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 12^th, 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 21^st. 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 26^th, 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!

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