Last month, RMS gave a four speeches in Spain that were sponsored
by the left-wing political party Podemos.
The first was at the civic center Cotxeres de Sants, in
Barcelona, on November 12th, and was
organized by Podemos in cooperation with the Pirate Party of
Catalonia. Podemos and the Pirate Party invited RMS because they want
to introduce the general public, and in particular the public sector,
to free software. About 150 people came to hear RMS's speech "La
informática y la libertad," in which he presented the free software
philosophy and also spoke about political parties' e-participation
tools and their effects on government, democracy, citizen
participation, transparency, and privacy when the programs used are
not free.
(Photos under CC BY-SA 3.0 and courtesy of Podemos.)
Óscar Fonseca Quesada of Podemos Catalunya, who helped organize the
visit, underscored his own commitment to free software and expressed
his hope that Podemos might one day be in power and work closely with
the FSF to ensure the region's migration to free software.
Later in the month, RMS was in Bilbao, to give a
speech to a small audience at La Morada Bilbao, on November
21st. Maru Díaz, spokesperson for Podemos in the Aragonese
Corts, the regional parliament for the Spanish autonomous community of
Aragon, also spoke, about the successes and difficulties in promoting
the use and advancement of free software in Aragon.
(Photos under CC BY-SA 3.0 and courtesy of Podemos.)
In San Sebastián, right before he spoke at
the San Telmo museum, RMS showed up at the Centro Carlos Santamaría to
take questions live and in person from an audience that had just
watched a recording
of a speech he had given earlier this year, on free software in
governments.1
On November 26th, at the Moraita de Bellavista, in
Seville, RMS spoke to about 60 people, at the
invitation of the Podemos Information Technology and Communication
circle. Salvador Muñoz, speaking for Podemos, said they invited RMS
because they are "activist citizens and want new technology to serve
the common good of all society," and "to reduce the digital divide, to
spread the use of free software, and to improve democracy through IT."
"Much work remains to be done." Aside from raising awareness at the
state level, Podemos's ITC circle has started a project to catalog
recommended free software tools and applications, which they organize
by categories for use at different levels (party, circle, association,
social movement, or at the level of any group or sector interested in
transitioning to free software). "We wish to demonstrate that there
are free ("libre") alternatives for everything we wish to do with a
computer and IT."
(Photos under CC BY-SA 3.0 and courtesy of Podemos.)
Please fill out our contact form, so that we can inform you about
future events in and around Barcelona,
San
Sebastián, and Seville.
Please see www.fsf.org/events
for a full list of all of RMS's confirmed engagements, and contact rms-assist@gnu.org if you'd like
him to come speak.
Thank you to all the organizers for having hosted RMS!