By Manuel Montobbio
Today the tradition of this speech of the National Day of Spain in Tirana reaches its fifth anniversary, a symbolic date which we face with the symbolic will of personifying a metamorphosis; as well as, at the same time, that to take a break in our journey and, while looking backwards or forward, reflect on who, how, why and what are we walking for and on the Ithaca towards which our vessel is heading to.
When looking backwards, reading again the speeches of each 12th of October of Spain in Albania offers us a trip throughout the desires and hopes essence of our journey, of our being; since that first speech, five years ago, in which as a declaration of intention we were saying that an Embassy is a commitment, a catalyst and a translator of worlds.
In this moment of drawing up a balance, we could say that yes, we do have committed ourselves, we do have catalysed, we do have translated each other and our respective worlds.
We have committed ourselves, since the construction of an Albania in democracy and freedom, fully integrated in Europe, where the collective life and will are the result of the bridges of dialogue among the different voices and hopes of its people, where the freedom and the good of the other is our very own and in whose streets its inhabitants walk with faith in a better future for everyone, does not seem anymore a distant aspiration of some distant human beings, but the fuel and the reason of our hope – the present of the future as Maria Zambrano would have said -, which we feel committed to build as our own.
We have catalyzed men and women of the culture – who have made possible, among other things, that the Autumn’s fallen leaves in the streets of Tirana have the taste of Spain-, of the justice, of the Administration, of the State Advocacy, of the University, of the European integration, of the business, of the media, of all those fields which make us, when thinking of Spain in Albania, to think of people of flesh and blood that we have known in the journey of life, who are Spain to us and with whom we have established relations that go beyond those we may have with this Embassy, which nonetheless has contributed to make them possible.
We have translated worlds and we know better our respective collective imaginaries, as we know the places where they coincide or meet in the past or in the future; and by knowing the other’s world, it inevitably, desirably, is transformed into ours.
Kavafis said that Ithaca is in the journey: having travelled it together transforms us; as by translating, meeting and knowing each other and walking together, the worlds of Shqiperi and Espa
