The President of Cofar, Manuel Lao Hernández, together with the President of the CIRSA Group, welcomed everyone and asked the Administration to be more sympathetic to the companies in the sector and to be much tougher on the prize draws that are currently flooding Spanish television and since they are not being regulated are, without any doubt, the worst sort of competition for the businesses in the Spanish gaming sector. All the speakers made repeated reference to the global crisis that we are suffering. Nor was there a single speaker who did not mention on-line gaming and random draws which are not subject to taxation and controls, unlike all the current machines in the market.

The first paper, followed by a group discussion, was chaired by the director of the Egartronic Group, Erwan Lévéder, and tackled "The present and future outlook for arcade games in Spain". The most important comment was that made by Isabel Fernández, representing the Vid Group and President of the Association of Leisure Centres, who emphasized the necessity to update the legal and fiscal measures that restrain this activity. In the second paper, "The importance of optimism both during the crisis and always", the speaker was the engineer Leopoldo Abadía, teacher and author of the book "The NINJA crisis" (no incomes, no jobs or assets) who explained in didactic terms how the present world-wide crisis developed and in good humour, how to overcome it with stoicism.  The general coordinator of Cofar, José Sánchez Fayos, was the moderator in the session on "The short term challenges for the sector" and, after lunch, the President of Facomare and ex-president of Euromat, Eduardo Antoja, chaired a group discussion in which most of representatives of the Autonomous Governments who were invited to the Congress, participated.

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