Luis Ayllón
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Portuguese Prime Minister, Antonio Costa, will chair the XXXIII Portuguese-Spanish Summit on 4 November in the town of Viana do Castelo (Portugal), as The Diplomat has learned from reliable sources.
As is customary at summits held by the two countries, around ten ministers from each side are expected to attend, although the exact number of ministers has not yet been determined.
The meeting will follow on from the summit held at the end of October last year in the Cáceres town of Trujillo, where a new Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was signed, renewing the one that had been in force since 1977.
On this occasion, the summit will focus on innovation, although, logically, one of the main issues to be discussed will be energy, where Madrid and Lisbon have been putting forward common proposals in the European Union, highlighting the value of the Iberian hub as an alternative to energy dependence on Russia, and advocating caps on gas prices. Sánchez and Costa will arrive at the meeting after having held a tripartite meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron this week, with the Midcat gas pipeline as the central issue.
The Spanish-Portuguese meetingwill take place in the town of Viana do Castelo, in the north of Portugal, located just 50 kilometres from the border with Spain, but beforehand, the heads of government of the two countries will visit Braga, to visit the advanced joint Spanish-Portuguese nanotechnology centre, which was inaugurated on 17 July 2009, in an event attended by the then King Juan Carlos and the Portuguese President Aníbal Cavaco, together with the heads of government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and José Sócrates.
In addition, as is customary at major bilateral meetings between the two Iberian countries, there will be time to analyse the situation of interconnections and cross-border cooperation, an aspect that has been growing in recent years in the different areas shared by Spain and Portugal.
Issues such as sustainable tourism, the cultural agenda, digital and environmental issues, among others, will also be present at the summit.
