2014

XX meeting of Barcelona: strengthening the movement for Catalan and European peace

The evaluated program

This project has as a main target the strengthening of the social textile and in particular the movement for the peace in Catalonia, providing tools and a space of meeting and of exchange for the activists and people interested. On the other hand, the contents of the work of the project promote a culture of peace and therefore a model of society based on the peace, the nonviolence and enjoying collectively the human rights of everyone. In this sense, the movement for the peace also looks for how to promote institutions more compromised with the culture of peace, from the point of view of the disarmament, of the demilitarization and with a control and transparency of the international trade and in particular of the commerce of weapons and of the industries and interests that generate it.

The program has been provided with six main activities that have been developed successfully, even though the differences between the timetable and the initial plan of action and the one that finally could be executed.

The two main activities in the program were the XX Meeting of Barcelona and the XXI Meeting of Barcelona. The first one received more than 200 participants, as well as activists and international investigators. An international seminar was realized with 50 participants of 17 countries. This one helped to strengthen the link and movement for the European peace and to help the Catalan movement to weave ties and simultaneously announce its work. XXI Meeting received up to 160 participants and state the question explored in the movement anti-war, for the disarmament; and talking, specifically, about the world governance and about the existing instruments for the prevention of the war. Both acts served to specify strategies and work lines.

These activities have served to sensitize, to form and to do global incidence between diverse entities of the movement for the peace, not only in Catalan, but also European.

About the recipient population, we have also managed to achieve the quantity of population that we expected. However, it is necessary to reinforce the diffusion of the actions and its replication in the virtual space.

The project was centred on three important intervention axes: formation, sensitization and incidence. We can say that in the work of these three axes, it has been fulfilled perfectly what had been marked at the beginning:

• Formation of the movement for the peace: the actions of the project have generated arguments and reflections of high quality.
• The sensitization: the work of implementation of the proper project has also had an impact in the formation of the activists and voluntary participants once it has forced them to put into practice a collaborative work between entities while carrying out joint actions.
• Media impact: the approach of the mass communication media, both social and conventional, to the done actions or to the deep content and subject treated (within articles asked by the speakers, interviews, etc)
• Incidence of the project: it has had an impact, but it is considered that the impact will be even major in the future when the strategies and tactics have been consolidated. These tactics and strategies rose from getting together the whole activists and the movement by the peace in Catalonia and in Europe.

We can affirm that the project can be considered as a success and the whole process needed to get these results. We should also consider as a success the strengthening the Movement of the Catalan Peace and consequently the culture of peace in Catalonia. However, it is necessary to emphasize as an important obstacle the difficulty of receiving the second annuity of the program; fact that made slow down very much the execution of the second part of the plan of action, generating certain insecurity among all the participants and collaborators of the intervention.