More than one hundred people attended, on 3 and 4 November, the several sessions of the II International Seminar “Culture, Right of Author, Lusophony and the Future”, organized by SPA at CPLP auditorium, in Lisbon, with the participation of the main leaders of the societies of authors from Africa of Portuguese speaking language and the representation of East Timor.
The audience, composed of authors, experts on Right of Author, representatives of several association, directors of SPA and a number of personalities, followed with great interest the participations of individualities such as Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins, José Pacheco Pereira, Luís Moita, José Manuel Félix Ribeiro, Nuno Vitorino, Mário Vale, Patrícia Akester, Luís Silveira Botelho, the general inspector of Cultural Activities, Ricardo Migueis, among others. Mr. Manisekaran Amasi, Senior Program Officer of World Intellectual Property Organization, agency of the United Nations who supports this SPA’s project since 2013, and Gadi Oron, Director General of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors, based in Paris, both invited by SPA for this Seminar in Lisbon, intervened with the deserved prominence and praised the quality of the event, considering it exemplar for collective management societies in several parts of the world, for being mobilizer of wills and assembler of new initiatives.
Also noteworthy the opening and closing interventions by the Ambassador Murade Murargy, Executive Secretary of CPLP, who stressed the importance of this event and the opportunity within a dynamic concept of Lusophone cooperation.
On the second day of the seminar, the president of SPA, José Jorge Letria, signed two new protocols of cooperation with the heads of the societies of Mozambique (SUMS) and Cape Verde (SOCA), Jaime Guambe and Daniel Spínola respectively, a warranty that also these societies will enter in this Lusophone cooperation program which is already producing visible results in Angola, Mozambique and East Timor.
Among the topics discussed were “The Economic and Social Value of the Language”, ” Cultural Development of Lusophony in the World”, “Collective Management of Lusophony: Challenges and Opportunities” and “The Legal Challenges of Collective Management Societies”, among others.
In the closing session, in addition to the president of SPA, intervened Manisekaran Amasi, Gadi Oron and the secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Luis Campos Ferreira, who highlighted the importance of this event and of all the project of lusophone cooperation started by SPA initiative, stressing that “this is the way how external politics is made” and praising the way the common language and associated national cultures are reinforced by this ambitious project.
It was announced that in 2015 there will be a new seminar in Lisbon and that over the next months, several results of the cooperation program in Angola, Mozambique and East Timor, as well as in other countries present, will be visible.
Lisbon, 5 November de 2014
The Board of Directors
