Uni-Italia Association, together with The Autonomous Body of the Spanish Service for the Internationalization of Education (SEPIE) and the Education Office of the Embassy of Spain in Italy, came together to celebrate the Italian-Spanish Day in Turin, on 15 June, to discuss academic relations between the two countries.
The event was held on 15 June 2022 in Turin at the Castello del Valentino, the historic and prestigious headquarters of the Politecnico di Torino, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List, thanks to the generous support from Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and Politecnico di Torino.
To date, there are 198 double degree agreements covering all the current higher education courses in the two countries, involving 44 Italian universities and 40 Spanish institutions. The Italian-Spanish Day 2022 aimed to highlight the possibilities for cooperation between institutions in the field of higher education, highlighting critical issues and proposing new solutions.
During the morning, the results achieved over the years were discussed, giving the universities attending the event the opportunity to take the floor and talk about some of the projects undertaken.
Dr. Annalisa di Calisto, Deputy Secretary General of Uni-Italia, thanked the institutions and bodies present at the event, and recalled the importance of similar meetings to improve bilateral academic cooperation in order to also contribute to a greater promotion of study abroad.
In the document presented by Uni-Italia, the scope of the relations undertaken between the academic institutions is emphasized. Furthermore, the intentions to consolidate bilateral agreements, thanks to the mutual vision of Europe, as well as the cultural and linguistic affinities, which enable these two countries to play a key role in the agreements on higher education in the European Union, starting with the signing of new protocols and agreements, have been highlighted.
The Director of Spanish Higher Education Internationalization Unit, José Aurelio Llaneza Villanueva, emphasized the importance of new strategies to ensure mobility for students with development pathways.
The speech by the Counsellor for Education at the Embassy of Spain, Dr. Ignacio Revillo Pinilla, in Italy showed how universities, in this world of constant change, are getting more and more prominent, with increasingly leading European roles and empowered to change our societies.
In the early afternoon, the Italian-Spanish day turned into an opportunity for B2B meetings between individual representatives of Italian and Spanish universities, which strengthened bilateral relations.
The ever-increasing trend in the number of Italian and Spanish students going from one country to another each year - six and eight thousand respectively - confirms the moral imperative of removing the obstacles to international mobility.
