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The Invisible College of Covadonga has issued a statement in response to the letter that the MRGM, Oscar de Alfonso sent to the HH of the G.L.E. on August 7 from Brazil and then we link so you can read it.

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Below we reproduce the answer in the form of a manifesto issued by the Invisible College of Covadonga, conformed with HH. of the Own G.L.E.

Grand Master, thank you very much for your open letter, even if you are somewhere different in the world. Brazil seems to be the country from where you send your letter and not from Spain.

How many trips have you made to London, Edimburgh or Dublin, the headquarters of the three great regular mother lodges?

Your letter is a distortion of reality and it lacks self criticism.

You are trying to portray your role as a victim, a democrat, a persecuted person. These are roles that you are not. You are exactly the opposite.

You are the wart within the Grand Lodge of Spain destroying our Grand Lodge from deep within the flesh of the institution and killing the essential spirit of Spanish Freemasonry.

Grand Master, by sending this letter you show us that you are just like the arsonist who is also a firefighter! Taking into account your decisions, and your personality, you are an inappropriate  to be a firefighter because in addition to lighting the fire, you continually create more fires and do not extinguish any of them when the fires grow and burn out of control.

In this way you cannot continue to be the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Spain, because we need our Grand Master to neither set fires nor stoke them so they burn brighter.

Spanish Freemasonry needs peace and a chance to restore the image of the Grand Master as the entity which represents the order before the Spanish society which is historically against Freemasonry. Instead of this you have used the opening up of Freemasonry to the Spanish society to fuel your own narcissism and ego.

You must assume and respond to this error with your resignation.

Even if you take pictures and make statements saying how smart you are, how good you are and that you are the number one mason, you cannot convince us that you fit your own description of yourself. We are sure that you do not. 

If you were a real Grand Master for the Grand Lodge of Spain, you would be an “interparal primus” (the number one amongst equals). You would not treat the Grand Lodge of Spain as if it is a “birthday party” for the celebration of you. With the images you transmit of yourself, with your statements, with your interventions in the media, you put us all at risk and create a bad image of yourself and of us all to the rest of the world, both Masonic and profane. Your public image discourages possible candidates, which our order needs, and you make us the focus of the anti-Masonic media. Your behaviour is very imprudent. It is not justified or creates any effective result.

The solution is that you must resign now because you are the problem.

Grand Master what you say in your letter is not true. What is happening at the moment has nothing to do with the elections or voting or with those who lost the past election. There are no «others» or » irregulars», that is your invention. In fact, we are many Freemasons, true to the principles of the order, who oppose you. Also the «Diario Masonico newspaper» is not the problem, nor are the blogs that you call “irregular” because they oppose you as Grand Master.

The only one who talks about the issue of past elections is you and a blog that is in tune with you views and helps you postulate this incorrect thesis. This blog, of which you are patron, fully supports you and intends to protect you against a possible “Brutus” who is plotting against you. Brutus was a Roman leader who plotted against Cesar so is your ego so big that you, Grand Master, are comparing yourself to Julius Cesar? 

The idea of plots against you is a delusional, ludicrous, paranoid thesis, but it is your position. 

Your blog also goes further and expounds an idea created by you, which as of yet you have not dared to say in public. This is your stupid condemnation of the PSOE’s (Spanish Socialist Party) and the Spanish extreme right wing organisations for being against you and the Grand Lodge of Spain. Many of the supposed “enemies” that you complain of in your blog are only the honourable brothers who have opposed your position as Grand Master or have suffered repression by you. 

This blog clearly supports you even though you are possibly the Grand Master who has generated the most rejection amongst the Brethren of the Grand Lodge of Spain.  This blog is good for you because in this way it can allow you to pit two blogs against each other as equals. Your blog and the other which details your appalling record as Grand Master. The administrators of your blog are seemingly not aware of their role as «useful fools». You are the classic «Brutus» in Roman history. You have no consideration for anybody but yourself in the same way as Brutus manifested this attitude in his speech treaty explained by Cicero. If we stay with the figure of “Brutus” as a symbol, you Grand Master are a repeated “Brutus” famous for plottings against persons who thought you were loyal to them. 

Do you remember your statements to the newspaper El País that shocked us all? 

Do you remember your resignation performance before RGM JOSE CARRETERO? The date, the time, and the words you used. No one can condone the actions and terrible record of RGM JOSE CARRETERO whilst he was Grand Master. However, we should all remember that you, Grand Master, was one of his most earnest and faithful supporters. In your resignation was an act of treachery to the person for whom, you had been his faithful “Right hand man” and had had his blessing and support. A resignation that showed your character and the lengths you will go to for power and to build your ego. 

Do you remember your statements about the PRGM of the Grand Lodge of Spain, Josep Corominas I Busqueta? He had no power and posed no threat to you, but you still assassinated his character and burnt his possible future within the Grand Lodge of Spain.

We believe that there have never been so many brothers united against a Grand Master and continuously raising the voice of alarm demanding your resignation and solutions to problems you have created. 

It is not these Brethren who do not respect the democratic will. It is you! 

We accuse you because you are the one who is destroying the project of a regular Grand Lodge, which so many Brethren have worked on for years. You are the reason many have left the Grand Lodge of Spain. Many more Brethren, because of their belief in their obligation to the order, stay members of the Grand Lodge of Spain, but they refuse to collaborate while you are the Grand Master. 

It is impossible to describe as democratic, intelligent, or fraternal the treatment you have given to the democratic initiative of more than one hundred brothers who joined with you to discuss constitutional change.  Collectively known as «La Mesa», they received abhorrent treatment from you which shows you are not in any way a democratic leader of the Grand Lodge of Spain.   

This group of concerned and conscientious Brothers is still active despite your efforts. Grand Master, it seems you are blissfully unaware of the effort and dedication it takes to have more than one hundred Brothers from all over Spain come together at regular intervals of their own accord and at their own expense to discuss ways to improve our constitution and the Grand Lodge of Spain.

We believe that you do know what this entails because you would have difficulty achieving the same union. You also know that this constitutional reform endangers your system of distributing power within the Grand Lodge of Spain and ultimately your system of giving ranks and therefore maintaining your position as Grand Master. 

This is the core of the problem. You can disguise the facts as you wish.  You can claim seven excuses not to act on the recommendations of this group, but it is your fear of the loss of power that stops you from taking these beneficial steps of constitutional change for the good of all the brethren of the Grand Lodge of Spain.  

It would be very easy for you to lead this movement. Instead, you call it «irregular» even though you have participated in this forum. This is a huge mistake on your part Grand Master. You have been listened to by this large group of Spanish brothers. You have been offered a democratic process for changing the Grand Lodge of Spain and the implementation of a new constitutional text. Your response has been to treat this group of brothers with a total lack of due respect and fraternity. We are not telling you that you must agree with their text and ideas. Probably there are other brothers who do not agree. However, the greatness of a leader is to channel these efforts that are born from a love of the order and for the institution and submit the ideas to a Grand Assembly. This reforming movement has been offered to you as Grand Master to lead and you have chosen not to. This is perhaps because you do not have the capacity to be the head of this group. Instead, you have turned against these brothers. 

Make no mistake Grand Master, this movement you have ignored and rejected is growing in number. They are connecting with many other foreign born Masons and Spanish Masons within the Grand Lodge of spain who want to maintain the dignity of our institution. 

Unfortunately for you and the Grand Lodge of Spain, you do not have access to a supply of the Brethren with the same experience as those who leave the Grand Lodge of Spain because of you and your leadership as Grand Master. There are still many worthy Brethren in the Grand Lodge of Spain, but there are also many new brothers with little experience in Freemasonry. 

You are filling key posts in the Grand Lodge of Spain with inexperienced but unconditional supporters, some of whom have dubious or unstable profane lives. With this type of Freemason you cannot create an effective management team for the Grand Lodge of Spain.

By your design and endeavour rather than by default, you are more and more becoming a dictator at the head of the Grand Lodge of Spain. 

A Grand Lodge of Spain that everyday is becoming more corrupt and distant from the philosophy of Freemasonry as it should be and a Grand Lodge of Spain which does not function as it should.

Grand Master, we repeat, do you really think the opposition to you is just a handful of discontented Freemasons? The right response to this question is to realise that the present terrible situation within the Grand Lodge of Spain is your fault, no one else. You have failed to see this and, if you persist, your actions will come back to haunt you. Your government decisions are designed not to consolidate the Grand Lodge of Spain, but to facilitate the entry and exit of members of the Grand Lodge of Spain. It is this flow that keeps you in power. You strategy for remaining in power as Grand Master is to take care of the young masons of all nationalities and the experienced none Spanish Masons who, because of their masonic learning, believe they have an obligation to implicitly trust whoever is the Grand Master. You exploit and encourage the support of these two groups because they are not integrated into the day to day of the Grand Lodge of Spain as an institution as their Spanish counterparts and, as such, they are not a threat to your dictatorial leadership or likely to oppose your plans for the Grand Lodge of Spain or the Royal Arch Grand Chapter.

Grand Master, can we seriously believe that a past election, which nobody remembers except you and your team, is the cause of the present situation in the Grand Lodge of Spain? In your imagination it is and in your conscience it is because of your manipulation of the election process to win by any means, fair or foul. This is the same paranoia as your absurd idea of extreme right-wing and  socialist conflict within the Grand Lodge of Spain and your attacks on brothers linked to the socialist party. 

The use of overt politics of the Grand Lodge of Spain by you is an expensive error within the order, but is another way you can divide the Brethren for tactical reasons and to maintain power. It suits you that this message is transmitted within and without the Grand Lodge of Spain. The names that are cited by you are your “personal monsters” of your own creation. These Brethren are not a problem for our institution, but they are for you. The condemnation of these Brothers by you is for reasons not related to Freemasonry or the Grand Lodge of Spain. Fortunately, you have no credibility or authority so you cannot achieve your aims.

Do not carry on down this path Grand Master. Think of  the Grand Lodge of Spain and all the Brethren. Whether you think we are right or wrong, change direction as we cannot permit you to continue on the route you have chosen for yourself, the Grand Lodge of Spain and  the Royal Arch Grand Chapter of Spain. 

Grand Master, until when do you think to continue your abuse of our patience and our intelligence?

When will stop your manipulation of the Grand Lodge of Spain? 

Do you really think that your open letter to the Brethren of the Grand Lodge of Spain will be enough to save your image and position as Grand Master? 

It is not and it will not stop the call for elections which is growing daily.

Grand Master, you have no escape from the change that is coming. Even more so because you seem intent on plunging blindly forward as if there is nothing wrong within the Grand Lodge of Spain.

Grand Master, do you understand that your lust for power and survival cannot carry on?

Another question Grand Master, how do you support yourself? We have the right to know because you are spending our money on trips whose meaning or result are neither explained nor justified. 

Your finances are a subject you must explain to the Brethren of the Grand Lodge of Spain. It is clear that profane metals must be left at the doors of the temple, but Freemasonry does not mean we forget about those profane metals. Grand Master, how is it possible that you can maintain a professional office and your profane job and income when you travel the kilometers you travel during the year? 

What are your current account balances? Your equity? It doesn’t add up so how can we not surmise that you need the budget allocation from the Grand Lodge of Spain to live. It appears that your trips are just a way to escape the failure of your profane life or are they to escape your economic situation? 

Do you enjoy and live for travelling because you can spend and use the Grand Lodge of Spain visa?

Are you using your trips in the name of the order with a personal economic objective in mind?

Do you have accounts in Latin America?

Are you doing business deals there or in other places around the world which you visit as Grand Master?

What is behind that business, you call “connecting masons”?

Do we mention the lack of accounting of the summer camps you organise?
You can tell the Brethren, this is not the case, but above all show us that the answers to these questions is “NO” and your personal finances are healthy and transparent as they shoud if you are the leader of the Grand Lodge of Spain. 

Show us you have an elementary code of ethics and good governance that is normal in profane life and more so in the daily life of a Fremason who lives the philosophy of Freemasonry but perhaps you do not live by our philosophy.

The accounts do not add up Grand Master. The expenses, the lack of justification of visa payments, the budget allocation, your tax declaration, everything, absolutely everything is up in the air at the moment. We do not know if you are aware that there is a high probability of a tax authority inspection of you and the Grand Lodge of Spain and that  this will lead to negative effect for everyone associated with the Grand Lodge of Spain.

Grand Master, how are the associations created by the lodges to collect fees, especially those of the British brothers? Are they helped by you to comply with current tax legislation, corporate law and association legislation or have you abandoned them to their fate? It is your responsibility as you encouraged these associations to be formed. 

Why are you disclosing so little information about the Grand Treasurer and his suspension? If the suspension is really for the reasons you say, we do not understand why these reasons were not explained at the time of the Grand Treasuer’s suspension. What has your lack of disclosure created? What has the silence of the Grand Orator created as well? The answer is yet another example of political and governmental mismanagement by you which unfortunately appears more like repression of a Brother. The same repression you apply to block the re-entry into the Grand Lodge of Spain by Brethren who have left at one time or another or to block the regularisation of Brethren from other Grand Lodges.

Grand Master you commit a gaff after gaff, error after error in problem management. It seems that you are leading us to the scenario of «either you are with me or you are against me» in a fight similar to «Indians» against «cowboys.» We believe there are many brothers who are not polarised by you into joining one camp or the other.  They are in the grey middle ground applying cautious discretion, with a desire that this conflict is over.

You are not able to control yourself or your tongue to govern the Grand Lodge of Spain correctly. Your desire to control, to repress and your devisive manoeuvres does not generate solutions, but increases the problems, and corrupts the situation even more. This is not a problem of past elections or a few brethren against you, this is a problem created by you and you alone. The “monsters or demons” in your mind are not a reality but they are continuously present to you. This is why you constantly harp on about regularity of those that oppose you and the Diario Masónico newspaper.

Grand Master, when you speak in your letter of regularity, or irregularity, you seem like a typical example of absolutism by saying regularity is me and all who blindly support you as Grand Master. Regularity is defined by external elements, but the behaviour of the brothers within a regular lodge can be irregular, and, on the contrary, an irregular lodge can function with its members in an absolutely regular way. You are not the one who decides or defines what is regular and what is not regular, nor are you anyone to say that the Diario Masónico newspaper is controlled by irregular Freemasons or is an organ of irregular Freemasonry.

The Diario Masónico newspaper interviewed RH Manuel Torres, PRGM Tomas Sarobe, PRGM José Corominas i Busqueta, RH Ramón Viñals. It does NOT seem that these Freemasons can be classified as irregular, and it does not seem that the newspaper’s performance is irregular. 

What happens is that unlike «The Orient» of the Grand Lodge of Spain, everyone trusts in the freedom of expression that the Diario Masónic newspaper offers, to all, even to you Grand Master. You are the only one who rejects the Diario Masónico newspaper because of your personal and unique distorted interpretation of what is regular. 

Also, if you review the pages which the Diario Masónic newspaper has published, you will see that it not only makes statements or publishes opinion documents, but also publishes many works of Masonic content, in which there is no evidence of any element that goes against the conventions that define what is understood internationally as regular masonry. 

You know this, but again, you distort reality by believing that a certain person you have on your infamous “black list” of Spanish Freemasons is behind «the Diario Masónico newspaper».  Whether or not he is, you have nothing to say on the matter as the newspaper is a valid informative publication. 

Grand Master, we remind you that, as you are accustomed to deciding about the regularity of the brothers, not only do you not allow regularizations of some valid Brethren and you refuse others to re-join the Grand Lodge of Spain as recently happened in Andalusia, but you press internationally to not allow such Brethren to be admitted to any Regular Grand Lodge because of your personal vendetta against them and your false claims that they are they are irregular. It is your actions in arbitrarily stopping these Brethren from gaining entry into regular Freemasonry which is making them irregular!

Unfortunately Grand Master, you are not an example of regularity.

The irregular Spanish Freemasonry has no time or concern for the Grand Lodge of Spain. The irregular Spanish Freemasonry is more concerned with getting a building as a base than working together with the Grand Lodge of Spain or being accepted by Spanish society. 

It is not strange that something about the Grand Lodge of Spain is published in what you call the irregular media. We would almost say that they publish very little about the Grand Lodge of Spain and are being quite discreet and respectful of our problems.

Again and again you act one way and then try to project a fabricated image to hide your deceitful acts. You misrepresent historical facts or distort them for your own ends.  Grand Master, the Masonry that you say is irregular Spanish masonry is the historical Freemasonry of Spain. It is the Freemasonry of the Second Republic. It is the names of these Spanish Freemasons that the regular Freemasons worldwide put on the lists of illustrious Freemasons. It is the masonry of those that we intended to incorporate into our name when the Grand Lodge of Spain was reborn after Franco. 

It is also the masonry of women, that you also use to your advantage when it suits you at some of your public acts and in your statements without any thoughts about if these women Masons are regular or not. We remember you were sitting with the leader of Spanish female Masonry at the dinner after the Grand Assembly in Barcelona several years ago. The same dinner you turned into a political event by inviting the Catalan leader, now exiled from Spain, Sr Puigdemont.

When the Grand Lodge formed there were agreements and an association formed called “GRANDE ORIENTE ESPAÑOL MASONERIA ESPAÑOLA SIMBOLICA REGULAR” You have abandoned this title and use “GRANDE ORIENTE ESPAÑOL”. This is not the same and its origin is more than debatable. You know this from the accounts of the liquidation of its members that took place at the “Assembly of liquidation” of the “GRANDE ORIENTE ESPAÑOL” when they were in exile. The current Grand Master of the “GRANDE ORIENTE ESPAÑOL”  is not you Grand Master.

It is necessary to speak Grand Master because we cannot remain silent any longer. It is necessary for society to understand, and for the anti-Masonic media to also know, that within the Grand Lodge of Spain, like any human institution, there are crises but also good dignified and honest people and good freemasons. These are good Brethren within the Grand Lodge of Spain, who, regardless of their beliefs, ritual practiced or their nationality, are still proud to be freemasons and to give their opinions and witness to society who recognises them as worthy people.

There is nothing in the constitution nor the statutes, nor the regulations of the Grand Lodge of Spain that can silence their opinion. Though in your letter Grand Master you quote a constitutional point, there is no point in the constitution or the regulations that allow censorship or the repression of freedom of opinion.

Grand Master, you are the first Spanish Freemason who should be censored because of your antics, stupidities, bad choice of language etc which you spread through your own social networks. What is this, a classic case of “Do what I say not what I do”? Are you minimally aware of the tremendous damage your posts cause to the Grand Lodge of Spain? What should we do with you Grand Master? Should we apply the same measuring stick to your actions as you do to others?

There has been no censorship of you as Grand Master so why should there be for other brothers?

Let us remind you of the Judgment of the Provincial Court of Madrid dated December 4 th 2001, Section 14 on the challenge of association agreements heard in the Court of 1st Instance No. 59 of Madrid where one of the appellants was the Grand Lodge of Spain. Citing abundant jurisprudence (Provincial Court of Barcelona from 2-12-1996, Provincial Court of Madrid from 18-3-2000, Supreme Court of 26-10-1995 and 13-6-1996), the court found that the power of self-regulation of associations is recognized, but it is stressed that this power of self-regulation is not absolute but is limited by general  norms and especially by constitutional requirements such as respect for constitutional rights and values of democratic functioning, transparency, respect for freedom of expression without prior censorship, and special care in the conception of procedures and the uses of expulsion of members, adding that the right to discrepancy is essential for the formation of human criteria, and that discrepancy inherent to the right to freedom of expression cannot be censored previously, and less with ambiguous and indefinite rules. The court concluded by criticizing the sanction procedure regulated in the Constitution and General Regulations of the Grand Lodge of Spain. 

Isn’t this evidence enough that you as Grand Master are on the wrong track?

To conclude, Grand Master, your letter does not serve or convince and you cannot ask for what you ask as you have no authority to request it especially as you have lost the respect of the Brethren.

For now you only have the power that comes with your title, but no power as a man. You will not convince any of us because you do not have reason on your side. Your Power is only transitory whilst you are Grand Master.  It is necessary that you do a service to yourself and the Grand Lodge of Spain by resigning and calling for elections.

Do not be afraid, if you have won an election a year and a half ago and if this is all a matter of a conspiracy against you by a minority, it is likely that you will win again.  However, if you want to continue maintaining this present situation, we are heading to the end of the Grand Lodge of Spain as the regular Masonic organization in Spain because of the damage that you are generating.

Fraternal greetings,

The Invisible College.