Pérez-Reverte and Vigorra postpone the conference on the Civil War from which David Uclés had withdrawn.
The organizers denounce the pressure exerted on social media by "far-left groups"
BarcelonaThe writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte and the journalist Jesús Vigorra, organizers of the conference 1936: The war we all lostThe conference, which was scheduled to take place from February 2nd to 5th at the Cajasol Foundation in Seville, has been postponed until autumn. "The intention expressed on social media by far-left groups, proposing violent demonstrations in front of the venue, has led us to advise Cajasol to postpone the announced debates," Pérez-Reverte and Vigorra said in a statement reported by EFE. The conference made headlines a few days ago when writer David Uclés withdrew upon seeing that former PP president José María Aznar and one of the founders of Vox, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, were among the speakers. "Aznar is one of the people who has done the most physical harm to the Spanish people recently, and Espinosa de los Monteros co-founded a party that denies my freedom of expression and my right to exist, and that defends values I do not share and against which I fight," said Uclés, the author of the novel The peninsula of empty houses and thelatest winner of the Nadal Prize by The City of Lights. The Cajasol Foundation has confirmed the postponement in a statement explaining that "in recent days, several participants have announced their withdrawal from the program." "This situation substantially alters the content of the conference, as well as the balance of voices and approaches that we consider essential to guarantee a diverse and representative cultural debate." According to the foundation, these last-minute withdrawals have caused "organizational problems that make postponing the conference until autumn reasonable," thus allowing a "reasonable amount of time" to reorganize it. Pérez-Reverte and Vigorra denounce "an intolerable campaign of pressure from Podemos and affiliated media on some of the participants" to force them to withdraw from a conference whose content they "were perfectly aware of."
