At the opening ceremony, which was held at the Paraninfo of La Nau, the University of Valencia Student's Delegate, Manuel González, welcomed the twelve student teams that have deduced to participate in the final phase of the University Debating League 2023 of the Vives Network. Then, the chief judges Fani Grande and Vincent Rebollar recalled the details about the general functioning of the League, the groups and teams, as well as the classifications and the development of the debates. Carles Padilla, Vice Rector for Internationalisation and Multilingualism, also joined in the welcome on behalf of the University of Valencia and highlighted the importance of the objectives of the Debate League: " to promote orality, dialogue and argumentation" in context where everything is moving fast and it is necessary to be well informed and " to contribute to normalising the use of Catalan in formal environments".

The competition starts with a preliminary round between all the participating teams. Then, on the last day, the semi-finals and the grand final will take place between the two teams with the highest scores.

For three days, dozens of students from 12 universities will take part in this public speaking competition, which aims to promote the use of the spoken word, dialogue and the exchange of ideas, as well as to create a space for training in their own language. This year, teams from the following Xarxa Vives universities will be taking part in the competition:

• University of  Alicante
• University Autònoma of Barcelona
• University of Barcelona
• University of Girona
• University of the Balearic Islands 
• University Jaume I
• University of Lleida
• Polytechnic University of Valencia
• University Pompeu Fabra
• University Ramon Llull
• University Rovira i Virgili
• University of Valencia

"Is tourism sustainable? The participating teams will have to answer this question, defending both the pro and the anti position. The competition jury, made up of professionals from the fields of culture, education and journalism, will evaluate each debate according to the quality of the interventions and the soundness of the arguments, as well as the degree of mastery of the subject, the communicative fluency of the participants and the staging.

In this edition, the students came from the following academic disciplines: Law (32%), Political Science (11%), International Relations (7%), Business Administration and Management (7%), Catalan Philology (4%), Economics (4%) and Geography (3%), among other degrees.

The University Debate League is a dialectic competition between teams of university students who debate on a controversial and topical issue. Since 2005, the competition has been promoting the use of the word and skills such as teamwork, documentation, critical analysis and argumentation among university students.

The activity, organised by the Xarxa Vives Universities, has the support of the Directorate General of Language Policy and Multilingualism Management of the Valencian Genererality and the Department of Education of the Generality of Catalonia. In the organisation of the final phase at the University of Valencia, it has the collaboration of the Students Delegation and the Information and Promotion Service,as well as other UV services: the TAU, UVComunica and the La Nau Cultural Center.