Our country has a strong cultural personality, but the current recession obliges us to reflect on the model for the next decades. Culture must play a leading role in society, not only from the perspective of education and social cohesion but also as a stimulus for the economy.

In response to more critical positions, a far-reaching debate on cultural consumption is opening up, and we must seek solutions with a medium-term horizon. Our reality is now more complex than before, and the Festival of World and Sacred Music provides answers to the multiple identities of our present-day society.

With the help of artists such as Pablo Milanés, Peret, Anoushka Shankar, María Bayo, Rachel Podger, Stile Antico and Cantus Cölln, our annual summer Festival will become both showcase and laboratory for a quality artistic experience, as well as an opportunity to pool and update ways of seeing and feeling our many-sided reality.

Antoni Tàpies, the artist who designed the image for this year's Festival poster, attributes a miraculous healing effect to art. As with the Festival, his sensitive work makes us rethink ourselves in order to build a better reality.

The Festival puts forward questions. Let us enjoy this artistic celebration as we search for the answers.