we had to carry out was to people said they were liberal but they were really interventionists. And that has gone. Now people agree that we have to do something different, and that comes from there. So it's very important that we have the tradition, this short-run tradition of free economics, liberal thinking. That tradition is there, and for the moment it seems worth it saying, despite the kind of government we have.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

We will have to speak about this government because Pedro, of course, has made several references to it, and it comes very natural to ask Pedro about this. But Pedro has also been involved in the diffusion of ideas in different roles. He has authored books and literally hundreds of opeds for different newspapers. He even brought Milton Friedman's Free to Choose TV documentary to Spanish television alongside a student of his, very renowned scholar, Carlos Rodriguez Brown. How important do you think is that role of a journalist that you have also played in many ways?

SPEAKER_02 37:36

Yes. Here we have a photograph there of Milton Friedman and George Figler. That's right. It's curious that in that photograph, Milton Friedman is in the middle. And sort of other people listening to him there. And so indeed the idea of being in favor of free economics, free trade, is something that has come to stay in Spain, mixed a bit with the hope that Europe will find its way. But in any case, I think it's something that is really struck roots there.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

I also wanted to ask you about your book, Fantastic Essay, which, if I'm not mistaken, was at first your speech to become a member of the Royal Academy of Political Science and Morals. It is being labeled as In Search of Montesquieu, En Busca de Montesquieu. And you have expressed through the years that at the end of the day, the difficult conquest that is freedom needs those institutions and these limits and perfectioning of power.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

Yes, you need to be able to look at the back and to remember what your traditions are. And people who fight those ideas of freedom are not so important in Spain because for a long time we've been working with Montesquieu, with Milton Freeman, with others, we've been working to try and establish the roots of free economics. And that is here. It stays there. I think that again is a very good step forward.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

A conquest indeed. Coming now to the end of the podcast. One of the topics that we discuss a lot is the problem of the young liberals not really reading that much and discovering these more cosmopolitan ideas of history and thinking. And the start of your last book about your life, the monograph is like a Chinese quote, a Greek quote, a Spanish quote. It kind of kind of really makes my point here. In your generation, this idea of a broad view of the world was so important.

SPEAKER_02 39:50

Uh is it still so important to have the broad reading of the Yes, I I think how can I say the temptation for people who think uh of freedom and defend freedom both economic and political. The temptation is to fight each other. To say I'm different from them. Look, this small group is somebody we have to fight. And I think that is something that we have w worked well here. Where people in favor of freedom are together and work together. And that perhaps is something we can teach other people. Britain is one of them where we need to have uh it seems a different way of organizing society. And that here again is something we struck rude with. We have here in Spain, liberals are different ways of understanding society, but we're not fighting each other. On the contrary, we are more or less with differences going forward in what is more traditional with our political and economic thought.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

I wanted to ask you about your relationship with some of the most relevant thinkers of the past century. We've spoken about Karl Popper already, but you also dealt with Friedrich Hayek with Milton Friedman. Any anecdotes or stories or just overall opinions of your dealings with both Hayek and Friedman that you could share with us?

SPEAKER_02 41:23

Well, Milton Friedman had a great deal of influence in Spain because of his television pro program. It's something that uh has left a mark indeed in the way we see freedom here in Spain. So that's one thing that goes well. And I remember Milton Friedman coming here, being attacked, but defending himself because he was wonderful and replying to what people said about him. And then you have the same with Hayek. Hayek, I remember when we went to Salamanca itself and he was there he was in the chair of the school of Salamanca defending the idea that if you have confidence in people then you have confidence in freedom. And the idea that being a a liberal means that you tend to believe in people, believe that people will in the end will defend what is right is something that's important. And Hannet is a difficult person, was a difficult person, but what he's written about the philosophy of freedom is something that stays with us forever.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

Pedro, this would probably be my last question to you. You've made several references so far to the challenges that this current government in Spain has created for us. I think that we obviously can identify economic issues. Minimum wage increases that are completely out of blown out of any proportion, tax increases by literally hundreds. But the one thing I am more concerned with is the hindrance of the rule of law and the power grab of many institutions of the Spanish democracy. So, what is your take on how do we go ahead? Like say there is a new government in place, what are the priorities?

SPEAKER_02 43:18

Well, the priorities is to obey the constitution. That's right, people being clear that we have a constitution, it should be obeyed. Instead of that, it's being attacked, it's being seen in the wrong way, mainly by special socialists that are in power. The socialists with no qualms about attacking freedom. So again, we are lucky to have the nineteen seventy eight constitution. Times are difficult at times, but what we have is there the reference of how we have to organize our life. Not easy. But we can do it and the basic ideas are there. So that's one thing that going are going to say. Curiously, people go back to the Constitution, say we need politicians to obey that constitution and to put it in practice. And this is something that sometimes seems that it's in danger. But I think the opinion of standards in general is in favor of establishing a free constitution and defending it.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

I guess I'll have the final question. And because it is the final question, I have a very different kind of question. I'm curious in your opinion, you know, 91 years old, you've done quite a lot, of course. There are some references. Reading your books, all see your views of art and music and literature in general is quite wide, you know what you can see here in your library. What pieces of music or art do you still really enjoy today?

SPEAKER_02 45:03

Oh, very clearly history, because I taught history. And going back in history, uh going back to earlier centuries, is something that resonate with people still. Sometimes wrongly, because some people are thinking of splitting Spain into many uh different systems, and that is not helping us certainly. But the idea that as you are using the uh you're showing the uh the book there, and so this again is a book about the tradition of freedom, a very old tradition of freedom in Spain. The word liberal is something that that was really first used in Spain when Napoleon invaded us. Therefore, the idea of liberal is something that has a tradition behind it, and that's very important in politics. So that's something now we are able to to defend, and that's what I try to defend in my book.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

I want to close by saying two things. First of all, uh Pedro has always said that there is still a lot of work to do. That is why still today he's wearing his boots, writing, and actively engaging in intellectual debate for that. I think we're all very thankful. I also want to say, of course, I'm very thankful for this opportunity. And on a personal note, I certainly could never pay back all the learning I've done in your seminars, conferences, talks, and writings. So beyond my thanks for today's talk, a talk between friends like we just had, my gratitude for all your work and your fantastic legacy.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

You've been too kind. We've tried many people together have tried to establish a different way of doing politics, shouldn't we have indeed? And so we may not be very many, but we still are there, and we're a voice in Spanish politics which ought to be treasured. So having you here with me, I hope that what I defended is something that resonates with you. So I'm very, very glad, very grateful for this conversation. Thank you so much, Don Pedro.