The student organization Deba-t.org has been forced to suspend an electoral debate at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona this Thursday, after half an hour of tension between students and supporters of Vox and other far-right Spanishist organizations such as S’ha Finish, in an event attended by, among others, the PP candidate, Alejandro Fernández, and the number 2 for the CUP, Laure Vega. For the PSC there was Esther Niubó; by ERC, Juli Fernández; by Junts, Glòria Freixa; by Comuns-Sumar, Lluís Mijoler, and by Cs, David Andrés.
As explained by sources from the organization, the spokesperson for Vox in Catalonia, Joan Garriga, whose party had not been invited to the event in compliance with the decision of the Deba-t.org assembly not to accept the extreme right at the event, has entered the auditorium where the debate was going to take place to demand his presence, after a resolution of the Provincial Electoral Board on Tuesday forced Vox to be included in the event.
Garriga has left the auditorium but a group of young people has remained in the audience with the aim of boycotting the debate if Vox did not participate. After several attempts to resume it, amidst cries, the Deba-t organization has decided to cancel it in order to maintain the mandate of its assembly not to allow the extreme right to participate.
All this amid cries of “Fascists out of the university” by some students and criticism, chants and expletives by others for the organization’s refusal to include Garriga in the debate.
Pol Turu, general secretary of Deba-t.org, explained to La Vanguardia that in response to the challenge accepted by the Provincial Electoral Board, they filed an appeal to the Central Electoral Board, alleging that their entity is private and, therefore, not Article 66 of the electoral law (Loreg) should be applied to it, which obliges publicly owned media to respect “political and social pluralism, as well as informational neutrality.” With this, advised by their lawyers, they planned to avoid the presence of Vox.
The Provincial Electoral Board had applied that article to Deba-t by considering that entity as a university community and consequently of a public nature, something with which Turu does not agree. “Our registered office is outside the UPF, the UPF has no say in our actions,” warned the head of Deba-t, calling what happened “intolerable.”
