The Diplomat
Madrid hosts since yesterday the XIX General Assembly of the Union of Ibero-American Capital Cities (UCCI), which is held every two years and returns to the capital of Spain after almost twenty years.
The Assembly, held under the slogan Cities for Ibero-America: The future that unites us, brings together for two days the mayors of Andorra la Vella, Asunción, Bogotá, Lima, Lisbon, Montevideo, San José, San Juan, San Salvador and Santo Domingo and senior representatives of Brasilia, Buenos Aires, Cádiz, Guatemala, La Habana, La Paz, Quito, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Sucre and Tegucigalpa, who will exchange initiatives around a common project of collaboration, solidarity and twinning and will approve the organization’s future lines of work.
Founded in 1982, the Union of Ibero-American Capital Cities is an international organization of municipal character whose objective is to define an area that constitutes a model of peaceful coexistence and solidary development. The General Assembly meets every two years in alternate Ibero-American regions, divided between the Iberian Peninsula, the Southern Cone, the Andean Zone and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. This year’s meeting was the return to the Spanish capital after almost 20 years, as the Madrid City Council recalled yesterday.
The Assembly is one of the governing bodies of the international organization, together with the Executive Committee. In the assemblies, mayors and senior representatives of the capitals exchange visions and initiatives around a common project of collaboration, solidarity and twinning. In addition, the meetings approve the organization’s lines of work, as well as declarations and statements, with a common denominator: the defense of municipal autonomy, its commitment to dialogue and peace, the social and economic development of its citizens, as well as the care of the urban environment, security and citizen participation.
During the opening ceremony of the Assembly, the Mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, stated that “cities now have a special responsibility to overcome the health, economic and social consequences of the pandemic”, because although cities do not have “the most effective powers to fight the pandemic”, they do have “the power of proximity and the trust of citizens”. “It is now the cities that can inspire the citizens by transmitting that we are capable of recovering that future and giving them the hope that they are asking for,” added the mayor, who announced that this year’s meeting will establish a Strategic Plan 2021-2024 that will emphasize “cooperation projects, so that they become the hallmark of the UCCI”.
The opening ceremony was also attended by the State Secretary for Ibero-America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Juan Fernández Trigo; the Councilor Delegate for Tourism and Secretary General of the UCCI, Almudena Maíllo; the Deputy Mayor of Madrid, Begoña Villacís; the president of the plenary, Borja Fanjul; the spokespersons of the municipal groups, the mayors and senior representatives of the Ibero-American cities that make up the UCCI and the representatives of the Ibero-American diplomatic corps accredited in Madrid.
