The act, in which the agreement was signed, has been presided by the principal of the Universitat, Mª Vicente Mestre, and by the Cullera’s mayor, Jordi Mayor. Furthermore, have attended the at the vice-principal of Innovation and Transparency, Mª Dolores Real; the director of the University Institute of Local Development, Mª Dolores Pitarch; the professor of the department of Geography, Adrián Ferrandis; the professor of the department of Modern and Contemporary History, Joan del Alcázar; the general secretary of Cullera’s city hall, Javier Gieure le Caressant; the deputy mayor of the Agency of Local Development, Mª José Terrades, and the technical of local development of Cullera’s city hall, José Salvador Martínez.

Cullera’s city hall considers the creation of formative, cultural, research activities. Thus, among the formative activities exists the establishment of a Research Prize for unpublished works (TFG, TFM or PhD thesis) that incorporate Cullera on their studies. In addition, more conferences, conventions, congresses and formative courses with a formative purpose of the city located in the Ribera Baja.

One of the most interesting aspects that the new chair provides is the creation of a turistic territorial observatory (OTT), which will allow the recompilation and generation of empiric information, both quantitative and qualitative, for its posterior prospective analysis and diffusion of the obtained results.

Furthermore, the activities of research and transference of knowledge that include conferences of technical dissemination, promotion of publications, reinforcement of national and international encounters about relevant topics or about the development of new lines of research of unknown aspects or little dealt with of this topics.

The principal Mª Vicenta Mestre has mentioned ‘the luck of the Universitat since it is able to count on the University Institute of local Development that a part from doing the research, provides dissemination, a very important factor. As the public university that we are, we are under the obligation to react to the necessities that our society may have and to transfer knowledge so our society can improve.’

For its part, the mayor Jordi Mayor has thanked the Universitat for the support in the making of this chair, ‘because knowledge is the future, and only with the support provided by the Universitat to offer these studies, we will be able to confront some of the challenges that we have as a town, like for example a new intelligent and sustainable tourism.’

In his words, the professor Adrián Ferrandis has mentioned the importance that the city of Cullera has, a town that joins the coast, the tourism, an economic projection and an important demographic entity. Furthermore, he has highlighted the three lines that the Turistic Terriotial Observatory has (economic, social and environmental) to allow a better distribution of the territory.

La Cátedra Ciutat de Cullera will come into force at the moment of the sign and it will have a validity period of three academics years, until the 2020/2021 course. Once the validity period is over, it could be renovated by academic course.