Dr. Cristina Blanco Sío-López

European Integration Historian (Universidade da Coruña)

“I personally decided to specialize in European Integration History because it offers examples of many attempts and failures and experiments of how a continent could learn a process to save itself from itself. In this respect, this case stands as a paradigm of the acceptance of the need to be kind with oneself, beyond taxing self-demands and expectations. Just being and exploring and discovering and becoming what the Spanish writer Rafael Dieste portrayed as “the amazed guests who asks so many genuine and grateful questions” (“el huesped asombrado que pregunta”). That point of departure marks the start of a continent’s journey beyond distinctive confrontational stances and a extractive-exploitative (global) past. It is based on the power of decision, namely, the stepping stone of all our big and small so very human critical junctures in search for hope.”