Congratulations to Tom McGee and Charly Solomou for winning this year’s Spanish Debating competition here at Sevenoaks. They held off stiff competition from the 15 teams that participated, not least our other team of Isobel Mee and Cecely Richard-Carvajal who were excellent in their local derby semi-final, a three-way round-robin between both Sevenoaks teams and a strong delegation from Tonbridge School. Charly and Tom receive the fabulous first prize of a free study trip to Mester Language School in Salamanca.

Sevenoaks teams have now won the competition three years running, but this year’s victory was particularly pleasing for a variety of reasons; not only was it a home fixture (the first time it has been held at Sevenoaks), but this year’s competition was bigger than before with teams from a whole host of schools including KCS Wimbledon, Tonbridge, NLCS, Whitgift, Wycombe Abbey, and Godolphin & Latymer. Even more impressive was that all Sevenoaks participants are in the Lower Sixth whereas most of the opposition teams were in their final year.

The motions debated were:

• Women have already achieved complete equality in modern society
• The only solution to the problem of doping in sport is to legalise it
• Every country should follow Spain’s example and adopt the new anti-smoking law

Tom and Charly, plus the other finalists from Forest School, were then given three minutes to prepare a completely surprise topic: ‘Money makes you happy’. They showed considerable flair and conviction in raising the question to a philosophical plane and verbally battering their opponents into submission.