Students of the Universitat de València have received formation from the Information and Promotion Service (SEDI) of the academic institution. The issue chosen for the debate was “Is the West responsible of the emergence of the Islamic State?” Five thousand people from 16 Andorran, Catalan, Valencian and Balearic universities have participated in the competition. It is considered the most important speech competition in southern Europe due to the number of participants.

It is a dialectical and intellectual competition, in which several teams of students debate on a current political issue. This year it took place in the Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH). It became the capital of dialogue and debate from 11 to 19 of April.  

The formative activity contributes to the transference of knowledge among secondary, high school and superior education students. It offers them a tool from which they can consolidate necessary transversal competences for professional development such as conviction, team work, creativity, documentation, analysis, speech, planning and decision-making skills. In addition, students have a lot of experience and share both cultural and linguistic ties.

The teams have debated during the last four days in the university modality of the league. This year topic was: “Is the West responsible of the emergence of the Islamic State?” The semi-finals were disputed by the teams of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Universitat Ramon Llull, the Universitat Rovira i Virgili and the Universitat de València. The latter and Ramon Llull’s contended the great final, in which the Universitat the València obtained the victory. 

Belén Guarner (Universitat de Barcelona) has been designated as the best orator of the competition by the jury. Once the debate had finished, the president of Xarxa Vives and the Principal of UMH, Jesús Pastor, presided the Award Ceremony alongside with the chief of the jury, Pere Rostoll (leader of the political section of the Alacant journal Información) and Fani Grande (script writer, blogger, writer and professor of effective communication).

The main profile of the participants in the competition is Law (25%) and Political Sciences and Public Administration students (18%). However, other areas of study were also present in the event, such as Business Management (9%), Education and Teacher Training (8%) and Engineering (8%) among others. Regarding gender statistics, men were 57% of the overall participation.

During the past two weeks, 60 debates took place. The responsible of the deliberations was a jury formed by 28 members of the Valencian Academy of Language, the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona, Escola Valenciana and other professionals of the fields of education, communication and interpretation.