Summer is a good time for fire, both for the friend who lights Saint John’s Eve as well as for the enemy who, uncontrolled, devastates everything it reaches, transforming the living spaces that forests are into gigantic extensions of death and desolation. There is no summer where the hostile flames don’t cause us numerous damage and it is at that tragic moment when we look at their devastating effect without noticing that, to a large extent, the fatal consequences are the result of criminal human behaviour or lack of foresight because, undoubtedly, fires must be put out in winter, the one preceding summer, clearing weeds, setting up firebreaks and preventing possible sources of insurgency.

ACADEMY  | Ramón Jáuregui Atondo

The German Proposal for the Future of the European Union
I have often heard criticisms of the enlargement of Europe in 2004 to the countries of Eastern Europe, referring to the management difficulties experienced by the European Union in adding ten new States and thus becoming too large and complex. I always responded to these easy and unfair accusations by saying that those countries were Europe before us. That Europe is Prague, Krakow, Budapest, as is Vienna, Rome or Paris. That the enlargement to the East was necessary due to both solidarity and geopolitical reasons. That to renounce the Czech Republic or Poland and Hungary, even the three Baltic countries, was to amputate Europe’s own heart.

OPEN TRIBUNE | Clemente Cruz Peralta

The Native of Teruel, Pedro José de Fonte. The Career of the Last Archbishop of New Spain
The young ecclesiastic from Teruel, Pedro José de Fonte Hernández y Miravete, arrived in New Spain accompanying Archbishop Francisco Xavier de Lizana y Beaumont in December 1802. He was then 26 years old. His life took an unexpected course in 1815, when he was elected archbishop of Mexico, thus becoming the last one of New Spain. To reach this position he had to go through a relatively short path, immersed in the conjuncture of the crisis that the monarchy of Spain suffered at the beginning of the 19th century.

INTERVIEW  | Francisco Fonseca Morillo

Francisco J. Fonseca Morillo is professor of Public and European International Law at the University of Valladolid and president of the European Movement in Castilla León, an international entity founded in 1949 and with divisions in all European countries, whose main objective is to contribute to the establishment of a united and federal Europe based on respect for human rights, peace, democracy, freedom and citizen participation.

CURRENT NEWS  | Sébastien Maillard

Europe, Fragments of Membership
The EU Council's French Presidency has highlighted the notion of European ‘membership’. But what kind of membership are we talking about? Which Europe are we ‘members’ of? Successive crises have made us question the complex links that bind us to the European Union. The migration crisis of 2014-2015 reminded Europeans of the haven of peace, prosperity and freedom that they represent to others in the world. However, at the same time the crisis betrayed Europeans' cultural insecurity preventing them from accommodating difference, and the very obvious ongoing inability to coordinate as 27 Member States on this politically slippery subject.

PUBLICATIONS | Retos de futuro en el Real Monasterio de Santa María de Guadalupe

Guadalupe is not only a physical, beautiful place, but has secularly been the cradle of thought and thinkers, of architects of a different relationship with the New World, an equal to equal one, one without vassals or vassalage, a spark from Guadalupe that lit the flame of an oil lamp, which was so often hesitant and that we now want to stoke. 

REMEMBERING  | Mikhail Gorbachev 

Address at the 2002 Carlos V European Award Ceremony
Dear friends, for me every time I visit Spain becomes a memorable event, all these visits are part of my memory, all these visits were extremely exciting and rewarding Today, in this same environment, I have been awarded this prize, with His Royal Highness and the distinguished members of the European Academy of Yuste present.