9th International Conference on the Links between Spain and North America
“A Round Trip Across the Atlantic”
Where: Instituto Franklin-UAH, Alcalá de Henares, Spain
When: April 24th – April 26th, 2024
Description: The year 2023 marked 510 years since the arrival of Ponce de León to the coasts of Florida, beginning a relationship between Spain and the lands of North America that persists until today. At the beginning of the 16th century, the islands of the Antilles had become the point of arrival and departure of a complex system of fleets between the peninsula and the Caribbean in which the island of Santo Domingo, Cuba and Puerto Rico also marked the beginning of explorations towards the mainland. It was in that same expedition of 1513 that Antonio de Alaminos recorded the first description of the Gulf Stream, scientifically establishing what for the following three hundred years became the tornaviaje or route back from the American coasts to the European continent, sailed by the Spanish treasure fleet on a round trip in which ideas, merchandises/goods/products/wares, men and women from Europe and America circulated cyclically across the Atlantic Ocean–a bridge, not an abyss–connecting two worlds that were building each other. Let the metaphor of the Atlantic bridge be used to discuss the round trip paths which, from the Iberian Peninsula to North America and back, two societies with common roots and a prosperous future have crossed.
The 9th International Conference on the Links between Spain and North America will deal with the influences and connections across the Atlantic, both in the past and the present from a political, social, economic and cultural point of view, as well as in relation to the current challenges of the international community related to the new geostrategic order imposed by the war in Ukraine, the emergency of climate change, or the new Asia-Pacific relations. As main points of this annual meeting, these issues will be discussed from an Atlantic perspective and, more specifically, from the relationship of Spain and North America and the Caribbean Islands with the goal of proposing new answers to new problems, without forgetting the roots of a more than 500 -year-relationship with the American continent.
Institution: Instituto Franklin-UAH
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