The Diplomat in Spain

Pedro Villena receives the award./ Photo: Casa Árabe

The Diplomat. 18/12/2016

Casa Árabe has been granted the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding, an award founded in Doha (Qatar) in 2015 with the objective of spreading and developing the Arab and Islamic culture, eliminating stereotypes and promoting relations with other cultures of the world.

The award was received on 13 December by the director general of Casa Árabe, Pedro Villena. The candidacy had been presented by the AECID in recognition of the work carried out in the last ten years by this institution of the Spanish public diplomacy to “promote the Arab culture in Spain and strengthen its economic, educational and cultural ties with the Arab countries”.

The award, created in collaboration with the Arab and International Relations Forum, has five categories, four of them dedicated to translations from Arab into English and vice versa and, as of 2016, to translations from Arab into Spanish and vice versa.

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The award recognizes the work in favour of the culture of international understanding and peace

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The fifth category corresponds to the Special Award for the trajectory of a person or institution that has contributed to the construction of the culture of peace and the promotion of international understanding, the category in which Casa Árabe has been awarded, along with Banipal, a magazine of Arab literature, and the Ibn Tufayl Foundation of Arab studies.

Casa Árabe, founded in 2006, is a Spanish public consortium led by the Foreign Ministry, the Autonomous Government of Andalusia, the Autonomous Community of Madrid, the City Council of Madrid and the City Council of Córdoba.