/19.02.15/.- El Grupo Popular en el Congreso ha presentado una Proposición no de Ley, para su debate en el Pleno de la Cámara, relativa a reclamar la liberación inmediata del dirigente de la oposición venezolana Leopoldo López. La ponente de la iniciativa es la directora del Área de Internacional de la Fundación FAES y diputada del GPP, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo.

/18.02.15/.- José María Aznar has demanded today the ‘immediate release’ of the Venezuelan opposition leader, Leopoldo López, in ‘a very clear and decisive manner,’ on the first anniversary of his ‘unreasonable and arbitrary’ arrest and imprisonment by the regime of Nicolás Maduro.

Who killed Joseba Pagazaurtundúa? Why? What for? We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, shall never forget. But there are many people in Spain with a short memory and a weak spirit. Joseba was murdered by the dark cohorts of those who now govern in Andoain, in San Sebastian and in so many other towns of the Basque Country. They killed him because of his untainted defence of Spain as a nation of free and equal citizens. They wanted to spread suffering across society in order to defeat democracy; in order to defeat a political order that Spaniards had thought necessary and together had made possible. This is the story. And this is how we will continue to tell it, against forgetfulness and against that form of political tacticism which is neither ethically justifiable nor electorally...

The editor and cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo surely believed that publishing cartoons of Muhammad disowning the jihadists of the ISIS or Islamic State was an obligation to defend the sacred liberal principle of freedom of expression. I don't think they realised that, in fact, they were sticking their head out of the trenches of the civilizational war between modernity and barbarism which, in the end, is what they have died for. The issue is that, in Europe, we still refuse to understand the nature of the threat that we're facing. This is not about publishing or not some satirical images, but about thinking or not that Allah is our God and Muhammad its prophet. As we have seen ever since the Islamic State launched its offensive on Iraq, back in June, what awaits unbelievers is clear and...

José María Aznar and Sebastián Piñera have written an open letter in defense of the freedom and the rights of all Venezuelan Democrats. Aznar and Piñera have signed this letter after learning that the Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado, will be taken to court accused of 'conspiring to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro'. They have also denounced the illegal detention of Leopoldo López, another opposition leader, and the constant political and legal pressure exerted on all the Venezuelan opposition.

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”.