The Diplomat
Since last Thursday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been hosting an exhibition of works by Zimbabwean artists in tribute to Pilar Fuertes, who died in 2012 when she was ambassador to Zimbabwe.
The exhibition, which can be visited until 30 April, was inaugurated in an emotional ceremony that brought together many colleagues, friends and family members of the diplomat.
Pilar Fuertes Ferragut died ten years ago, after suffering a traffic accident in Namibia, where she was spending a few days on holiday. At the time, on 2 April 2012, she was ambassador to Zimbabwe, a post she had held since November 2008. She was 49 years old and had a brilliant diplomatic career, which had begun in 1992 and had taken her to countries such as Lebanon, Indonesia, Guatemala and Egypt, where she was the second head of the embassy. She was also posted to the Diplomatic Information Office (OID) and was Deputy Director General for the Pacific, Southeast Asia and the Philippines and Deputy Director General for International Relations, Immigration and Foreigners at the Ministry of the Interior.
The exhibition “Spirit of Friendship. Between two waters”, in the preparation of which the Spanish Embassy in Harare, the National Gallery of Zimbabwe and the Cristóbal Gabarrón Foundation have participated, brings together works by eleven artists from Bulawayo and Harare: Anthony Bumira, Misheck Masamvu, Owen Maseko, Stephen Garang’anga, Charles Bhebe, Tafadzwa Gwetai, John Kotze, Wallen Mapondera, Belinda Marshall, Freddy Tauro and Tracy Ann Strydom.
It was Pilar Fuertes herself who in 2012, months before her death, promoted the creation of an exhibition of Zimbabwean artists, in her eagerness to contribute to strengthening the democratisation process in the country, using culture and the arts. As Cris Gabarrón, President of the Gabarrón Foundation, points out in the exhibition brochure, the Spanish Ambassador’s residence in Harare became “an effervescent centre of the arts, of thought and of people, a small ‘Switzerland’ where diplomats, politicians, businessmen, artists, thinkers and friends came together in freedom, in a country under stress due to the existing social, political and economic conflict. For this reason,” he adds, “it was not surprising to see the great mark he left on the world of culture and the arts in that part of the world, which is visible in this exhibition”.
