Eduardo González
King Philip VI, the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will participate today at the Casa de América headquarters in Madrid in the commemorative act of the XXX anniversary of the Ibero-American Summits.
The Casa de America event has been organized at the initiative of Pedro Sánchez and has been prepared for months in conjunction with the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB) with the aim, according to sources from Moncloa, of highlighting the achievements since the first summit, held in 1991 in Guadalajara (Mexico), and to reflect on the challenges of the Ibero-American summit system in the current geopolitical context.
The event will begin at five o’clock in the afternoon and will be inaugurated by Pedro Sánchez. The event will be closed by the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and the King, who will deliver closing remarks. Participants in the event will include the former Ibero-American Secretary General, Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica, who ended her mandate in mid-September to take up the post of Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
The current acting secretary general of SEGIB is Brazilian Marcos Pinta Gama, who will also participate in the Casa de América event. The deadline for the presentation of candidacies to succeed Grynspan opened on September 15 and will close on November 19, just a week before the meeting of foreign ministers of the Ibero-American Conference, convened by the Dominican pro tempore secretary of the Ibero-American Summits and at which it is expected that there will be an agreement on the new head of the SEGIB.
The opening ceremony will be followed by two panels with the participation of the presidents of the countries that have hosted at least two Ibero-American Summits to date. The first panel, entitled Achievements of the summit system in 30 years and moderated in person by former Ibero-American Secretary General Enrique V. Iglesias, will include the virtual participation of the President of Colombia, Iván Duque; the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera; the Vice President of the Dominican Republic, Raquel Peña; and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal, Augusto Santos Silva.
The second panel, which will also be moderated in person by Rebeca Grynspan and will be dedicated to the challenges facing the Ibero-American community of nations, will include interventions by Pedro Sánchez and, via videoconference, by the President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández; the President of the Dominican Republic -the next host of the 2022 Summit-, Luis Abinader; and the President of Panama, Laurentino Cortizo.
To date, 27 summits have been held. The last one took place last April in Andorra and the next one will be held in the Dominican Republic, probably in the fall of 2022. The Ibero-American Conference is made up of 22 countries, 19 Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Latin American countries and three European countries: Andorra, Spain and Portugal.
