The international meeting cycle, produced under the epigraph ‘Ibero-American Discussions with Observatories’, has been developed between 2024 and 2025 with a dozen only talks were hundreds of specialists have shared their experiences about culture as a global public asset. “The cycle has been useful to promote an internationalisation process in network, configuring as a space of meeting, discussion and common narrative building, a reflect of the role played by cultural observatories -most of them linked to public administrations- as for challenges and possibilities that guarantee culture as a fundamental human right”, points out Raúl Abeledo.

These meetings, between the observatories of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Spain, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Portugal and Uruguay, mean “a reflection on the necessity to evaluate, and make a monitoring and prospective of to where are citizenship citizenship going, and which is the role of public institutions, between these universities, in a delicate scenery for culture where democratic columns are endangered, like freedom of speech or the right to one’s self-identity”, narrates Abeledo. 

A political, social and educative context that, in his opinion, “is opposed to philosophy and critical thinking, without a gender perspective, peace culture or democratic memory: in America, United States; in Europe: France, Italy...”.

This way -he continues-, the participation of the Universitat de València in this cycle has been key “to put a bridge with Latin America in terms of cultural cooperation”, because “from internationalisation we find an opportunity to build cultural spaces” between Europe and America which will start with the roadmap marked after the consolidation of the Red Internacional de Observatorios e Investigación en Políticas y Economía de la Cultura, an accomplishment thanks to the connection of the Ibero-American Meetings with Observatories with the 4th Meeting of Politics and Culture Economy celebrated in Cuenca (Ecuador) on October.

A Network that agglutinates 11 cultural observatories from seven Latin-American and European universities, and of four state organisms: the universities of Valencia (Spain), do Minho (Portugal), Brasilia (Brazil), of Arts (Ecuador), of the Republic (Uruguay), of Cuenca (Ecuador) and of Buenos Aires (Argentina); and the observatories of Cultural Politics of Chile, Latin-American of Cultural Management (Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Argentina), of Economics in Cultures, Arts and Knowledge of the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, and Itaú Cultural of Brazil.

With the collaboration agreement subscribed they compromised to “impulse work in the network between the observatories that we are currently representing in the framework of Red Internacional de Observatorios e Investigación en Políticas y Economía de la Cultura”.

As the boss responsible for the Valencian observatory explains, product of the Ibero-American meetings appears an opportunity of concretion of this Network, which will progressively be defined in the future, along with an academic publication that will collect the research articles about the perspectives on the cultural observatories from Latin America and the Ibero-American space, a collaborative work whose co-edition is planned under the lead of the Biblioteca Digital de Humanidades of the Universidad Veracruzana and the UArtes Ediciones, as well as the support of RGC Ediciones of Argentina, first editorial specialised in cultural politics in Latin America. The goal is to offer a contemporary and Latin American panorama about the estate of the cultural observatories in Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

To continue, after all, with the project of generating spaces where we can express the voices of the cultural observatories, systematise experiences and promote potential links between cultural agents and specialists in research and management, and that way impulse collective knowledge.

The organisation of the ‘Ibero-American Discussions with Observatories’, led by the Observatório de Políticas de Ciência, Comunicação e Cultura of the Universidad do Minho (Portugal), the Observatório de Políticas Públicas Culturais da Universidade de Brasilia (Brazil) and the Observatori Cultural de la Universitat de València (Spain), has taken place inside the framework of the 75th anniversary of the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI) and has meant “a very valuable opportunity to generate bonds and collaboration networks with academics and cultural agents from the 25 cultural observatories of Ibero-America involved, issue that is completely alienated with the goals from the Strategic Plan of the UV for 2023-2026”, reminds Raúl Abeledo.