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The Focus-Abengoa Foundation and Seville City Council sign a general collaboration agreement

Seville, October 6th, 2004. The Focus-Abengoa Foundation and Seville City Council have signed a collaboration agreement to develop different cultural activities that promote and stimulate social action works in favor of the city of Seville.

The institutional act took place in Seville Town hall, where the agreement was signed by Alfredo Sánchez Monteseirín, Mayor of Seville, and Javier Benjumea, President of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation; also attending were Anabel Morillo León, Director of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation, Juan Carlos Marset, Culture Delegate of Seville City Council and Manuel Copete, Director of the Bienal de Flamenco.

The Focus-Abengoa Foundation, in developing its objectives of encouraging, diffusing and developing the historical and cultural heritage of Seville, commits itself, in the course of its first activity under this Agreement, to publishing a book on the events of the past 25 years of the Bienal de Flamenco (1979-2004), which will clearly reflect the importance of this artistic expression in the year of its 25th Anniversary. The edition will be coordinated by the writer Antonio Zoido.

Likewise, Seville City Council will provide its support for the Focus-Abengoa Foundation’s exhibition entitled “From Herrera to Velázquez. Sevillian Painting at the Crossroads of 1600”, scheduled for towards the end of 2005 in Hospital de los Venerables, in Seville. In addition to Seville City Council, the exhibition will also receive exceptional support from the Museum of Fine Arts and the County Council, among others, through the lending of exceptional paintings such as “La Imposición de la Casulla de San Ildefonso” by Diego Velázquez. The exhibition, which is being supervised by the Honorary Director of the Prado Museum, Alfonso E. Perez Sánchez, and the professor from the University of Alcalá, Benito Navarrete, is being organized in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao, the city to which it will subsequently travel.

Abengoa's unfailing commitment to sustainable development and the principles it embraces, involves maintaining and increasing natural capital, social capital and the capacity of the global economy to generate wealth and distribute it fairly. This social action is channeled through the Focus-Abengoa Foundation, which was created in 1982 with the primary objective of contributing to the preservation, dissemination and development of Seville's historical and cultural heritage and its diffusion in Latin America.

The Foundation has progressively expanded its activities in tireless pursuit of its foundational objective, the promotion of culture in its many artistic and scientific forms. Proof of its efforts in this area are the educational initiatives undertaken by the Foundation, such as the Focus-Abengoa Work Placement Program, the agreements made with various Spanish and foreign universities, the Javier Benjumea Board of Economic and Business Ethics with the Pontifical University of Comillas and the Javier Benjumea Research Award with the University of Seville.

Antonio Zoido

Born in Seville, Antonio Zoido is a renowned expert on the andalusian world and, at the same time, an intellectual open to all humanistic currents. A Philosophy graduate from the Gregorian University of Rome and the University of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), he is a member of the Machado Foundation and advisor to the Bienal de Flamenco of Seville. He has written several books, among which we would mention “Ni Oriente ni Occidente” (Neither East nor West), “Los Hijos de Platón” (Platoon’s Children) and “los Pobres de Zeus” (Zeus’s Poor).