The director of the FUNIBER Chair of Ibero-American Studies and Iberophony and professor at the European University of the Atlantic, Frigdiano Álvaro Durántez Prados, and the director of the House of Austria Chair of the CEU Institute of Historical Studies, Consuelo Martínez-Sicluna y Sepúlveda, met last Thursday at the rectorate of the CEU San Pablo University in Madrid to sign a letter of collaboration. Both academic entities have signed a letter of collaboration to jointly research and disseminate Hispanic history and heritage, as well as the articulation of the community of countries and speakers of Spanish and Portuguese languages.
Through the agreement, the two institutions join forces for research and knowledge transfer in the fields of history and the humanities. Specifically, the agreement envisages the development of joint actions in the field of the Hispanic Monarchy and the House of Austria. They will also work together on the interdisciplinary analysis of the Pan-Iberian Space or Iberophony, made up of all the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries on the different continents and the more than 850 million speakers of the two great Iberian languages.
Thanks to this, the CEU Casa de Austria Chair will benefit from an important international projection, as the FUNIBER Chair, promoted by the Ibero-American University Foundation, is made up of five universities from Spain, America and Africa: Universidad Europea del Atlántico, Universidad Internacional Iberoamericana (México), Fundación Universitaria Internacional (Colombia), Universidad Internacional Iberoamericana (Puerto Rico) and Universidade Internacional do Cuanza (Cuito). The FUNIBER Chair aims to study the Ibero-American world without geographical restrictions and is the first of its kind.
At the time of signing the agreement, Professor Martínez-Sicluna declared that “it is clearly relevant to establish a collaboration with the FUNIBER Chair, with which we share a common purpose, which emphasises the recovery of knowledge of our historical past, in a field of our own: the political space of Iberophony”.
For his part, Dr. Durántez Prados pointed out that “this signing takes place between the chairs of two higher education institutions that are absolutely outstanding in the Spanish and Ibero-American university context, or, more precisely, in the pan-Ibero-American context. Firstly, the CEU San Pablo group, which needs no introduction and is a fundamental reference in our country; secondly, the Ibero-American University Foundation, which promotes the first pan-Ibero-American university platform, with universities in America, Europe and Africa, and with a presence on all continents,” he said.
As a first joint action, the Chairs are already collaborating in the organisation of several congresses to be held in different Spanish regions during the coming academic year.
Ongoing collaboration
The letter signed between the two chairs formalises a growing cooperation between their parent educational groups. Thus, during the academic year that is coming to an end, the coordinator of the FUNIBER Chair, Rafael Maldonado de Guevara y Delgado, present at the signing, has organised four talks and an academic visit to Salamanca as part of the Legal Reasoning Seminars that the Faculty of Law of the CEU San Pablo University of Madrid is developing. All of this, under the direction of Dean Alfonso Martínez-Echevarría y García de Dueñas.
On the other hand, this summer UNEATLANTICO is hosting several activities of the Cantabrian delegation of the Catholic Association of Propagandists. These collaborations are also being extended to the Ángel Herrera Oria Cultural Foundation, whose managing director Fernando Lostao Crespo also attended the signing, together with Professor José María Carabante, member of the Casa de Austria Chair.