Tamara Falcó will participate together with the leader of HazteOir in the reference congress of the ultra-Catholic movement
Tamara Falcó will participate at the end of this month in the World Congress of Families to be held in Mexico. This event has become a benchmark meeting for the international ultra-Catholic movement. In recent editions, held in Verona (Italy) and Budapest (Hungary), political leaders from far right formations like the former Italian minister Matteo Salvini, the president of the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d'Italia), Giorgia Meloni; and the hungarian prime minister Victor Orbán.
Ignacio Arsuaga, president of HazteOir, is a regular at this event. In fact, the international brand of your organization, CitizenGo, is one of the convening groups of the World Congress of Families. This Spanish lobbyist has become one of the most relevant actors in the international 'anti-gender' movement, with campaigns against the abortion law and LGBTI rights. Her organization is behind the bus that toured Madrid with the transphobic message "boys have a penis and girls have a vulva".
In his speech in the edition that was held in Verona in 2019, Arsuaga assured that "the natural family is being attacked all over the world." Therefore, to avoid this situation, he encouraged the attendees to pray. “Pray for the natural family, pray for our families. Trust in God and in divine Providence.” he asserted. And he sentenced: "God willing, we will win the cultural battle sooner rather than later."
For her part, the aristocrat and influencer Tamara Falcó makes her debut in this type of international gathering. She is the daughter of Isabel Preysler and the Marquis of Griñón, she inherited the title of nobility from her father after he died in March 2020 due to Covid-19. From Falcó's representative agency they confirm that the Marchioness of Griñón will attend "as a speaker, as well as as an assistant", although they do not detail what her intervention will consist of.
The presence of names linked to the nobility in ultra-Catholic movements is not new. already detailed Neil Dattaexecutive director of the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, in the report he published in June 2021 entitled The tip of the iceberg: extremist religious funders against sexual and reproductive rights. At the 2019 edition of the World Congress of Families Louis Alfonso of Bourbon, great-grandson of Francisco Franco and Alfonso XIII, participated as “VIP speaker”.
Datta recovered in that report a few words from the German sociologist Andreas Kemper to explain this link. “The 'protection of life' in this sense is the 'protection of the nobility,'” he explained in his investigation. And he went on to quote the German academic: “The link between this 'pro-life' movement and its aristocratic followers is the title. The family must be 'holy' because it guarantees family inheritance. Not only in the sense of private ownership, but also in the sense of a higher pedigree.
Along with Arsuaga and Falcó, the Spaniards who have also confirmed their attendance are Tomás Melendo, who presents himself as a doctor of Philosophy and Educational Sciences; the filmmaker Juan Manuel Cotelo; the priest William Serra; the psychiatrist Enrique Rojas and José Miguel Cubillo, former president of the Federation for Family Development in Spain.
In the program of attendees that is published on the congress website there are also representatives from Mexico, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Guatemala. Some of them lead religious organizations or initiatives such as the Institute for the Theology of the Body, the ALPHA Course for Marriages, the International Organization for the Family, the Council of Red Familia, projects on chastity or the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute.
The meeting is presented as an event to "affirm, celebrate and strengthen the family as the fundamental and natural environment key to the flourishing of mature individuals and sustainable societies." The program will start on Friday, September 30 and end on Sunday, October 2. It also details some of the topics that will be addressed. The title of some of the tables are 'Strong families, sustainable societies', 'Accompanying families in the company', 'Family and entertainment' and 'Family life'. Tickets for the general public range from $900 to $1,300.
This event is the great meeting point for ultra-Catholic organizations. Some groups, like Human Rights Campaign, have warned that this congress – in which dozens of organizations meet – is one of the “most influential” in the “export of hate”. In an interview with elDiario.es in 2019 the professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the Free University of Brussels (ULB), David Paternotte, explained that this summit helps the attending organizations to “define the agenda”.
As Datta explained in the report titled The tip of the icebergin its latest editions this summit has brought together European "populist" and "far-right" leaders, as well as "leaders of the American Christian right and anti-gender Christian actors who tend to be critical of the Vatican."
The investigation carried out by the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights detected in 2021 a rise of movements against feminism, abortion and the LGTBI collective. As revealed by this network of parliamentarians from across the continent, funding to promote an agenda against these rights has multiplied by four in a decade. It has gone from 22.2 million dollars in 2009, 22.2 million dollars were allocated to 96 million in 2018.
This institution reached this conclusion before the Supreme Court of the United States revoke the historic sentence that guaranteed the right to abortion. This ruling has encouraged and given wings to the hopes of ultra-Catholic groups to curtail sexual and reproductive rights in their respective countries.
