The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, announces in Rome the launch of a special fund in collaboration with UNESCO
Spain will dedicate 1.5 million euros to safeguard the cultural heritage of Ukraine. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, announced this Friday in Rome the first contribution that our country will make to a fund set up in collaboration with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) to protect Ukrainian cultural wealth, which has been threatened since the Russian invasion began on February 24.
“War devastates everything in its path, including culture and cultural heritage,” Albares announced in a meeting with journalists in Rome prior to his trip to Venice, where he plans to visit the Spanish pavilion at the Biennale of Art that opens its doors tomorrow. “Spain supports Ukraine in every possible way. With the shipment of weapons, with the reception of 135,000 refugees, with a package of 31 million euros of humanitarian aid and also taking to the International Criminal Court the need to prosecute war crimes, “said the head of diplomacy Spain, highlighting the importance of collaborating so that Ukraine preserves its “cultural heritage”, because without it “there can be no national consciousness”. The “universal language” that culture means, he later pointed out, is what makes us “free citizens.”
Albares met this morning in Rome with his Italian counterpart, Luigi Di Maio, with whom he spoke about the Russian threat and the next NATO summit, to be held in Madrid on June 29 and 30. In his opinion, this meeting should encourage the Atlantic Alliance to prepare for the new “hybrid threats”, which go beyond the military field and can also come through the migratory, energy or cybernetic fields. “You can threaten the security of a country by putting 15,000 soldiers on its borders, but also with 15,000 irregular immigrants, as we have seen with Belarus and Poland, or by threatening to stop energy flows, as is now very evident with the gas issue. Russian. NATO must be prepared for all of this,” Albares said.
Facing the relationship with Algeria, deteriorated after the Government of Pedro Sánchez accepted the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara, the head of the Foreign Ministry considered that Algiers is a “strategic partner” and praised its historic compliance with the gas contracts. When asked about the expected rise in the price of Algerian gas for Spanish energy companies, Albares replied that he did not want to “feed sterile controversies” without relating the price increase to the discomfort that Spain’s change of position has generated in Algeria regarding their former colony. Algiers is the main supporter of the Saharawi independence movement and its political arm, the Polisario Front. “Spain hopes that having a good relationship with Algeria is not incompatible with having a good relationship with Morocco,” said Albares.
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