The press conference of the twenty-fourth edition of the Festival of Ibero-American Culture, is always celebrated in the eastern city of Holguín between October 23 and 30. On this occasion dedicated to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Casa de Iberoamérica, was held in the Hall of Solidarity of the Hotel Habana Libre with the presence of Eusebio Leal Spengler, Historian of the City of Havana, who was awarded with the House Distinction, the highest recognition granted by this institution founded on the initiative of the then Minister of Culture , Dr. Armando Hart Dávalos, on October 23, 1993, as part of the commemorations for the fifth centenary of the encounter between American and European cultures.
The House of Latin America, which has among its objectives "to consolidate the interest of the population for all the manifestations of art and culture of the Ibero-American region", awards with the House Distinction to those personalities that contribute to this purpose. "There are many - expressed Eduardo Ávila Rumayor, director of the Holguin institution and president of the FCI - those who in these twenty-five years have served the greater effort promoted by Hart to found a house that worked to support the meaning of the encounter of the two cultures . It was a lot of effort that at the level of a distant territory eight hundred kilometers from the capital was made to carry it forward. Today we are talking about twenty-five years of work that have depended fundamentally on the relationship with the Cuban intelligentsia in all the provinces and beyond. Here we have, fortunately, Eusebio, who has been accompanying us permanently, because the House will always need it ».
"I must thank everyone for your understanding," said Leal, "that not having been able to go to the Holguín Book Fair this year did not seem like a grievance on my part to such a hospitable and beautiful land, where Christopher Columbus exclaimed that this is the most beautiful land that human eyes saw, where he observed daisies and daffodils, as in Andalusia in summer, according to his diary, and many more things that made him fall in love with that land that today is a province of the great Cuban east, which It means that we belong to that powerful tradition that begins when you cross the Jobabo River, which is like the Rubicon a water line, but that means to pass and enter a large page of the glorious history of Cuba. Thanks to the Casa de Iberoamérica, I really appreciate the work you are doing, a truly extraordinary work that Fidel inspired, because it was he who determined, together with Antonio Núñez Jiménez, how we should commemorate and remember an inexorable and unavoidable event as was the encounter of the cultures of the new and the old world ».
The award of the House Distinction to Eusebio Leal is an excellent preamble to the Festival of Ibero-American Culture, which is dedicated "to highlighting the common historical-cultural roots that unite the member nations of this community, characterized by a cultural mosaic of wide and rich nuances ».
As every year, the event will have among its several spaces, the participation of more than two hundred guests from twenty countries, the Ibero-American Congress of Thought, the Ibero-American Colloquium of Letters, personal and collective exhibitions of fine arts, as well as the International Handicrafts Fair Iberoarte, the Peasant Festival and meetings with the Artistic Brigades of Solidarity .
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