Portugal and Spain ratify good relations with dozens of agreements

Portugal and Spain are celebrating this Wednesday in Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, the 34th Iberian Summit, with an agenda centered on culture, a common cross-border strategy and the European Union, and a dozen agreements are expected to be signed.

More than a dozen memorandums will be signed at this summit, including in areas related to culture, territorial cohesion, education, health, science or higher education, the two leaders’ sources said.

The Portuguese government emphasizes an intercultural program between Portugal and Spain, which will be dedicated to the 50th anniversary of democracy, with the aim of highlighting the contribution of cultural agents to the democratic transitions of the two Iberian countries in 1974 and 1975.

As part of the cross-border strategy announced at the 2020 summit in Guarda, agreements will be signed on a cultural program that includes about 40 events this year; bilingual and intercultural school project; a village regeneration program or a university rural campus initiative that provides internships and research work in small towns.

At the 34th Iberian Summit, as usual, a joint declaration will be issued, which should reflect the “excellent relations” between the two countries and agreement on international issues, primarily within Europe, according to Spanish executive sources.

The summit officially begins at 9:00 am with a welcome ceremony that includes military honors.

This is followed by a meeting of the leaders of the two governments and sectoral ministerial meetings before the plenary session of the summit.

António Costa is in Lanzarote with ten ministers and Pedro Sanchez with nine from the portfolios of Foreign Affairs, Labour, Social Cohesion, Education, Science and Higher Education, Environment, Health, Culture, Infrastructure and Justice.

The summit will end with the signing of memorandums and a press conference by António Costa and Pedro Sanchez, scheduled for the late morning.

Although the official work of the summit will take place this Wednesday, the meeting of the two governments began on Tuesday afternoon with a visit by Costa and Sanchez to the house in Lanzarote where the Portuguese writer José Saramago lived, without any statements to journalists. followed by a working lunch for two delegations.

The 34th Portuguese-Spanish Summit takes place just four months after the previous one, in November, in Viana do Castelo, due to Spain’s domestic agenda this year: regional and municipal elections on May 28, general legislative elections in December and the election of the President of the Council of the European Union (EU) in the second half.

With regard to European issues, both governments emphasize coherence in issues such as economic management or energy, areas in which they emphasize the “Iberian Mechanism” of capping the price of gas used to generate electricity, and the project of gas pipelines for transportation. hydrogen between the Iberian Peninsula and France (H2MED).