A possible victory for López Obrador next Sunday represents a risk for governability, a democratic setback in institutional strengthening and the rule of law, and an advance of authoritarian populism to the detriment of the free market and individual freedom with an impact on all of Latin America.

Many Nicaraguan citizens are suffering repressing actions resulting from an extractive regime that struggles to survive and remain in power. The situation has put the country on the ropes and today the exist is at least complex. Al those of us who believe in democracy, the rule of law and freedom  must contribute to the “internationalization” of the Nicaraguan question.

The Valencian Community is facing an extremely important challenge. It must choose between consolidating an open and modern society, committed to projects on a national scale, or abandoning itself to a local policy at the service of spurious interests, to a centrifugal passion where sectarian and exclusionary practices rule.

El secretario general de la Organización de Estados Americanos, Luis Almagro, ha recibido el Premio FAES de la Libertad por su firme defensa de los valores democráticos en América Latina y el apoyo a las fuerzas políticas democráticas en Venezuela.

The PSOE's proposal of law to amend the so-called' “Ley de memoria histórica” is his ace up their sleeves that the Socialists are saving to respond to the intentions of Podemos in their quest to snatch the 'anti-Franco' flag from them. The journalist Pedro Corral, a PP councilor in Madrid, describes the proposal as "absolutely shattering", and argues in these FAES Papers that it is "the last burden to sweep away the constitutional system".

November 9, 2004 was the fifteenth anniversary of the ?fall? of the Berlin Wall. To commemorate the event, the FAES Foundation organized a series of lectures called ?The Freedom Revolution?, in which twelve figures from the political and intellectual world in the East and West took part. The series was coordinated by Ana Palacio, a member of the Spanish Parliament and former Minister for Foreign Affairs, and it ran from November 2004 to May 2005.One of the main theses of the ?Freedom Revolution? is that the Berlin Wall did not collapse of its own accord. The Wall was pulled down by the determination of people who risked their lives in order to regain their freedom. If the Wall fell it was also because of the steadfastness of a generation of politicians who were determined to stop the advance of totalitarian tyranny despite of the incomprehension of a large proportion of intellectuals in the West. These efforts helped to bring freedom and peace to the other side of the Iron Curtain.Some of the eye witnesses of that time, many of whom played key roles in the process, took part in the lecture series and explained their vision of events and their response. Helmut Kohl, Bronislaw Geremek, Giovanni Sartori, Nicolas Baverez, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Jesús Huerta de Soto, Francis Fukuyama, Guy Sorman, André Glucksmann, Richard Perle, Joseph Weiler and Christopher DeMuth took us through what happened in the Freedom Revolution. Their words, their memories and their teachings, given in the Great Hall of San Pablo-CEU University, are gathered together in this volume, which also includes the introductions made by José María Aznar, AnaPalacio and José María Lassalle.The FAES Foundation would like to give special thanks to Noah Clarke, Carmelo López-Arias, Elena Segura, Jessica Zorogastua and Miguel Ángel Quintanilla Navarro for their work in putting together this publication.We would also like to thank the Rector of San Pablo-CEU University, José Alberto Parejo Gámir, for the magnificent facilities offered by the university, which made this lecture series possible.

Europe is in the throes of two simultaneous crises: on the one hand, it is suffering from a political crisis, a crisis of leadership, one that has led to constitutional failure; on the other, it is suffering from a loss of identity, a phenomenon that results in cultural relativism. Marcello Pera, Speaker of the Italian Senate and Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Pisa, delivered a conference entitled “Strength of Identity” during the course of the FAES Campus 2005, a paper which the FAES Foundation is now publishing. Also known as the co-author of the book Senza Radici (“Without Roots”) alongside Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Professor Pera urges European culture to proudly recall and reaffirm its origins and its universal democratic principles: freedom, equality and tolerance. In this respect, Europe must recognise the intrinsic value of a civilisation, Western civilisation, that has given the world so many universal ideas. “Europe must be aware of the moral superiority of a series of values that have prevailed over centuries and that have produced beneficial results wherever they have become established”.