The second Iberosphere Summit concluded in Madrid on Tuesday, October 11th, following two days of conferences and panels delivered by prominent thinkers and politicians from Spain, North and South America, and Europe on the topic of freedom.
The summit is sponsored by ECR-EuroLat, an alliance of the EU political party European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and conservative Latin American leaders. For this second summit they gathered under the theme, ‘The Counteroffensive for Freedom Has Begun.’
Hermann Tertsch, MEP and head of the VOX delegation in the EU parliament, opened the summit, explaining that they had gathered to insist “on the need for a conservative and firm response to what Ibero-America is suffering, in the face of the seizure of power by narco-communism by means of democratic principles to dismantle the institutions and impose a totalitarian narrative.”
Tertsch also explained that some of the invited South American leaders were not able to attend in person due to security concerns.
“They have been advised not to come to Spain,” he said. “They are concerned about the pending legal proceedings in the narco-dictatorships where they live and they do not have full guarantees that they will be as safe in Spain as some of [Nichols] Maduro’s friends.”
Tertsch went on to state that the goal of the summit was to go beyond political discourse.
“We are going to deal with the main aspects of the activity of our enemies, not political opponents, because they use many illicit mechanisms to achieve their ends in a perfect symbiosis of political forces such as the Sao Paulo Forum and organised crime—drug trafficking—which is responsible for greasing this entire plot,” he said. “What we are dealing with is not other people who have a slightly different opinion on the redistribution of wealth. No. We are talking about a general project of absolute power by criminal organisations that want to come to power and never return it.”
He also highlighted the need for Europeans to defend the freedom of Americans.
“This challenge is key for Europe,” he said. “Because the Ibero-American continent is also the greatest dam against totalitarianism. We need all of America to be democratic in order to also defend a democratic Europe in the future.”
Santiago Abascal, president of VOX, closed the summit.
He first warned that under the current government, Spain was headed towards a totalitarianism akin to that already suffered in countries such as Venezuela and Nicaragua. He referred specifically to the situation in the country’s judiciary, in which the socialist-led government has blocked judicial appointments and much-needed reforms in an attempt to use the courts for its political agenda.
“There is a plan so that what has been done in other places, in Ibero-America, is done in Spain,” he warned. “We have to know that they have a plan to end the separation of powers.”
He also lamented that “Europe is turning its back on Ibero-America,” allowing its potential to be wasted.
He lamented that the “part of the world in which freedoms have advanced the most, in which democracies have reached a greater degree of perfection,”—Ibero-America the United States, Europe—is, sadly, “degrading.” He cited Venezuela and Argentina as the “perfect examples” of how socialism corrupts society.
He ended with a call for unity among the conservatives, liberals, patriots, reformists, and even “moderate progressives who believe in democracy.”
The complete summit is available online on VOX Europe’s YouTube channel.
