Dastis presents the award to Euro MP Maite Pagazaurtundúa./ Photo: Centro Sefarad
The Diplomat. 21/07/2017
The Foreign Minister, Alfonso Dastis, and the president of the Community of Madrid, Cristina Cifuentes, among others, participated yesterday in the celebration of the 10th anniversary of Centro Sefarad-Israel.
The event, which was coordinated by the director of the Centre, Miguel de Lucas, was also attended by Luis Cueto, general coordinator of the mayor’s office, since the City Council of Madrid, along with the Community and the Foreign Ministry, are part of the institution’s consortium. Furthermore, Israel’s Ambassador, Daniel Kutner, and the president of the Jewish Communities in Spain, Isaac Querub, were also present.
All of them gave a speech, just like the Minister Dastis, who emphasized the full operation of the law that allows Sephardim acquiring the Spanish nationality and affirmed that one of the main tasks of Centro Sefarad-Israel is the promotion of the memory of the Holocaust.
Maite Pagazaortundúa received the “Corona de Esther” Award for her commitment to freedom
The commemoration was also the occasion to present the exhibition “Ten years in 50 images”, which builds the trajectory of his decade with images of the main milestones, and to present the Corona de Esther Award to the European deputy Maite Pagazurtundúa, in recognition of her commitment to the defence of justice and freedom. Pagazaortundúa thanked the award and warned against “identitarian nationalist winds, which are lashing us now, like they did five centuries ago”.
To top it all off, there was a music and comic show that paid tribute to some of the most eminent Jews of the world of cinema and music, such as Groucho Marx, Bob Dylan, or Leonard Cohen.
In these ten years since its creation, Centro Sefarad-Israel has been consolidated as an institution of Spanish public diplomacy and it has turned its founding message into a reality: serving as a bridge between Spain and the Jewish world, as it has been proved by the intense coordination with the Embassy of Israel and many other diplomatic missions that have wanted to value the Jewish dimension of their own countries.
The event was attended by leaders and members of the Jewish Communities in Spain, as well as by a large group of representatives of the political, diplomatic and cultural scenes, standing out the mayors of many towns in which Centro Sefarad-Israel usually collaborates.
The activities of Centro Sefarad-Israel throughout these ten years include conferences, book presentations, exhibitions (its own and of other institutions), theatrical activities, concerts, gastronomy, and technological and business forums; all of them are the expression of the rich Jewish culture.