MADRID, 26 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the Higher Sports Council (CSD), José Manuel Franco, travels to Dubai this Friday to visit the Spanish Pavilion at the 2020 Dubai World Expo, which is held until next March 2022 and which, in this edition, has as the motto “Intelligence for life”.
Sport and, more specifically, chess as a link between Spain and the Arab world are part of the common thread of the Spanish Pavilion in Dubai, promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation through Spanish Cultural Action (AC / E ), and with the support of the CSD.
It is the activity with the most dedicated space in the pavilion: a 22-meter-long panel that summarizes the history of chess as a nexus of Arab and Spanish cultures, a giant floor board and several tables for visitors to play games.
For this reason, the Spanish Pavilion will host from this Thursday until next Monday, November 29, the World School Chess Tournament, in which twelve teams of adolescents up to 16 years old from 10 countries participate. Among them, Spain, whose representatives are the young people of the EDM Torrelavega school (Cantabria).
A tournament that began to be played virtually at the end of 2019 and in which more than 2,600 players from 53 countries have participated so far, managed through AC / E together with the international online chess platform Chess24.
“The Dubai Expo 2020 is the first major non-sporting international event of a massive nature to be held in the world, and Spain is very present in it. It is a privilege that our Pavilion, in addition to placing sport as the spearhead of our international image, host events such as the World School Chess Tournament, a discipline in which our country is a benchmark in terms of education “, stressed José Manuel Franco.
In this sense, the president of the CSD recalled that Spain is the only country in the European Union that has dedicated a game exclusively to sports, worth more than 300 million euros.
“A sign of the weight of sport in our country and of our will to continue promoting it, modernizing it and consolidating it as a world benchmark,” he said.
Expo 2020 is held from October 1 to March 31, 2022 under the motto “Connecting minds, building the future.” During these 182 days the objective is to show the capacity to collaborate and innovate that human beings have.
Thus, the exhibition shows the most innovative and unprecedented scientific and technological advances in the most disparate fields, from medicine to space travel.
About 200 countries, multilateral organizations, educational institutions and companies participate in this Universal Exhibition, which is the first time that it takes place in the Middle East. For the first time in the history of the Expo, each country has its own pavilion.