In these bitter hours of the Spanish society, partly due to the mediocre economic management of our politicians, and to a greater extent due to the cannibalism of clumsy international speculators, it is convenient to rescue the figure of the Roman patrician Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, whom Cato the Elder proposed as model of virtuous citizen for his patriotism and frugality.

Little do we know about the life of this great Roman politician, all of it wrapped in a majestic and suggestive legend. We get data of his cursus honorum, among others, of Tito Livio, Aurelio Victor, Dionisio of Halicarnaso and Lucio Anneo Floro. Cincinnatus, so nicknamed because of his curly hair, was born around 519 B.C., still during the Monarchy, which later would be so hateful to the Romans of lineage. Man of fortune, belonging to the gens Quinctia, Cincinnatus made his way in politics driven by his possible brother Titus Quinctius Capitolinus Barbatus, the first Quinctius that acceded to the consulate. He would do it, in total, six times.

Cincinato was forced to abandon the politics and to sell great part of his properties to pay a high bail in favor of his brilliant and intrepid son Cesón Quincio, whom he disinherited. Condemned to death in contumacy in a trial orchestrated against him by the plebeians, Caeson had to go into exile in Etruria. The permanent conflict between patricians and plebeians marked the whole degree program of our illustrious Cincinnatus as well as the evolution of the Roman Republic, that was consolidated, little by little, to the rhythm in which these tensions were surpassed. It was by then, in 445 B.C., when the law Canuleya gave validity to the marriage between patricians and plebeians.

In 460 B.C. Cincinato was elected consul substitute membe of Rome, after the death of Publius Valerius Publicola in the assault to the Capitol. During its consulate, Cincinato managed to stop with audacity to its plebeian enemies desirous to limit the consular power. Consumed his high magistracy, he returned to the agricultural works. Two years later, being the Roman army of the consul framework Minucius surrounded by the Ecus and the Volscians, the people of Rome clamored for a dictator to solve the conflict.

The tradition tells that Cincinato received to the delegation of the Senate that took him the news of his nomination while he was plowing his own lands, on the banks of the Tiber river. The Spanish neoclassical painter Juan Antonio Rivera has immortalized this moment in his oil painting Cincinato abandons the plow to dictate laws to Rome (1806). The reaction of Cincinato was immediate: he put on his toga, hung up the corresponding insignia and was acclaimed as dictator. After saying goodbye to his wife and asking her earnestly to watch over the farm, our hero crossed the Tiber in a boat facilitated by the Senate. On the other side awaited him his sons and most of the senators.

The next morning, he went to the forum, organized an army in the field of Mars and, with the financial aid of Lucius Tarquicius, whom he commissioned to lead the cavalry, managed to free the consul Minucius from the siege, who rewarded him with a gold crown and another obsidional. He took prisoner to the enemy general and the day of the victory he walked it next to him in the triumphal chariot. Passed 16 days, Cincinato abdicated of the dictatorship and returned to his farm to attend again the wild tasks.

According to the tradition, Cincinato was invested for the second time dictator in 439, being already an octogenarian, by indication of his brother Capitolino Barbado, then in his sixth consulate. The patricians, seeing that their privileges were in danger because of the conspiracies of the tribunes of the plebs, and of the threats of coup d'état of the tribune Spurio Melio, turned again to him, because of his intelligence internship, dominion of the strategy and rooted civic virtues. The chief of the cavalry, by order of Cincinato, took charge of giving death to Melio, who had been provided with weapons to manage to control the city, devastated by the famine.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus died around 430 B.C., possibly before his brother Barbatus. Dante did not hesitate to mention him twice in his Paradise, nor Petrarch in dedicating to him a biography of his illustrious Men. For George Washington, Cincinnatus was always a model to imitate and he liked to be compared with him. Under his example he took shelter when he decided to retire from politics in 1796, renouncing to a third mandate as president of the United States, at a moment in which his moral authority did not know rival. For that reason, in America, Cincinnatus continues being a reference of freedom, a symbol of civic virtuosity, that has even given name to two cities: Cincinnatus, in the State of New York, and the best known, Cincinnati, in Ohio.

People need symbols of stability, virtuous people who transmit confidence, especially in times of crisis, when things go wrong. Leaders who decide rightly and quickly when the shadows tighten. People are clamoring for cincinatos, women and men willing to leave the plow, their professional work , whatever it may be, in the service of the res publica, in the noblest sense of the term. Reliable strategists who give safe, firm, clear, demanding orders to safeguard the political community.

Spain is crying out for a Cincinnatus to free us from the Maelstrom in which Zapatero's government wants to sink us. Spain is besieged by the unemployment, the recession, the high social expenses, the indebtedness of our companies, the leave productivity and the lack of confidence in the institutions. Spain needs, today more than ever, of a Cincinato accepted and supported by the left, the center and the right, that, with the maximum favor of the political parties, serves as helmsman during this damned crisis, which destroys the coexistence. It does not even serve any more an anticipated call of elections. There is no time for it.

Our dear President Zapatero, today, is far from being a Cincinato. Still less our minister Salgado. To them it is necessary to compare them with the consul Municio, to whom the Roman dictator came to the aid. I refer to the facts. But neither is Mariano Rajoy. I am thinking rather of a Rato, an Almunia, a Solana; final, a politician with an internationally recognized auctoritas that, with a position of plenipotentiary superminister, subdues the very President of the Government, for a few months, until the storm subsides. A superminister who rubs shoulders with Merkel and Sarkozy, with Obama or with the southsuncord without the need for translators or intermediaries: live, with aplomb and conviction. With leadership. And then, once the crisis is over, after a triumphal walk, acclaimed victorious by the sovereign people, to return to the plow of their bankruptcies. A person who does not make party politics, but State politics, who does not use the crisis to put more ideological pressure, nor to generate anomie and sterile dilettantism.

There is an urgent need for a Cincinnatus with economic knowledge, who bets seriously for the workers, who enjoys the unconditional support of the businessmen and of all the social actors. A politician who does not tremble the pulse if it is a question of taking urgent measures in emergency situations. It is time for an anti-crisis czar.

Because the management of an economic hecatomb is something that is already well studied. There are thousands of books and hundreds of websites about topic. There are protocols everywhere. And they work. The first rule, the golden rule on which all experts agree, is that "whoever gets you into a crisis does not get you out of it". It is unfair to say that Zapatero has been the cause of a galloping crisis that has threatened the capitalist system as never before, but what is certain is that, in the photo of the Spanish economic crisis, ZP and his team will appear in the foreground, in the same way that Aznar continues smiling through time in the photo of the Azores. Let us look, then, among the millions of Spanish men and women for our Cincinnatus, a courageous leader who will be for all, as the great Titus Livius would say, spes unica, our last hope.