"Can you imagine a world without knives? The same goes for cell phones."

Barcelona"How can social media connect us, if using a cell phone at the table is rude?" asks a girl, as if it were a hand-to-hand battle between gladiators and she'd just disarmed her opponent, who, eager to buy time to devise a counterattack, responds with a simple but effective: "How?"

The setting is the Última Palabra (Final Word), the Catalan speech competition that aims to promote communication skills among vocational training (FP) students. The finalist teams are announced just before the grand finale, so the contestants don't know if they'll have to defend their school until the moment of the battle.

The presenter takes the stage, the auditorium lights go down, and the audience prepares for the big announcement. The finalists are the Food Institute and the INS Barcelona School of Hospitality and Tourism. Rut Martínez and Ahlam Sefiani, two of the four members of the first team, explain that they prepared for the debate by gathering data and staging mock debates in which they answer hypothetical questions to be prepared, and above all, by using a lot of creativity.

Surprise positioning

The teams are randomly chosen to position themselves for or against social media, and the match begins. The remaining students not participating in the final group together in the audience by school and roar to cheer on their classmates, as if the contest were about who can cheer the loudest rather than who can present the best oratory.

The team from the School of Hospitality and Tourism must defend the use of social media, and they begin their presentation by showing a knife, not threatening anyone, but rather extolling their everyday life. "Can you imagine a world without knives? Well, we shouldn't imagine a world without cell phones, either."

At the end of the speech, the rivals attack with questions that attempt to dismantle their arguments, and then they give their presentation to defend the role they have been assigned: to be against the use of social media. INS dels Aliments' creativity amazed the audience by using a red thread to unite the students and represent the connection created by social media. The surprise came when they threw the ball of thread off the stage to represent the isolation social media causes.

Both teams attack each other with harrowing questions. They react quickly when they are speechless, changing the subject and acting confidently as if nothing had happened, but they also use personal stories to seek empathy from the jury.

The jury praises the fair play of the participants and the critical thinking of the arguments, such as the defense of apps that focus on mental health or the denunciation of the loneliness that virtual isolation via mobile can cause despite being physically in company. But in the end, only one institute can emerge victorious: the INS Barcelona School of Hospitality and Tourism.