In the last 72hs I have traveled to the 80's twice, first because I have finally seen Mecano's musical “Hoy no me puedo levantar” (today I can’t wake up) in the Coliseum theater. One of the best musicals ever seen in Madrid, with more than 2.5 million spectators and with 27 set changes with LED technology, really recommendable. Second, because I attended the celebration of the 35 anniversary of the Círculo de Empresarios (a Spanish business association), where the history of the institution was reviewed.

The Círculo de Empresarios was created in 1977 with some aims that are still as current today as back then: promoting free business, private initiative, market economy and entrepreneurship, and raising awareness of the essential role of the businessman in the creation of wealth, employment and social welfare.

Talking with businessmen of those times, I realize that the situation we live now is hard and complex, but equally hard was the one they found, in the midst of a transition and above all, with two very important variants; first, the uncertainty of what the future may become after such a long dictatorship, everything that had to be done, and the second, our standard of living today is infinitely better than in the 80's. Back then, the data related to the Spanish economy undoubtedly showed a situation of depression, characterized by a stagnation of the productive activity, (GDP growth in 1976: 1.5%), an increase of unemployment (more than 800,000 unemployed, 11% of the working population) and high levels of inflation (20%).

In this situation, the Moncloa Pacts were signed, unprecedented agreements in Europe subscribed by the government, political parties, trade unions and business associations, which meant a control of cash flows, a depreciation of the peseta and salary control measures. The results were not entirely satisfactory, although they meant the unity of the economic agents facing the crisis. Since 1982, with the beginning of the socialist government, an economic policy was implemented marked by inflation control and salary moderation.

And the saddest part is that the problems reported back then from the Círculo, to improve the economy, continue to be valid today:

• Productive model
• Unemployment
• Corruption
• Educational model
• Internationalization of companies
• Etc.

This leads me to several conclusions: first, governments do not listen to businessmen, or they are not interested, and second, time is ticking out for us, or in other words, I'm not surprised by the situation we are in. If we look back, even when I was really young, there was no Internet, or mobiles; we queued on Sunday to buy a ticket to go to the movies and not be left out due to overbooking; we only had one TV channel, flying by plane was a luxury, etc… everything has changed radically around us, but our society model has been unable to adapt at the same speed of this so dynamic, fast and global new environment.

We continue to have similar educational models as in the 80's and all the new professions that are required today, did not exist before; our productive model has to change to the new global and really communicated environment and our civil society needs to be modernized and be much more autonomous, without so much regulation and interventionism from the government (with the following reduction of civil servants).

For a moment, I would like to go back to that time and “suffer” the problems of not having the new technologies that we currently enjoy. That way, we would realize the potential we have in companies to take advantage of those new technologies to communicate and interact better with our clients, with the resulting benefit. Concepts such as CRM, e commerce, Big Data or the Cloud, are wonders that technology brought within our grasp to make our organizations more efficient and we are turning our backs on them too lightly. With the danger of international competition winning over us using that competitive advantage.

Let's fight for being a country with companies of the 21st century and not from the 80's, otherwise, as Mecano said, better stay at home!