Politics & Power Quote by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

Zapatero’s line is a small, sharp rebuke to an era when “the markets” started speaking like a sovereign. In the years surrounding the eurozone crisis, European governments were routinely told to “calm” bondholders, reassure credit rating agencies, and treat investor confidence as the ultimate referendum. By conceding that markets matter while insisting citizens matter more, he’s trying to reassert a basic democratic hierarchy: voters are not an externality.

The phrasing does clever work. “Very important” grants legitimacy to the economic reality politicians can’t simply wish away, especially in a currency union where borrowing costs can punish the wrong headline. Then comes the pivot: “but for the government,” a narrowing of obligation that draws a boundary between what everyone should care about and what a state is morally bound to prioritize. He’s not anti-market; he’s anti-veto. The subtext is that markets have been acting like a parallel government, issuing demands without standing for election, and that leaders have been too eager to translate those demands into domestic austerity.

It’s also a defensive line from a center-left politician navigating the political cost of technocratic governance. Zapatero is signaling to anxious citizens that social protection and public legitimacy aren’t luxuries to be traded for “stability.” The implicit warning is stark: if governments serve markets first, politics doesn’t disappear; it metastasizes into distrust, street protests, and the rise of anti-system parties.