The relationship between the cultures of the world should be an open window letting in new ways of life - Sam Abrams

 Hospitality regards the encounter with the other as an event, an opportunity and a celebration, never as a problem - Ryszard Kapuscinski

 

We are presently at the meridian of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. The changing social reality in the European countries, the phenomenon of globalization and the development of communication technologies are creating new scenarios of encounter and dialogue between cultures.

 Intercultural dialogue is, first of all, dialogue and communication. A dialogue with an intention: to construct collectively, to construct together.

 Recent movements of migration have increased the urgency of creating examples and experiences of intercultural dialogue. We are constructing a world where diversity is present at the turn of every corner. We need to bring to the surface the diversity of the receiving cultures and add them to the diversity of the incoming cultures, because cultural diversity is a wealth on condition of sustainability. Cultural uniformity is a danger because it diminishes the pool of information which a society accumulates, and it makes the society more vulnerable to the uncertainties of the future.

 Intercultural dialogue goes far beyond the intellectual exercise of round tables, exhibitions or the pages of a book. If it does not go hand in hand with experiences which touch the heart, it will be very difficult to establish a constructive dialogue; it will only be a theoretical construction.

 Intercultural experiences have been made throughout history. In different times and places, cultures have been co-existing and dialoguing. The years of coexistence, in Spanish territory, of Christians, Jews and Muslims are a clear example hereof. Harmony was made impossible when one culture had pretended to dominate the others. Who knows if we will not have to retrieve historic moments and successful experiences to use as models for our present.

 We face important intercultural challenges, to which we must give a collective response: in the scope of education, public spaces, culture, work, coexistence in the neighbourhoods....in short: in all civic areas. We have to promote the intercultural competences of all citizens, and create a network which generates greater social cohesion and coexistence. We need to face a new civic view of the world integrating everybody into a plural and diverse society.
 Cooperation and Solidarity are the essential guidelines of municipal policies, which will be able to create open windows in order to establish spaces of equality and social cohesion, where intercultural dialogue will be utterly possible.

 

Maria Núria Terés

 Town councilor representative of Education and Cooperation of the Municipality of Girona