Enrique Iglesias, Ibero-American Secretary General, Ángeles González-Sinde, Spain’s Minister of Culture, Paula Marcela Moreno, Colombia’s Minister of Culture, and Luis Miguel Úsuga Samudio, Medellin’s Cultural Citizenship Secretary, launched today in Madrid the III Ibero-American Congress on Culture which will take place in Medellin, Colombia, on July 1-4. It will deal with ‘Ibero-American Musical Expressions in the XXI Century’.
Enrique Iglesias highlighted Paula Marcela Moreno’s persistence in keeping the project going and praised the philosophy that grounds the Congress. He said “To exercise culture, understood as a division of citizenship, is a basic element for cohesion and social inclusion because it produces, simultaneously, confidence and self-esteem. Therefore, we understand culture as a key element for Ibero-America’s social fabric”. He also referred to Medellin’s vocation as a hosting city, and stated: “Medellin will be celebrating this year, a great city, pleasant and with its own dynamic, which really vibrates in all the aspects of political, economic and social life”.
Minister Moreno was also grateful about the commitment of her counterpart the Spaniard Ángeles Gonzáles-Sinde and of the delegations of the 13 countries that have participated in this Congress conception, which this year will deal entirely with music. “This has been a dream –affirmed Minister Moreno–, a dream for Colombia: for the world to see us from a general perspective, it is not our pretty face, nor our ugly face, it is the face of a country with multiple specialities, fulfilments and complexities that is already waiting for you with great enthusiasm and affection to reflect jointly about the meaning of Ibero-American integration”.
During her intervention, Ángeles González-Sinde highlighted this Congress as a space to analyse the current state of a key sector of culture “given its economic importance, its ability to create jobs, its potential for innovation and its capacity to reflect our identity”. The minister pointed out that “the meeting will also be useful to strengthen new action lines to promote the development of more advanced, ordered and coherent cultural policies, but also more audacious and tending towards the effective application of the Ibero-American Cultural Chart”.
The III Ibero-American Congress on Culture revolves around four core themes: music in Ibero-America: languages, practices and movements; music’s industry; music and citizenship, and music and cultural policies. Colombia’s Minister of Culture assured that after just two weeks of on-line pre-registration, at www.iberoamericanocultura.com, there are over 4,200 people attending the 70 programmed activities.