The Spain-India Council Foundation and the Observer Research Foundation are co-organising the third edition of the Spain-India Forum on November 22, 2023 in New Delhi. The Spain-India Forum serves as a relevant platform for promoting bilateral relations between Spain and India. It is supported by the State Secretary for Foreign and Global Affairs of Spain, the Embassy of Spain in New Delhi, and the Instituto Cervantes in New Delhi.
The 2023 edition of the Spain-India Forum is especially significant as it is being held in India for the first time. The previous two editions took place in Madrid in 2014 and 2017, focusing on urban development and infrastructure, and renewable energy respectively.
The main goal of the III Spain-India Forum is to explore the assets and opportunities for bilateral cooperation between Spain and India as global partners in four key sectors: the participation of the European Union and Latin America in the Indo-Pacific; capacity-building in defence industries; university collaboration and educational exchanges; and the global dimension of the Spanish language.
The public programme on November 22 will be followed by a Closed-Door Working Meeting of Indian and Spanish experts on November 23.
A forty-member delegation will travel from Spain to New Delhi to participate in the Spain-India Forum together with their Indian counterparts. It is composed of the delegation of the Spain-India Council Foundation, formed by its board of trustees and members, along with three sectoral delegations: the Spanish Language delegation, coordinated by the Directorate-General for Spanish Language in the World; the Higher Education delegation, coordinated by the Spanish Service for the Internationalization of Education (SEPIE); and the think tanks delegation, coordinated by the Spain-India Observatory. The Spanish delegation is led by State Secretary for Foreign and Global Affairs of Spain, Ángeles Moreno Bau, and the President of the Spain-India Council Foundation, Juan Ignacio Entrecanales, Executive Vice President of Acciona.
The participation of government and institutional representative from India is scheduled in the main event as well as in the side events, including Meenakshi Lekhi, Minister of State for External Affairs and Culture of India, Sanjay Verma, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs of India, and Professor Harsh V. Pant, Vice President for Studies and Foreign Policy at ORF.
