The Diplomat
An official delegation from Nepal met last week in Mérida with the First Vice President and Minister of the Presidency, Carmen Calvo, and the President of the Junta de Extremadura, Guillermo Fernández Vara, in order to seal the last steps for the construction in Cáceres of one of the most important Buddhist centers in the world.
The delegation from the Asian country, led by the President of the National Assembly of Nepal, Ganesh Prasad Timilsima, met last Wednesday with Calvo and Fernandez Vara at the headquarters of the Presidency of the Board in Merida, where they signed the joint declaration of Caceres as Sacred Land, a necessary step for the construction of the Buddhist center of the Lumbini Peace Garden in the city of Extremadura, according to the Extremadura Executive.
The meeting was also attended by the Ambassador of Nepal in Spain, Dawa Phuti Sherpa, the mayors of different municipalities and representatives of the Lumbini Garden Foundation. Timilsima and the rest of the Nepalese delegation arrived in Spain last Tuesday with the aim of launching a fundraising campaign to establish the Lumbini Peace Gardens in Caceres, according to the Nepalese news agency Rashtriya Samachar Samit. The visit concludes today.
The Nepalese delegation is composed, among others, by the mayor of the municipality of Lumbini, Man Mohan Chaudhary, who last Thursday signed a twinning agreement with the deputy mayor of Caceres, Maria Jose Pulido, another necessary step for the construction of the Buddhist center.
On the same day, the San Francisco Cultural Complex in the Extremadura city hosted a Peace Conference at which the campaign to raise 70 million euros was announced. Among those attending the conference were, in addition to Fernández Vara and Timilsina, the former mayor of Madrid, Manuela Carmena (who had offered the capital to host the Buddhist center) and Shlomo Ben Ami, former Israeli Foreign Minister and former second Israeli ambassador to Spain. Finally, the Nepalese delegation visited the Arropé Hill on Saturday, where they carried out several religious and symbolic acts for the sacralization of the site.
The Peace Garden, promoted by the Lumbini Garden Foundation, will be built on a 100-hectare plot of land located on the Arropez hill, between Cáceres and Valdesalor. The project -which could begin construction in 2023- will house a 40-meter statue of Buddha, Buddha relics provided by the Government of Nepal, the embassies of the main Eastern Buddhist cities, a meditation center, gardens and a university center associated with Nepal. The aim of this project, which was rejected by Madrid after the arrival of José Luis Martínez-Alemida as Mayor and in which Málaga and Barcelona had also shown interest, is to turn Cáceres into a world pilgrimage center for Buddhism, with the consequent tourist benefits for the area. Negotiations for its installation in Cáceres began in November 2019 and culminated with an official visit to Nepal by the mayor of the city, Luis Salaya, in January 2020.
