It is a pleasure to welcome you to Madrid, and this morning here to the Royal Palace. We are sincerely grateful to all of you for choosing Madrid to host the Imperial Springs International Forum 2024, held for the very 1st time outside of China as it expands its outreach and impact. There is so much wisdom and experience in this room, and navigating today’s troubled waters demands immense amounts of those two skills: wisdom and experience.
I wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the partners who have made this Forum possible: the Australia-China Friendship and Exchange Association, the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, and the People's Government of Guangdong Province.
And, of course, a special thanks to the “Club de Madrid”, an organization that embodies the political values we treasure the most. Its ability to convene leaders with varied experience and profound insights fosters innovative solutions to some of the most pressing challenges of our time. I am immensely proud to see this organization well settled in Madrid, a city that has for centuries been a bridge between cultures and civilizations.
Dear friends, the dedication and support of all of you has laid the foundation for this Forum launched in Guangzhou back in 2015, and has since then consolidated as a unique platform for dialogue. Here I wish to commend Dr. Chau for his vision when he launched the Imperial Spring Forum ten years ago, and also to thank the Spanish Ministry of FA and the Madrid City Council for all their support on welcoming you.
To all former Heads of State and Government present in the room, I would like to convey a message of profound and heartfelt gratitude. Over the years, I have had the pleasure to meet many of you in person. You have carried out the highest responsibilities in your countries of origin. Now it is very rewarding to see you are still committed to the never-ending task of building a better world for future generations.
In times of fragmentation, such as the one we live in, your expert voices remind future generations of the importance of upholding the values and principles enshrined in the UN Charter, in preventing conflict and preserving peace.
I want to give a special welcome to our distinguished visitors from China. In 2025, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Spain and China, while in 2023 we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relationships.
In this context, our political, economic and people-to-people exchanges are vibrant, as demonstrated by the visits of the Presid of the Gov. to China in Sept. 2024 and March 2023. More recently, just a few weeks ago, we also received the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Nat.People's Congress, Mr. Zhao Leji.
The Queen and I hold very dear memories of our visit to China in 2006, when I was a Crown Prince. We then had the opportunity to inaugurate the headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes in Beijing. Last September, the Presid of the Gov. inaugurated the new Cervantes Institute in Shanghai, setting a new milestone in the mutual promotion of language and cultural ties.
Spain and China feature among the countries with the richest cultural footprint in the world, as reflected by the number of recognized UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Our mother tongues are the two most widely spoken ones in the planet. Sharing our culture and languages is the most powerful tool against the language of divisiveness and fragmentation.
Dear friends, in a world marked by immediacy, and overwhelmed by constant fluxes of information, initiatives such as this Forum help us gain perspective. This is of the essence in contemporary international relations.
Dag Hammarskjöld, UN Sec. Gen. between 1953 and 1961, once said: “only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road”. Let me express, once again, my satisfaction for this gathering in Madrid, and may those words serve as a source of inspiration to us all, for present and future talks.
Thank you.