The Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, begins a tour of Latin America and the Caribbean this Sunday to strengthen relations in the year that the next Ibero-American Summit is being held in Madrid. On this occasion, he will visit Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Mexico, where he will address the main issues on the bilateral and regional agenda with political authorities, business leaders and academic and cultural institutions.
Puerto Rico will be the first stop, where, in addition to various institutional meetings, he will take part in an investment forum with business leaders, as well as in the Inter-American University Conference on Spanish, where he will have the opportunity to highlight the deep historical and cultural ties that exist with the American continent.
From San Juan, he will travel on Tuesday 28 April to Santo Domingo, where he plans to visit a cooperation project promoted by AECID aimed at strengthening the comprehensive system for the care and protection of victims of gender-based violence.
He will also take part in a business forum and hold a meeting with his counterpart, Roberto Álvarez, with whom he will have the opportunity to review the preparatory work for the upcoming Ibero-American Summit to be held in Madrid.
The final leg of the trip will take place on Wednesday 29 April in Mexico, where the minister, on his third visit to the country, will take the opportunity to meet with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Roberto Velasco, with whom he will sign the Act of the Spain-Mexico Binational Commission, reflecting the good state of the fraternal relations between the two countries.
He will also lay a wreath at the tomb of Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas, who welcomed thousands of Spanish exiles to Mexico following the Civil War; he will open the exhibition “La Mitad del Mundo” (The other half of the world), which he also visited during its run in Madrid; and he will take part in various events held at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Mexico and the National Museum of Anthropology. Finally, he will tour the Consulate in Mexico to review the work being carried out in accordance with the Law on Democratic Memory.
With this tour, Albares will have the opportunity to highlight the importance of Latin America and the Caribbean to Spain, a sister region with which it shares a language and deep historical, political, economic and cultural ties. There, he will be able to step up preparations to ensure the success of the upcoming Ibero-American Summit in Madrid, thereby reaffirming and revitalising the Ibero-American Community of Nations.
-NON OFFICIAL TRANSLATION-