The president of the Iberoamerican University Foundation (FUNIBER), Dr. Santos Gracia Villar, accompanied by the director of Institutional Relations of FUNIBER and of the Cátedra de Estudios Iberoamericanos y de la Iberofonía, the professor of the Universidad Europea del Atlántico (European University of the Atlantic, UNEATLANTICO), Dr. F. Álvaro Durántez Prados, together with the director of the FUNIBER delegation in Portugal and professor of the Universidad Autónoma de Lisboa (UAL), Nancy Elena Ferreira Gomes, visited the headquarters of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) in Lisbon.
The FUNIBER and UNEATLANTICO representatives were received by the Executive Secretary of the CPLP, Zacarias da Costa; Political and Diplomatic Counselor, Ana Paula Tuavanje Elias; and Chief of Staff, Filomena Duarte, who are members of the Executive Secretariat of the CPLP.
This meeting represented a transcendental milestone for both parties and continues the process of rapprochement between the two institutions that was initiated with the visit of Professor Durántez on July 27th, after a first meeting between the President and the Director of Institutional Relations of FUNIBER and the Executive Secretary of the CPLP in March, in the Dominican Republic, on the occasion of the XXVIII Cumbre Iberoamericana de Jefes de Estado y de Gobierno (XXVIII Iberoamerican Summit of Heads of State and Government).
The collaboration between FUNIBER and the CPLP is guided by clear objectives, such as the articulation of two naturally related spaces, the Iberoamerican and the one represented by the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, which together constitute the Iberophony or Pan-Iberian space. The signing of an agreement covering areas of joint intervention, such as higher education, technology, culture, and languages, is envisaged in this context. During this last meeting, President Santos Gracia explained FUNIBER’s triangulation strategy for promoting education in Portuguese and Spanish in a space of convergence, in which UNEATLANTICO participates, while Executive Secretary Zacarias da Costa reiterated CPLP’s interest in processing FUNIBER’s application for Consultative Observer status.
The Community of Portuguese Language Countries was founded in 1996, only five years after the Ibero-American Summit, and constitutes the privileged multilateral forum for deepening mutual friendship and cooperation among its member countries: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe, and East Timor. Geographically, the surface area of the planet occupied by the nine CPLP member states is vast, amounting to 10,742,000 square kilometers of land, 7.2% of the Earth’s surface, spread over four continents: Europe, America, Africa, and Asia.