RMS was at the Institut Ausiàs March, in Barcelona, on November 11^th, to give his speech
“El Software Libre y tu libertad” to over 300 people.

(Photos under CC BY-SA 3.0 and courtesy of the Institue Ausiàs March.)

Later in the month, on November 26^th, he was in Seville, at the University of Seville's Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Informática, to speak at SecAdmin, an event that seeks to “combine system administration and information security and provide its attendees with knowledge and opportunities for professional development” and sharing and networking. Over 400 people attended his speech.

(Photos under CC BY-SA 3.0 and courtesy of SecAdmin.)

Then, on November 29^th, RMS was in Salamanca, to give his speech “El Software Libre en la ética y en la práctica” to an audience of about 600 people. According to Emilio Cobos Álvarez, who organized the visit, “free software adoption is still a ways away at the university, where, for instance, certain compulsory courses require the use of proprietary software to complete the corresponding work (and to pass the course), and the use of certain Google services for mail and authentication is completely necessary.” Free software advocates at the school invited RMS “in the hopes that his energy and his speech would improve free software adoption at the USAL.” As a result of his visit, some students and professors have just formed Libre-USAL, a group that aims to provide free alternatives within the university. Libre-USAL is still in its incipient stages, and the members are “working on setting up all the infrastructure, but [they] hope be able to help.”

(Photos under CC BY-SA 3.0 and courtesy of Emilio Cobos Álvarez.
More photos available here.)

And, finally, RMS ended the month speaking at the University of Alcalá's Escuela Politécnica Superior, in Alcalá de Henares, on November 30^th.¹

Please fill out our contact form, so that we can inform you about future events in and around Barcelona, Seville, Salamanca, and Alcalá de Henares. 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 the organizers for having hosted RMS!

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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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RMS was in Pamplona on November 22^nd, to give his speech “​El software Libre para tu privacidad y tu control de tu informática,” as part of European Dialogues, a project "designed to foment and promote reflection and debate," a "space in which the citizenry can gather and exchange ideas." The talk was in Spanish, with simultaneous translation into Basque, and took place in the Baluarte Sala de Cámara, before over 350 people—students, alumns, politicians, representatives of nongovernment organizations, and professionals.

Two days later, again as part of European Dialogues, RMS gave the same speech at the San Telmo museum in San Sebastián.”¹

(Photos under CC BY-SA 3.0 and courtesy of European Dialogues.)

Katerina Yiannibas, Globernance (one of the sponsors of the talk and an institution for democratic governance) Project Manager and Director of European Dialogues, remarked:

The relationship between a European citizen and an ever increasingly complex stack of local, regional, national, and supranational governance merits a more diligent consideration of fundamental values and liberties. We invited Richard Stallman to join our debate and speak on the issue of privacy and one's control over one's data. The recent reform of EU data-protection rules shows that there is more work to be done to protect our individual liberty. Mr. Stallman, in an informative yet surprisingly entertaining intervention, reminded us that maintaining democracy and protecting the right to protest requires individual privacy vis-a-vis the State. The message he left us with was that we needn't become a hero, just less of a coward.

Please fill out our contact form, so that we can inform you about future events in and around Pamplona and San Sebastián. 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 the organizers for having hosted RMS!

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