The directors of the six Casas show the collaboration agreement.
Juan David Latorre. Madrid
Yesterday, the general managers of the Casas of Public Diplomacy (América, Árabe, África, Asia, Mediterráneo and Sefarad-Israel) signed a general protocol at Casa de América to create a stable collaboration framework between the six institutions and to promote the development of joint activities. This protocol will be reflected on a new website and a new forum called Red the Casas (network of Casas).
The objective of this agreement is to strengthen each of the Casas individually and all of them as a whole, encouraging them to work in harmony and to share objectives. In order to do that, they will organize events (digital or face-to-face events), exhibition, seminars or other initiatives between two or more Casas, using for them the logo Red de Casas and including it on a new website, www.reddecasas.es, where the agenda, the content and the programme of the six institutions of the Spanish public diplomacy will be available.
Besides, the new forum of Red de Casas will organize conferences periodically. “In short –according to Tomás Poveda, general manager of Casa de América-, these are new tools to strengthen the strategy that we have been following for years”.
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Tomás Poveda highlighted the close relations of the Casas with all the Embassies
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In statements made to The Diplomat, Poveda pointed out that this new website “is the result of the collaboration of the managers of the virtual sites of each Casa”. The first coordination work will be responsibility of Casa de América for a year. The general manager of Casa de América highlighted “the close relations that the Casas maintain with all the Embassies, because otherwise it would be very complicated to organize the large amount of cultural activities being developed”.
“This joint step -Tomás Poveda continued- is part of the strategy of foreign policy, whose priorities, of which he mentioned four, are connected to the public diplomacy: coherence, efficiency and transparency of the foreign policy, promoting and projecting our values and interests, placing the citizen in the centre of the foreign policy and projecting us globally as an advanced country”.
Poveda referred on several occasions to the “efficiency” as the main characteristic of the work of the Casas of the public diplomacy. “The Casas, each of them individually, have become benchmark centres”, he continued, and he gave as an example the role played by Casa Árabe, as a source of information, after the recent terrorist attack in Paris against the editorial department of Charlie Hebdo.