Founding Declaration

Gipuzkoa Garaile (Victorious Gipuzkoa) is a civil society initiative; a collaboration of people who have collectively reflected on Gipuzkoa’s present and future and on the tools we have available to drive us to success in overcoming the challenges that our community faces.

Planting the seed of an idea for a shared project is Gipuzkoa Garaile’s aim. It is an open and pluralistic initiative. Gipuzkoans are the main raison d’être for this collective effort because we believe that people are, and should continue to be, the driving force of Gipuzkoa.

We are launching Gipuzkoa Garaile to make a contribution to progress and improving the quality of life for everyone who lives in Gipuzkoa, as well as to promote the development of our land in order to achieve intelligent, sustainable and inclusive growth. Through this enterprise, we want to help Gipuzkoa become a socially cohesive and supportive place where the environment guarantees sustainable equality of opportunity and outcome.

To that end, we want to create an economic structure based on people and their talents; on an industry advanced in research and innovation that is open to the world, and which values the entrepreneurial Gipuzkoan spirit; and with businesses that can actually undertake this shared project with ease – a project based on mutual trust and an ongoing, integrated collaboration between workers and employers. In short, competitive businesses which generate a profit while being socially committed and environmentally responsible.

Gipuzkoa Garaile aspires to be a meeting place focused on building a better Gipuzkoa:

• etter for the citizens of Gipuzkoa, for which it will be vital to enhance training, motivation, commitment and employability.
• Better for businesses, which need to be competitive, flexible, profitable and sustainable.
• Better for Gipuzkoa as a whole, which must restore growth and full employment for the benefit of its citizens’ wellbeing.
• Better for the Basque Country, from an integrative vision that seeks to serve the overall specificities and strengths of Gipuzkoa.

The world is facing a new era. Globalisation is leading us to compete across the world in selling our products and attracting talent. We need to increase our appeal as a land of opportunity for the creation of wealth, but also to capture people and businesses from outside our land. We should model ourselves on our European neighbours – pace-setting countries like Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. We should also be skilled at penetrating global knowledge networks.

Without a competitive, productive and strong fabric to society, there is no future. What is good for its competitiveness and sustainability is good for employment, is good for the health of the public sector, and is good for the social welfare of citizens. In short, it is good for Gipuzkoa, and therefore also for Gipuzkoans.

Businesses and the individuals that comprise them need an ecosystem that facilitates the expansion and development of knowledge, technology and research. Let’s work on it. Let’s drive that favourable environment where productive activity is competitive, profitable and sustainable, because the benefit of today is investment tomorrow and employment the day after tomorrow.

We, who drive this initiative forward, share this desire, which is borne with ease in all advanced countries of the world, and we believe that it is essential for Gipuzkoan society as a whole to recognise. This purpose, part of the genetic code of all advanced countries in the world, we also share as those driving the initiative and we additionally believe it important that it is shared by the whole of society.

We have faith in Gipuzkoa’s future. We believe in the endeavour and in our collective ability to make progress. Gipuzkoa has a future. Our economy has at its disposal the necessary strength and resources to seize the opportunity to make a robust and stable recovery. But we all have to be convinced that this is possible, and to put ourselves to work in the same direction. Starting right now.

Gipuzkoa Garaile intends to work:

• Towards a place made up of committed people with technical expertise, in possession of values like ethics, hard work, risk-taking, willingness to change, solidarity, transparency, accountability, commitment, mutual respect and trust.
• Towards a technologically advanced economic structure able to create products and services with high added value, with the added ambition of achieving a strong international presence.
• Towards a connected system: network science and technology, universities, educational environment, especially the vocational training, companies... They all form a rich framework as substrate necessary to foster the development of the territory and globally competitive growth.
• Towards an efficient and accredited educational system using the best experiences from our cultural setting, which deepens our advances in knowledge through growing and decisive support for research, with all the necessary instruments that enable the strengthening of competition for our University, Vocational Training Centre and Science and Technology Network. And all of this in service to productive activity.
• Towards the founding of an economic model in which a business is the result of a shared project based on trust between employers and workers, which is socially responsible, and which is a key player in the task of generating wealth and employment.

Gipuzkoa Garaile aspires to be a forum in which we can debate and propose initiatives and actions that are oriented around laying foundations to inspire the present and future development of a prosperous and supportive Gipuzkoa for decades to come.

Gipuzkoa Garaile is an open and pluralistic initiative that arose from civil society with the exclusive intention of contributing to its future progress and wellbeing.