The issue of quality of public debate in Spain was proposed on the assumption that issues of common interest are usually very difficult to debate in Spain, despite an institutional framework that, broadly speaking, favours debate: a liberal democracy, four decades old, which allows full expression for all; an education system The EU has a long-established system of education for the vast majority of the population; a pluralistic media; a civil society with a certain degree of mobilisation; a market economy that continually raises questions of debate, opening up channels for debate; and, in general, a culture of tolerance.
Essentially, participants accepted, explicitly or implicitly, a diagnosis of the quality of public debate in Spain that emphasises its inadequacies, in (usually implicit) comparison with a sort of ideal type of public debate and/or with what is known, more or less directly, about the functioning of the public sphere in other Western countries (perhaps Anglo-Saxon and Central and Northern European), and, in any case, in view of what would be required by the seriousness of the problems Spain is facing.