It was said that Chile was not ready to vote for a woman, it was traditionally a sexist country. In the end, the reverse happened: the fact of being a woman became a symbol of the process of cultural change the country was undergoing.

As the old joke goes, I have all the sins together. I am a woman, a Socialist, separated and agnostic.

There has been a cultural shift. It is difficult to measure all that right now, but Chilean women have seen my presidency as a source of pride. Women are performing in jobs in Chile now that 20 or 30 years ago nobody would have dared to imagine.

You all want to know what is my dream? Very simple. To walk along the beach, holding the hand of my lover.

The challenge is for us to reinvigorate the relationship with the Chilean people and to give state institutions new legitimacy. But this is also a universal phenomenon. There's also disenchantment with politics in Europe.

Having experienced personally and through my family the tragedy of Chile is something always present in my memory. I do not want events of that nature ever to happen again, and I have dedicated an important part of my life to ensuring that and to the reunion of all Chileans.

We need to reform the constitution in Chile. The current one was written and passed in 1980 during the dictatorship. Some changes were made after the return of democracy, but its origins remain illegitimate. Instead of continuing to make fixes here and there, we need to undertake fundamental changes to our constitution to make it reflect the reality of our democratic society.