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Qatar, Pearl of the Gulf
October 18, 20227:00 p.m.
MADRID / ONLINE
Casa Árabe Auditorium (at Calle Alcalá, 62).
7:00 p.m.
Free entry until the event’s capacity is reached.
In Spanish.
Casa Árabe and the Ediciones Península publishing firm have organized the presentation of this book by two highly acknowledged experts on the Arab world in Madrid on October 18: Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio and Ignacio Gutiérrez de Terán. Within the framework of the program “Football for Hope.” You can watch the presentation live on our YouTube channel.
In the book, the two authors have provided an economic, political and social overview of this Gulf country, which is topping the headlines this year as the organizer of the 2022 World Cup.
In recent decades, Qatar, a small country on the Persian Gulf, has managed to emerge from anonymity. Its discovery and exploitation of oil and gas have definitively changed the course of the emirate’s history. Whereas a century ago most of the population worked in fishing or pearl hunting, today Qatar has become one of the countries with the highest per-capita incomes in the world, standing out as an energy giant commanding powerful financial muscle.
Despite its small size and low population, the Al Thani dynasty has managed to turn Qatar into a key player in the Middle East region thanks to a dynamic foreign policy based on the use of soft power: launching the pan-Arab media chain Al Jazeera, mediating in regional conflicts and sponsoring reformist Islamist groups.
Hosting the 2022 Football World Cup marks the culmination of this effort to put Qatar on the map of major international events.
In recent decades, Qatar, a small country on the Persian Gulf, has managed to emerge from anonymity. Its discovery and exploitation of oil and gas have definitively changed the course of the emirate’s history. Whereas a century ago most of the population worked in fishing or pearl hunting, today Qatar has become one of the countries with the highest per-capita incomes in the world, standing out as an energy giant commanding powerful financial muscle.
Despite its small size and low population, the Al Thani dynasty has managed to turn Qatar into a key player in the Middle East region thanks to a dynamic foreign policy based on the use of soft power: launching the pan-Arab media chain Al Jazeera, mediating in regional conflicts and sponsoring reformist Islamist groups.
Hosting the 2022 Football World Cup marks the culmination of this effort to put Qatar on the map of major international events.
In conjunction with the Ediciones Península publishing firm, Casa Árabe will be welcoming Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio and Ignacio Gutiérrez de Terán, two well-known experts on the Middle East who will be presenting this documented study on the political, social and economic direction taken by the small country since it became independent. Accompanying the authors will be journalist and correspondent Ángeles Espinosa and Cristina Juarranz, Casa Árabe’s Management Assistant.
Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio is a professor and department chair of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where he runs the Complutense Research Group on the Maghreb and Middle East, as well as the journal Anaquel de estudios árabes He has had over ten books published, including Geopolítica de las Primaveras Árabes (Geopolitics of the Arab Springs, 2022) and Siria. La década negra (Syria: The Black Decade, 2022). He is also a regular analyst for several media outlets, including RTVE, El País, and El Periódico.
Ignacio Gutiérrez de Terán is an associate professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He specializes in contemporary history of the Arab and Islamic world and political transitions in the Middle East. Some of his most notable publications include Yemen, la clave olvidada del mundo árabe (Yemen: Forgotten key to the Arab world, 2014) and Las revoluciones árabes: relato de un proceso en desarrollo(The Arab Revolutions: Tale of a developing process, 2017). He has also translated several titles into Spanish from the Arabic, including The Quarter (Los susurros de las estrellas, 2021), by Naguib Mahfuz. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Nación Árabe.