On Saturday 12th of September, the VII Congress of the Humanist Party of Spain took place in a public institution of Madrid. With a programme based on nine papers written about different subjects and groups of interchange, the Congress, which was open to the participation of all members of the Humanist Party as well as other organisations and friends, helped to go deeper in the analysis of the current moment and in the recognition of points of agreement for the construction of a new future.
“We are sure that we are going to encounter all those who defend the principle that we, the people, are the most important value,” said Eva Ubago, General Secretary of the Humanist Party in Spain in her welcoming address to the fifty or so people who participated in person in the Congress. It was also possible to follow and interact with the congress through streaming and skype.
The Congress was greeted by Marcos Palomo of The Left (Workers Party), Beatriz Talegón of “We are Left”, the organisations Convergence of Cultures and the Community for Human Development. In addition, Ángel Viviente from Civil Convocation and Antonio Cortés from Open Left came to visit the institution where the event took place in order to transmit their support and share their point of view and desire to achieve a convergence of the left.
The analysis of the present moment in politics that we are going through, with the general election scheduled for the month of December, and processes of “convergence” in progress formed part of several papers and debates. All this while trying to not lose focus on the social and historical processes that, in any case, change and accelerate every day. “The role of the Humanist Party in this moment must be to defend the unity of the entire left, seeking a broad convergence and not greater fragmentation,” was the synthesis of the discussions in one group, while subsequently warning of the need to make efforts to attempt to interpret historical processes without being carried away by “opportunism” or the “illusion of an apparent revolution that has not yet begun.”
“We are speaking about a profound revolution that puts people as the highest value and not the interests of a few, valuing this ‘something more than a party’ slogan that accompanies our name,” said Eva in her closing remarks to the Congress. “Politics will therefore be, the expression of a humanising and planetarising change. It will be that place from where we as human beings will generously be able to make a common front, understand one another and organise ourselves to build a future that connects with our best aspirations.”
Papers
Among the papers presented in the Congress (which are available on the party’s website) is information about campaigns that Humanist Party base teams are carrying out such as the denunciation of the abuse of psycho-pharmaceutical drugs on children (Carabanchel team), and the gathering of signatures in favour of a Humanist Neighbourhood Plan (Asturias team), together with other proposals and campaigns given in support of immigrants and refugees set out in papers such as “The Law of Hospitality” and “Towards the Universal Human Nation” from the teams in La Coruña, Asturias and Cantabria. There were also ideological reflections, contributions for how to improve aspects such as the party’s external communication and organisational proposals, some of which will be submitted to a vote by all full members.
