Una pica en Flandes

Away from the cameras and partisan ups and downs, Javier Elorza, one of the most authoritative voices in our country, guides us in this book through the most unknown side of European politics. Diplomat and career civil servant, this personal chronicle of his journey from 1986 to 2004 as a member of the permanent representation of Spain in Europe, in which he held the main positions, shows the European Union from within, with the power struggles, the weak balances of forces, variable pacts, secret agreements and national interests as true protagonists, sometimes in a stark and brutal way. The author, in this unprecedented and privileged vision, opens the doors of the offices and gossip of the community institutions, and recounts the role that Spain has played in Europe since its accession in 1986, as well as the economic and social impulse that this it has meant for our country. From the hand of Felipe González or José María Aznar, he recounts in an entertaining and direct way the ins and outs of the arduous and exhausting negotiations that in Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice or Lisbon always resulted in more prominence and integration of Spain into the Union. No one had ever told this story, which is also completed with a multitude of anecdotes about figures such as Giscard d'Estaing, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder, John Major, Jordi Pujol, Francisco Fernández Ordoñez, Abel Matutes, etc., that is, of those who have shaped the idea of Europe -and of our country- in the last forty years.