The Diplomat
The Board of Trustees of the Spain-U.S. Council Foundation held its first regular meeting of the year last week, which ratified, at the proposal of the president, Josu Jon Imaz, the appointment of José María de Areilza Carvajal as the Foundation’s new vice president.
“I assume the position very honored and with great enthusiasm,” declared Areilza in his first words of thanks. “I am convinced of the usefulness of this great project, in which a plurality of voices and interests in the economic, cultural, scientific and academic fields coexist,” continued the new vice president, who also had a few words of remembrance for his predecessor, Gonzalo Ulloa, who stepped down at the end of 2022 as trustee and vice president on the occasion of his retirement from the law firm Gómez Acebo & Pombo. A member of the Board of Trustees since 2015, José María de Areilza is secretary general of Aspen Institute Spain and regular and tenured professor of the Jean Monnet Chair at ESADE.
During the meeting, held on March 22, Imaz reviewed the latest activities held, including the lecture series The Role of the Spanish Navy in U.S. Independence: New Notes, organized together with Casa de America and the Naval Museum. He also presented the Report of Activities 2022 and took the opportunity to congratulate once again his predecessor, Juan Lladó, and the General Secretariat of the Foundation for carrying out such an extensive and ambitious program of activities in a very special year, in which the Foundation celebrated its 25th anniversary.
The President also highlighted the holding of the XXVI Spain-U.S. Forum, which took place in Bilbao at the beginning of July, just after the NATO Summit in Madrid, and recalled the visit programs for Young American Leaders, U.S. Congressional staffers and Hispanic Leaders and the new alliances generated with outstanding American institutions, such as The Ripon Society, the Alliance of Attorneys General or George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
Within the agenda for the current year, the Board of Trustees paid special attention to the new edition of the Young American Leaders program, the inauguration, on April 27, of the third venue of the exhibition Invisible Emigrants. Españoles en EE UU UU (1868 – 1945), at the Museo de Arte de Almería, thanks to the support of Cosentino; the award ceremony of the X Bernardo de Gálvez Award to the Meadows Museum in Dallas and the celebration of the XXVII edition of the Spain-U.S. Forum, which will be held in the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, on October 13 and 14.
