How we celebrate "I Love Free Software Day" in Barcelona, Spain
The annual "I Love Free Software Day" celebration, on 14 February, acknowledges all Free Software
contributors for their commitment to the four freedoms (to use, study, share and improve Free Software).
The Free Software contributors’ dedication is amazing and safeguards our software freedom. We want to
thank all of you for work to Free Software <3
Since we began organising events in Europe together with the FSFE is local groups for the
"I Love Free Software Day", Barcelona has regularly been taking part. The Barcelona based
local group is a mix of people contributing and developing KDE and Free Software
friends from Catalonia. Known as "Barcelona Free Software", they do very great and amazing events. Over time
it was inspiring to see how the events evolved, from
company related gatherings to independent
group meetings with the opportunity to welcome new Free Software enthusiasts.
FSFE: Hello Albert, thank you so much for taking the time and answering our questions.
It is a pleasure to do this interview with you. You are the coordinator of the Barcelona local group,
which is also very much connected with KDE. Can you tell us a bit more about this group, and where the
connection to KDE comes from?
Albert, from the Barcelona local group: BlueSystems, one of the companies employing
people to do KDE work, opened an office in Barcelona a few years ago. At some point, people from that group
said “Ok, we already know everyone in Barcelona that does KDE things, so let’s expand to Free Software and
make new friends”, and that’s how Barcelona Free Software was born.
Since the original folks were from KDE, if some kind of official paperwork was needed, be it for
renting something or getting a small grant or sponsorship, it was very easy to use the KDE España
association. To this day KDE España still handles all the legal stuff for us. We are very grateful to them!
FSFE: How many people are active in the group?
Albert: At this point I would say there are about four of us doing general coordination
work and a similar amount helping when they can. The number of people who come to our activities is quite
hard to measure, but I would say in a year we get around 100 different people attending.
FSFE: What are the usual activities the Barcelona local group does?
Albert: We do a monthly meetup, except for the summer break in July and August.
There we are focusing on a wide range of topics around Free Software and adjacent Free Knowledge and
Free Hardware.
For example this last year we have had talks about VLC, about a CPU being developed in the Barcelona
Super Computing Center, about a Free Software/Hardware combination to measure sports performance and
many more.
This wide range of topics allows us to foster a thriving local community that welcomes both Free Software
enthusiasts and curious newcomers, while at the same time attracting profiles from other communities with
whom to carry out collaborations.
FSFE: When was the first time you celebrated “I Love Free Software Day”, and how did it work out?
Albert: We first celebrated I Love Free Software Day in 2019, and it was quite a success;
that year I think we even got a local company to sponsor part of the cost of food and drinks. We also learned
that different people have different expectations and that while we had made it clear, at least we thought,
that it was a “let’s socialize” event, we got a couple of people who left when they realized there was no
presentation, so since that day we have tried to make sure there’s a good mix of “learning” and “socializing”.
FSFE: How did the celebration of “I Love Free Software Day” evolve over
the next years, and what was your personal highlight while celebrating this special day?
Albert: 2021 was definitely a challenge since in Barcelona we still could not
gather in big groups, so we did something online and I think it worked relatively well. The rest of
the years we learned from our “mistake” from the first time in 2019, and we make sure there is a good
talk at the beginning so people that want to learn more about Free Software get to do it and then a
good part of socializing too, since we feel it goes very well with the “Let’s appreciate Free Software”
focus of the “I Love Free Software Day” event.
"I Love Free Software Day" celebrations in Barcelona.
FSFE: What did you do for I Love Free Software Day 2025?
Albert: We gathered at Akasha Hub, a Free Software friendly self-managed community;
we did a small presentation about Free Software and used the game-like materials that FSFE had produced
to test the knowledge of the attendees and learn some things we did not know about the big world of
Free Software.
Albert at the "I Love Free Software Day" celebrations in Barcelona, 2025.
FSFE: What would you recommend to others when they want to organise
“I Love Free Software Day” celebrations, and what are pitfalls you would say should be avoided?
Albert: My main takeaways from the several years are:
- Have a good mix of presentations/talks and socializing/party. Different people are going
to want different things but if you have a good mix of both everyone will be relatively happy.
- Make sure the place you’re doing the event is relatively easy to get to. We have not had this
problem with the I Love Free Software Day events, but some of our other events were in “Go to this
building, then to 7th floor and 3rd door on the left, and there you will find a sign and also you
will need to give ID to the person at the door” and we definitely felt that attendance would have
been better if the instructions to get there did not feel like an Escape Room game.
- Confirm a few of the regulars will show up; this way if the event does not attract
lots of new people, at least you still get to socialize with your usual friends.
- Mention that there will be food, if you are having food; of course, do not lie
if you do not :D. We make most of our events quite close to dinner time, and if
potential attendees know there will be food they will be less stressed about having
to find a plan for food in a part of the city they maybe do not know that well. In this
regard we want to thank the FSFE for sponsoring food for the Barcelona event this past couple of years.
FSFE: Why do you think I Love Free Software Day is important and why should
everybody be celebrating this day?
Albert: I truly believe in the power of saying “Thank You”. Free Software developers
are usually in a loop of bug reports and feature requests by users. We as users often see what is broken
or what is missing, so we will communicate that to the developers, usually failing to send a message of
how awesome the software is. This is why celebrating I Love Free Software Day and taking the time to say
“Thank you” to the developers and projects we depend on is important; we need to break the cycle of
negativity that sometimes the developers of Free Software are stuck in.
FSFE: Do you already have plans for celebrating “I Love Free Software Day 2026”?
Albert: We will most surely celebrate in 2026 too. We have not started planning yet,
so if anyone from the Barcelona area wants to help, please talk to us!
FSFE: Albert, thank you very much for your time!
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