Confidence and hope. These are the words I address to all of you, to all those who live here, to all those who work here, and to all those who went out all over the world in search of the better life that Portugal denied them. It is true. It is true that the month is too long for the wages to last. It is true that we face the drama of access to housing, access to healthcare, and a shortage of teachers. It is true that there is a lack of nurseries, care homes, low pensions and retirement benefits, and that often only overtime and double jobs make it possible to get by.

But the strength of those who have worked all their lives, the strength of the people and the strength of youth and, above all, the strength of those who produce wealth, placed at their service and at the service of their rights, is a huge force, as the general strike has shown. Together, they rejected the labour package and affirmed the path that must be followed: wages, rights, dignity, respect. May this huge strength take their rights into their own hands and impose, once and for all, the policy that serves them, as enshrined in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.

To achieve this, we are counting on our candidate, António Filipe, in the elections for President of the Republic. Work, rights, development, sovereignty, a fair life, progress and peace. This is what is needed and this is what we are entitled to. And it is for all this that we are fighting with great confidence and with great hope.

Our problem is not a lack of enthusiasm. Our problem is not a lack of ability. Our problem is not a lack of means or resources. Our problem is the lack of wages, the lack of pensions, the lack of nurseries, the lack of care homes, the lack of access to healthcare, the lack of doctors, the lack of teachers, the lack of housing. That is the real problem with this boring pace. Our pace is the pace of precariousness, to which they want to add the pace of low wages, they want to squeeze us even more, they want even more overtime, more working hours, less time for our own lives and for our children.

It is this boring pace that must be addressed. And the huge strength of the workers' struggle, the huge strength of the youth's struggle, the huge strength of our people's struggle, has already demonstrated and will continue to demonstrate that, if committed to their service, if committed to their rights, it will be possible to achieve the better life to which we are entitled. It is with this confidence and this hope that we face the New Year.