The event that brought together former presidents, intellectuals, academics and opinion leaders, was inaugurated on May 20 in Madrid with the “Dinner for Freedom”, which marked the beginning of three days of exchange of ideas and reaffirmation of values.
“We are facing a civilizational crisis where politics cannot be abandoned,” said Gutiérrez, also warned about the progress of authoritarianism and populism in Latin America, called to recover confidence in politics through example and integrity, evoked the moral and intellectual legacy of Mario Vargas Llosa and highlighted the role of figures such as Edmundo González Urrutia in the defense of democracy.
Álvaro Vargas Llosa, vice president of the International Foundation for Freedom, and Iván Duque, former president of Colombia, were the other speakers of the evening. Both agreed to point out the need to persevere to populist threats and strengthen spaces of democratic articulation such as the Freedom and Democracy Group.
The next day, in the emblematic Athenaeum of Madrid, Gutiérrez participated in the presentation of the book The Risky Polemicist, a collective work in tribute to Mario Vargas Llosa edited by the FIL. There, the president of Foundation Freedom and Development highlighted the validity of the liberal thought of the Peruvian author and reaffirmed the commitment of the Freedom and Democracy Group with the construction of a free, institutional and plural Latin America.
“We need to sustain the liberal principles against the ideological confusion that affects the elites and citizens,” Gutiérrez added before an auditorium that brought together former presidents, parliamentarians, writers and academics.
The culminating day took place on May 22 at the Campoamor Theater in Oviedo, where Gutiérrez officially opened the VI Citizen Meeting against one thousand two hundred attendees. Prior to the event, he accompanied the former presidents invited on an official visit to the Parliament of the Principality of Asturias, where they were received by the local authorities. The gesture reinforced the institutional nature of the meeting and historical links between Spain and Latin America.
In his opening speech in Oviedo, Gutiérrez was categorical: “Freedom is a word injured in Latin America. We live under the false freedom of despots, which deform it, manipulate it and make it a tool for submission.” In response to this deterioration, he announced the creation of a permanent academic forum that allows to discuss ideas and transform them into concrete proposals for the region.
During the meeting, Gutiérrez also moderated the first panel, politics and development: two sides of the same currency, along with former presidents José María Aznar, Felipe Calderón, Mauricio Macri and Andrés Pastrana. Aznar emphasized that “the crises we face are fundamentally political,” while Calderón warned about the loss of citizen confidence in the democracies of the region.
The activities were completed with thematic panels on authoritarian populism, political leadership, democratic values and technological challenges, with the participation of figures such as Álvaro Vargas Llosa, Laura Chinchilla, Luis Lacalle Pou, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, Lorent Saleh, Eduardo Fernández, Agustín Antonetti, Juan Luis Cebrián, Jamil Mahán, Brian Ware Piro and Félix Sanz Roldán, as well as prominent moderators such as Claudia Gurisatti, José Suárez and DC Page.
The VI Citizen Meeting culminated with a hopeful message by Gutiérrez: “Iberoamerica does not need nostalgia, it needs a new shared ideal. There is future and is in our hands.”