<h6><strong>The Diplomat</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, participated this Tuesday in Brussels in the presentation of the Europalia 2025 international arts festival, one of the most important cultural events in Europe, in which Spain is a guest country.</strong></h4> According to the Ministry in a press release, the thirtieth edition of the festival will take place between October 8 of this year and February 1, 2026, and will deploy "a multidisciplinary program throughout Belgium that highlights Spain's cultural wealth, uniting heritage with all contemporary art forms and bringing together both established names and emerging figures." This was at the press conference following the event, which was also attended by his Belgian counterpart, Maxime Prévot. Albares stated that Spain's participation in the festival represents a "unique opportunity, as culture has two aspects: it is an exceptional instrument for challenging ideas, perceptions, and concepts, but it is also what defines us as people and connects our heritage and traditions." Founded in 1969, EUROPALIA is held every two years in Belgium and focuses on a different country or theme each year. Each year, a multidisciplinary program encompasses visual and performing arts, music, film, and literature, fostering meaningful cultural exchanges between Belgium and the invited countries. EUROPALIA ESPAÑA 2025 plans to host more than 200 activities, including around ten exhibitions, more than 20 proposals related to visual and artistic creation, 40 musical activities, 70 performing arts projects, 50 film screenings, 30 initiatives on literature and thought, and 20 proposals from other disciplines. The festival will open with the main exhibition, "Light and Shadow. Goya and Spanish Realism," at Bozar, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, from October 8, 2025, to January 11, 2026. Along with Goya's paintings and prints, the exhibition includes works by his contemporaries and later generations (such as José Gutiérrez Solana, Pablo Picasso, Antonio Saura, among others), as well as new multidisciplinary creations by artists such as Asunción Molinos Gordo (visual artist), Francisco López (sound artist), Albert Serra (filmmaker), and contemporary Spanish and Belgian writers. The program will also include major performances, such as "Afanador" by the Spanish National Ballet, the National Drama Centre's co-production "1936," directed by Andrés Lima, and the production "El maleficio de la mariposa" by the Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía. The curatorial project for EUROPALIA ESPAÑA 2025 includes artists of all generations, from established figures to the most emerging, and from all over Spain. “When we agreed to co-organize this 30th edition three years ago, we wanted to achieve several goals, such as promoting cultural and linguistic diversity, fostering intercultural dialogue, supporting international artist mobility and exchanges, and promoting cultural rights as part of human development,” the minister continued. “It is also an opportunity to engage in a necessary debate with our citizens, especially about this world, and about how to respond to current trends that erode our democracies, particularly in a year in which, in Spain, we commemorate 50 years since the beginning of the end of the dictatorship and the beginning of our path toward freedom and democracy,” he added.
