Tunisian Meeting

From December 3rd to 5th, Casa Árabe and the Tunisian Embassy in Spain, in collaboration with the Foreign Investment Promotion Agency (FIPA) and the Tunisian National Tourism Office (ONTT) as well as Tunisair, organized in Madrid several activities including different fields, both economic and cultural ones, which showed the richness of this North-African country.

This two-day Tunisian Meeting began on Monday December 3rd at 9.30 with the meeting "New Tunisia, new opportunities", organized by Casa Árabe and the Tunisian Foreign Investment Promotion Agency (FIPA), in collaboration with Tecniberia and Ametic. The director general of the FIPA, Noureddine Zekri, was one of the participants. The round table was opened by the director general of Casa Árabe, Eduardo López Busquets, and the Tunisian Ambassador to Spain, M'hamed Ezzine Chelaifa, and it tackled the investment and entrepreneurial cooperation opportunities Tunisia offers for Spanish corporations in the new context of political transition and those sectors where both countries have chances to be complementaries, such as new technologies. Therefore, there were Spanish corporations and associations related to that sector, among them Ángel Zarabozo, director general of Tecniberia, and Simón Sajardo, director of international development for Africa by Indra. To be able to take part in this activity a registration was requested, either by E-mail (economia@casaarabe.es) or by telephone (91 563 30 66).

In the afternoon, at 19.30, Casa Árabe hosted the concert of the group Música Antigua, directed by Eduardo Paniagua, titled "Tunisia’s garden. Arab-Andalusian Music out of the Tunisian Tradition." The performance was 45 minutes long and it offered the sound of the traditional malouf. Entry was only by invitation and managed by the Embassy of Tunisia (madrid@embajadadetunez.es). Once the concert was over, the final selected pictures of the photograph contest "Tunisia: Gathering Emotions through your Memories"* were exhibited, and winners were made public.

On Tuesday December 4th, the Tunisian National Tourism Office (ONTT) organized two workshops, from 9.30 on at the Column Hall at Casa Árabe. The first was focused on "Cultural Tourism", especially on the archaeological and the Saharan axis, and addressed to professionals of the Tourism field and to the travel agencies personnel. At noon, the second workshop dealt with "Spanish-Tunisian Cooking in the Mediterranean Diet", the lecture by the cooking executive chef Slim Btayyaieb, was followed by a tasting of Tunisian specialities, which were prepared by gastronomy and food industry professionals. To take part in these workshops registration was required; at it was made via E-Mail (onttmadrid@turismodetunez.com).

On that very same morning, at 11.00, the director of the Bardo Museum, Soumaya Gharsallah, gave the speech "The Bardo: a palace, a museum, a collection". It was an opportunity to visit the exhibition on the recently renovated Bardo National Museum, which was also dressed with “reproductions” of some Tunisian mosaics. The speech was free of charge and took place at Casa Árabe.

The second day ended up with a speech at 19.30 by Ridha Mami, president of the Tunisian Hispanist Association. The lecture was titled "Tunisia: a welcoming people, cradle and crossroads of Mediterranean cultures and a brother country". The event took place at Casa Árabe’s auditorium and entry was free.

These two days focused on Tunisia ended up with the screening on Wednesday December 5th of the feature film 'A Summer in La Goulette' by Férid Boughedir (Tunisia -France- Belgium, 1996, 89 min.).

La Goulette, 1967. Youssef is an Arab Muslim who works as train ticket inspector and his best friends are Jewish Jojo, owner of a bar, and Catholic Giuseppe, a Sicilian born fisherman. Their three daughters, Meriem, Gigi and Tina, are sixteen years old and grow up together being best friends. During a party the three of them are surprised by their fathers hanging out with three boys from different religions as their own ones. Then, the three families fight and blame each other of what had happened.

The screening was in original version with subtitles in Spanish and tickets were available on sale as shown below: