The first “Catalonia Progressive Forum” is now reality. On the 10th and 11th of June we held the first international meeting of progressive forces in Barcelona, promoted and organized by Esquerra. This first edition brought together 14 political parties from Europe and America, all of them on the progressive spectrum.

The Forum debates revolved around the motto for this first gathering, “No stepping back: standing for democracy in the 21st century.” In four different round tables—the first of which was inaugural on Friday, and three on Saturday—we discussed the main challenges facing our democracies, how to protect democracy from populism and the far-right, and how to deepen and improve its mechanisms, institutions and the protection of rights. To conclude the gathering, we issued the joint “Declaration of Barcelona on the Defence of Democracy,” a statement that defends the need to join forces among the progressives in the face the rise of the far right, and to defend the right to self-determination of peoples, a right democracies are duty-bound to protect.

We can make a very positive balance of this first edition, although new paths are obviously always untravelled. This balance was shared by the eighty attendees and representatives of the political forces present at the meeting.

Our hope is that the Catalonia Progressive Forum—which Esquerra plans to be biannual—will be the international meeting point not only to discuss and reflect together on the priority issues of the Left, but also to establish ties and bonds with those parties and movements from other countries with whom we have so much in common. The Catalonia Progressive Forum is thus definitively on our agenda.

You can watch all the speeches of the Catalonia Progressive Forum here. 

Jordi Solé

Secretary for International Affairs and Member of the European Parliament