The third edition of a publication which, in addition to focusing - as ever - on countries such as China and Japan, in this volume highlights India as the new key actor in the region. The annual presents a summary of the main economic, socio-cultural, political and security events that have taken place in this region during 2006, together with analysis from leading Spanish and foreign experts, chronologies and the most recent statistics, as well as maps and graphics covering the most important issues. With the aim of portraying the reality of the continent, the Annual continues to represent a multidisciplinary study of the different countries and regions, so as to reproduce, as faithfully as possible, the complex reality of a continent that is heterogeneous and in constant evolution.

Speakers include: Antonio de Oyarzábal, Vice-President of the Real Instituto Elcano; Narcís Serra, President of the CIDOB Foundation and Jesús Sanz, Director General of Casa Asia.

The event will be presided over by Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.

Please confirm by telephone (913 690 252) or e-mail (lvalcarcel@casaasia.es) Cocktails will be served after the presentation.

This workshop represents an analysis of the management of cultural diversity from the field of innovation, based on a biographical study on artists and animators, community development workers and entrepreneurs − three groups of innovators with an intercultural background − creative both in terms of their life experience and their professional practices. The study situates the intercultural actors as links between the social fabric, networks and institutions, analysing their class trajectories, as well as their cultural, social and political capital and the key features for understanding how their identities and life experience have led them to develop innovation mechanisms in the field.

Jude Bloomfield, a researcher on urban cultures, cultural policies and planning and citizen studies, an expert in interculturalism and multiculturalism, translator and poet, will present some of the results of the research project The Intercultural City − Making the Most of Diversity (Comedia/Rowntree), a study on which he collaborated as a researcher and consultant.

Talk in English. Simultaneous translation service available (English-Spanish)

2-3 October 2007

With a regime such as that of the Communist Party, China lacks a civil society comparable with that of Western countries. Nevertheless, certain spaces separated from the established power exist that are used by non-official social movements which possess great strength. It is these spaces that some intellectuals view as being linked with the idea of democracy from a Chinese perspective. Intellectuals who themselves possess a certain capacity for influencing the ruling class, and which could thus be viewed as a certain type of civil society. At a time when China has become one of the main world laboratories with respect to political innovation (and one which gives us the opportunity to reflect upon our own models in the West), the objective of this seminar is to analyse the emergence of this phenomenon.

Address by Lino Gutiérrez, US ambassador to Argentina (2002-2006) and Nicaragua (1996-1999). He was Principal Deputy Secretary at the Department of State for Latin American Affairs and had previously been stationed in Santo Domingo, Lisbon, Port-au-Prince, Granada, Paris and Nassau, where he served in different areas of the Department of State.

Presentation by Marta Nin, Deputy Director of the Casa America Catalonia Foundation.

The presentation was made within the series of conferences The United States and Ibero-America: an updated view, which feature the participation of US ambassadors with a history of experience and responsibilites in the region of Latin America.

3 - 4 October 2007

This is the second of the conferences organised on the initiative of the then-President of France, Jacques Chirac and José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero at the Summit Meeting between Spain and France in 2005. The location of the Forum, which alternates between the two countries, will be held on this occasion in Paris, where it will bring together leading Spanish and French representatives of a wide range of sectors, including those of business, the economy, politics, academia, the media and art, in order to promote discussion on experiences of issues that affect both societies. European integration, which is currently at a crucial stage, and the proposed Mediterranean Union will be the central subjects for debate at this meeting. Other topics that will be covered at the Forum include the interconnection of infrastructures, television, scientific research and technological innovation.

4-5 October 2007

The progressive intensification of relations between China and Europe is reflected in initiatives such as the 2nd China-Europe Forum, which is organised by the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation for Human Progress. The Forum is coordinated on a Europe-wide scale, and comprises more than 40 simultaneous subject-based workshops devised to generate common viewpoints on a range of key aspects for political, economic and social development. Within this framework, the phenomenon of migration is one of the issues under debate, given that the demographic and economic transformations being experienced by China and Europe are producing migration movements that are having a major effect on the shaping of the respective societies. Though significant differences exist between the two cases - in terms of, for example, volumes, flows and relations with countries of origin and destination - other similar challenges also exist that are associated with this phenomenon, such as the inequality of laws, the underground nature of its existence and the need to build inclusive societies. European and Chinese experts will meet together in this workshop to identify the distinctive elements of migrations in Europe and China, and to reflect on the challenges that this reality is bringing about.

8 and 9 October 2007

Analysis and debate of the impact of EU policies on their neighbouring states, and especially of some of the issues that are currently assuming greater importance, such as the management of conflicts, Europe's energy policy and the exterior dimensions of justice and domestic issues. The seminar, which will be spread over two days, takes a comparative look at the effects of these policies on countries in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. The first day will feature a presentation to the general public of the main points of the European Neighbourhood Policy, as well as the impact of the deployment of the EU energy policy on its southern and eastern neighbours. The second day's session will include the presentation of the results of research studies on specific applications of the European Neighbourhood Policy in the Mediterranean basin and Eastern Europe.

19 and 20 October 2007

The Spain – Italy Dialogue Forum brings representatives from civil society together in an annual encounter that has been taking place annually in the two countries on an alternating basis since 1999. After the previous encounters in Genoa, Barcelona, Rome, Valencia, Milan, Jaen – Granada, and Verona, this 8th Forum will take place in Toledo, on the 19th and 20th of October, 2007.

The Forum is reaching its eighth meeting at an especially intense time in the relations between the two countries. On the one hand, the business world has been witness to important operations that have united first-order business projects in key sectors, such as infrastructures, telecommunications and energy, creating unprecedented complicity and synergy between the two economies. On the other hand, the European political environment has changed substantially: the scenario following the constitutional crisis and the renewal of leadership in Germany, France and Great Britain threaten to displace the Latin powers from the heart of decision-making in Europe, despite their determined commitment to integration. Finally, the most immediate challenges in the Mediterranean region are far from being overcome, and some of them, like the lack of growth in the countries on the southern shore and the migrations that pass through this area, affect Italy and Spain directly and intensely.

The Dialogue Forum, in which prominent figures in the civil societies of the two countries can freely discuss these current issues, is an ideal framework for promoting new ideas and proposing joint action to the Spanish and Italian governments. With this idea in mind, the Forum will serve to reach consensus on concrete proposals that can be submitted to the executive branches of the two governments in a timely way, just prior to their bilateral summit, which is scheduled for the latter half of November 2007.

19-20 October 2007

An event organised to enable judges working in Spain and Morocco to share experiences and problems which, as a result of the social and political changes brought about by the progressive multicultural composition of society, affect judicial practices in each country. The aim of this exchange is to overcome cultural barriers through a joint reflection that will allow the participants to find answers to their common problems.

Working languages: French and Arabic

The organisation of the world is shifting. The 19th century equilibrium between the world system and the system of nation-states has been profoundly shaken. That undermines the cultural bases for social integration. However, a new geography is developing: the space of flows in the urban network. In that sense urbanity is developing as a postnational culture. How culture can ground social bonding? What (intercultural) practices can help sustainable cultural development in that context?

In this workshop, Eric Corijn, lecturer in Social and Cultural Geography at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels (VUB), research director at the "Cosmopolis, City, Culture & Society" centre and an expert in European urban development, culture and citizen studies, examines the question of what intercultural practices could encourage a sustainable cultural development in this context.

Talk in English. Simultaneous translation service available (English-Spanish)

Dr. Oriol Costa, a researcher from the Free University of Berlin, will present the results of a study on the characteristics and evolution of cooperation projects to protect the environment in the Mediterranean. The study covers all the international and regional initiatives aimed at conserving or recovering the ecosystems of the Mediterranean sea and its region of influence. The workshop will include a debate on how this transformation has the potential to unleash profound changes in the objectives, mechanisms and networks of actors that are important for the conservation of this area of the planet, which is both vulnerable and damaged, in terms of its ecology. After the initial presentation by Oriol Costa, a debate will be opened featuring academics and experts from public administration bodies, and whose names will be announced in the near future.

24, 25 and 26 October 2007

Within the framework of the drafting of the law on welcoming people immigrating into and returning to Catalonia, the Department of Immigration has organised this conference, the objective of which is to promote the policies on welcoming newcomers that have been introduced in different countries, and the resulting experiences in the areas of linguistic, educational, health and labour welcoming, both by Catalan governments and social agents. Once this law has been passed, Catalonia will be the first country in the south of Europe to regulate by law the significant area of the basic mechanisms that have to be set in motion at the very beginning of the process of integrating immigrants.

26-27.oct.2007

Third edition of the seminar on the Latin-American Development Agenda, which as every year brings together economists and -professors to discuss about appropriate policies to achieve both economic development and social cohesion in the region. The different panels address the labour market, the fiscal reforms, education reforms, the social protection, the pension and health systems, among others. The conclusions and recommendations will be submitted to the Heads of State and Government who will meet at the Seventeenth Latin-American Summit to be held next November in Chile. The papers of the panels will be published in a book by the ECLAC and the CIDOB Foundation.

29-30 October 2007

The increase in cross-border mobility, on both a physical level and a technological or imaginary one, and the resulting incorporation of a diversity of cultures, agents and problems of a transnational nature all serve to call into question our physical-political and culturally delimited community within the formula of the Nation-State. The area of culture has become a space of conflict in which diverse collective interests, cultural habits, community expectations, symbolical beliefs, etc. are negotiated beyond national limits and perspectives. When identity is created from the frontiers of contact, and when the progressive mobility of labour, culture and geography causes this identity to multiply and be constantly re-created according to the context and the interlocutor, the question is: how are these cultural reference points constructed? How can they be inserted into political and social strategies? How can a political account be given of this diversity that is in a constant flux of appearance and disappearance?

This forum has been created as an auxiliary research support for doctorate students from different disciplines, universities and countries; it represents a new, annual event that aims to open up a specialised discussion to the wider public, as a new way of focusing the actual forum's debates and as a new space to facilitate the presentation and discussion of the various analyses.

Call for papers
30 November 2007 deadline for the abstracts.

The competition has opened for the submission of written works that have as their central theme a reflection on the notion of territory and its links with tourism, heritage and identity. The papers that are judged to be the best will be selected to form part of the seminar Tourism, heritage, identities and territories which, working from a multidisciplinary viewpoint, will represent an attempt to widen our perception of the concept of territory, redefining it in terms of its implications for the field of tourism, sustainable development and the processes of identity reconstruction. It is all about investigating whether, now that mobility affects tourism more than ever, the reassessment of territory as a social identification space and a development space could become a source of conflict or, in contrast, an opportunity for social and economic advancement.