The Governing Board of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation has approved the appointment of Rebeca Grynspan, the Ibero-American Secretary General, as new member of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste, at a meeting held this morning in Mérida.
Grynspan was appointed Under-Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) in 2010 and Assistant Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). She was the UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean from 2006 to 2010 and Vice-President of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998. As a renowned advocate of human development, she was also a UN delegate at the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti, a group composed of officials from the Haitian government, the ex-President of the United States, Bill Clinton, and other important international partners. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Extremadura.
Other members of the Academy are: the painter Antonio López; the politician Marcelino Oreja; the theologian Hans Küng; the cardiologist Valentin Fuster; the pianist Maria João Pires; the historian Maria del Carmen Iglesias, and the politicians Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra and Federico Mayor Zaragoza.
The new Regulation of the Academy was also approved at the meeting. It seeks, on the one hand, to reactivate this body so that it may be more agile and make it a reference forum for the encounter and discussion among its academics, the Alumni Network of Yuste and university students who attend the international courses of Campus Yuste, where problems affecting Europe and Ibero-America may be dealt with. On the other hand, it seeks to achieve an intergenerational academy.
The European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation is a meeting space, where intellectuals, artists, scientists and politicians are called to exchange opinions and where they are made public.
This was the first meeting held by the Governing Board once the European Academy of Yuste and the Extremaduran Centre for Studies and Cooperation with Ibero-America, (CEXECI) merged together. This union has taken place in order to comply with the government’s commitment to restructure foundations and public entities and as a result of a new way to work applied by Extremadura’s foreign policy, which goes from a vertical to a horizontal and transversal plane.
The Action Plan for 2018, including more than 100 activities related to Europe and Ibero-America, has also been presented in detail at the meeting held by the Foundation’s Governing Board. The Campus Yuste Programme, which includes international summer courses organised by the University of Extremadura; Aula-Iberomamérica, which consists on lectures by experts; Aula Abierta, which comprises encounters and sessions in Extremadura and Costa Rica, as well as several symposia on Extremaduran important figures in America that will be held at different locations in the region, stands out.
There will be cultural and awareness programmes, such as the Emperor’s Concerts, the cinema award, the cinema workshop, and the school programmes on Europe and Ibero-America. The Yuste Foundation will continue publishing the existing of book collections, now adding the collection “Entre dos mundos: América y Europa desde Extremadura” (“Between two worlds: America and Europe from Extremadura”). Moreover, activities related to European and American networks, such as the Asociación de Universidades Latinoamericanas (Latin-American Universities Association) or the Encuentro Triangular Estratégico América Latina y el Caribe, Europa y África (Strategic Triangular Encounter, Latin-America and the Caribbean, Europe and Africa), will be carried out.
Moreover, the Foundation’s Governing Board has approved the regulation for the “Carlos V European Award”, as well as the call for the twelfth edition of the Carlos V European Award; an award delivered to people, organisations, projects, or initiatives that have contributed to the general knowledge and enhancement of Europe’s cultural and historical values or to the unification of the European Union. The award will be delivered on the 9th of May, on Europe Day, by His Majesty the King.
