Now that Adolfo Suarez's life has definitively come to an end, the different media will abound with assessments of his political work: debatable from a historical analysis, just as they were already subject to strong discussion during his own presidency of the government between July 1976 and January 1981. The Transition is not in fashion. Due to these pendulum swings that usually occur in historiography, a period in which it was glorified -perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly- has been followed by another of a revisionist nature that blames the Transition, and the way it was carried out, for most of our current ills, which are not few.

As a leading figure of those years, the name of Adolfo Suárez is already associated with the democratic transition. The defenders of his bequest will emphasize his determination to achieve the transition from dictatorship to democracy in a basically peaceful manner. His detractors or critics will focus on the conditioning elements of this process, starting with the fact that the main designers of the political reform were people from Franco's regime: Torcuato Fernández-Miranda, Adolfo Suárez and King Juan Carlos himself, after all, appointed successor by Franco.

In the eyes of many analysts of the time, Suarez did not seem to have the most suitable profile to lead the task, entrusted by the King. Moreover, unlike other men who applied for that task or who were loved by the incipient public opinion of the time, he was hardly known. That is why he became the most unexpected star of the transition. His government program was summed up in his first television appearance: "That the governments of the future be the result of the free will of the majority of Spaniards". If we have to judge him by the wording of that specific goal he set himself, it is obvious to say that he succeeded because since then this has been the fundamental rule of our democracy.

In order to properly assess his political action in those delicate moments, it must be remembered that the reception of his appointment as President of the Government was between lukewarm and disappointed within Spain and basically skeptical for the main newspapers of reference letter international. He did not have it easy, but there is little doubt about his efforts: achieving the self-dissolution of the Francoist Cortes, the secret negotiations with Santiago Carrillo for the legalization of the PCE, stoically enduring the enmity of the ultra-right who saw him as a traitor, his fortitude in the sad afternoon-night of 23-F. He was certainly a better statesman than a party man, and that is why the UCD that was organized around him ended up devouring him with the acquiescence of the rest of the parties and most of the public opinion.

Suarez echoed the King's main message: "our future will be based on an effective consensus of national harmony". That call for reconciliation guided his steps and, perhaps, today we could all learn a little of that spirit to apply it, on instructions different because the time we live in is different, to our current problems.