I write this column after seeing in situ how the umpteenth business in Spain has closed and seeing in the faces of its owners, Pilar and Jaime, two middle-aged self-employed workers, the outline of failure drawn in those sunken eyes after a dream to which life does not let out. They have decided to throw in the towel, abandoned to their fate and tired of fighting, alone, against an insatiable monster. How many more end the day with the idea of continuing on the same path?
The self-employed are a unique species, forged against destiny and friendly to those difficulties that everyday life brings to the table. They are better known in the storm than in the peace of calm. They say that, in hard times, they eat things that would make a goat vomit, and they endure inclement weather and misfortunes with the same ease that a socialist has to lie and loot public coffers. While we wait for the liberal revolution that does not come, prisoners of a political model that stifles the life project of individuals, the self-employed rise up against this gigantic State of interests in which this coercive institution, an entelechy that exists due to the management of some elite A cowardly and cowardly woman who dedicates herself to attacking other people's life plans, she redoubles her efforts in persecuting – and fleecing – those who try to prosper to support those who wish to be supported.
In Spain, the three million self-employed number was surpassed a long time ago, and I think I am not mistaken if the feeling of the majority today is that they are not free to lead the life they want or organize it under the purposes established by them because they are submissive to a higher priority called apparatus of monopoly of violence, that is, the State. Their day-to-day life consists of turning the page of the calendar with fear, waiting for the next deadline to pay the monthly or quarterly installment, the revolutionary tax or the VAT which, together with personal income tax, salaries, social security and various withholdings, constitute that that civil society suffers daily and that we call fiscal hell, a term that bothers the capricious economists and storytellers of the regime. If we add to all this that three out of every four self-employed workers are over forty years old, we find the problem of who should lead the car and why there is no desire to encourage entrepreneurship among young people, nor do they find reasons to create businesses looking at the panorama. controller that we have on top. They are, without a doubt, the most punished and little rebel group of those who make up the ecosystem of those affected by the power-living caste.
And many of us wonder, is there anyone who defends the self-employed? Do the self-employed have an employer or union that represents their interests? Who mobilizes them when it is time to take them to the streets? Although there are three associations that represent the self-employed, UATAE, UPTA and ATA, only the latter has established itself as their employer, a very sustainable condition in the virtual world, although the reality is far from what its all-powerful president , Lorenzo Amor, at the time, vice president of the CEOE, boasts of doing, Sheltered in the generous subsidies that the Government (yesterday from the PP, today from the PSOE) grants to the employers' association, Amor occasionally launches proclamations of walking around the house criticizing minimum wage increases and labor reforms with which to excuse his fertile conscience of the business caste.
Have you seen him defend farmers – mostly self-employed – against the attacks of the socialist government and the European bureaucracy? Have you heard the Caesar of all the self-employed demanding zero quota for those colleagues who do not enter or shouting to the heavens for being the country in all of Europe where its constituents (that is to say) pay more compared to what they receive? Have you seen his indignation upon learning that eight out of ten self-employed workers perceive that their economic situation is worse than it was a year ago, according to a report from the association he directs? Neither did his associates. It is difficult to lead the self-employed or the businessman with solvency if your survival depends on the economic subsidy of the same government that is suffocating the group to which you belong and claim to represent. Unfortunately, ATA has long become the excuse to keep at bay those who painfully contribute to maintaining the racket of which the self-employed employers' association itself, and its leaders, are a part.
If that's not enough, here's another proof of your contribution to the cause. There is a 2020 European directive that allows self-employed workers to eliminate the obligation to declare quarterly VAT if their turnover is less than 85,000 euros per year. Thus, Europe, due to said directive, obliges the countries of the Union to implement this measure before January 1, 2025. Spain still has not done so. Have you heard Mr. Amor demand that the Government come into force?
For all this I remember today Pilar and Jaime when, after closing their business – a hardware store in its beginnings, reinvented until its sad end in a completely one hundred percent – they confessed to me that in thirty years of being self-employed no one has come out to defend them, despite listen to them and paralyze the streets to protect their rights. The self-employed in Spain today have no one to direct them, although those who speak for them eat at the same table and under the same tablecloth as those who stifle their future and trample on their decency.