On 29 May, Miguel Ángel Cortés, President of the Board of Trustees of the Fundación Carolina, Rafael del Pino y Moreno, President-Founder of the Fundación Rafael del Pino, and José Ángel Sánchez Asiaín, President of the Board of Trustees of the Fundación Colegio Libre de Eméritos Universitarios, signed a Collaboration Agreement for the joint organisation of the International Meetings "Europe and America. Four hundred years after Don Quixote".
The aim of the Encounters was to promote and publicise Spain's cultural legacy and its contribution to universal culture and, in particular, to Western civilisation.
The meetings were held in 2005 to commemorate the fourth centenary of the publication in Madrid of the first part of Miguel de Cervantes' work, "El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha", one of the great literary monuments of universal culture, and also a symbol of Spain's contribution to the shaping of our civilisation on both sides of the Atlantic.
The celebration of these anniversaries was supported by the organisation of three top-level international meetings, aimed at debate and reflection on the main aspects of relations between Europe and America - as the continents that form the core of Western civilisation - in historical perspective and in the present day.