His Excellency Dr Santos Gracia Villar, Doctor in Graphic Engineering, Geomatics and Projects, is admitted as a Numerary Member of the Royal European Academy of Doctors, with the speech “La formación universitaria como instrumento para el desarrollo de los pueblos y para la articulación de comunidades multinacionales. El proyecto de FUNIBER” (University education as an instrument for the development of peoples and for the articulation of multinational communities. The FUNIBER project).

Response by: Appointment Pending

Auditorium (A) of the Foment del Treball headquarters. Via Laietana, 32, Barcelona

Monday, 22 June 2026

18:30 h

Format: In person and via streaming

Registration: Please confirm attendance with the Secretariat: secretaria@raed.academy or by calling tel. 93 667 40 54

University education as an instrument for the development of peoples and for the articulation of multinational communities. The FUNIBER project

Higher education, from the creation of the first universities to the present day, has always been an essential tool for the instruction of individuals and citizens in the most advanced societies of each period, aware of the value and need for an education capable of meeting the requirements of the organised political, economic and cultural community, as well as those of the individual. In this regard, the legitimate aspiration of every person to achieve personal growth —professional, economic and academic— while also contributing to the growth of the society of which they are part, has become a highly widespread aspiration in contemporary communities. To make this possible, it has always been necessary to combine planning, effort, discipline and functionality.

At the end of the 20th century, the emergence and rise of the network of networks, the Internet, began to profoundly transform the educational landscape in general and higher education in particular. The Ibero-American University Foundation, FUNIBER, thus emerged in this temporal context, incorporating new technologies with the aim of combining the elements of excellence of the traditional model of in-person education with those of the more recent distance-learning model.

Likewise, it set itself an unavoidable twofold objective of high axiological value: to make higher education available to the largest possible number of people, regardless of their purchasing power and of the student’s place of residence or geographical location.

In addition, FUNIBER’s strategic plan considered it a priority to harness the linguistic and cultural affinities of peoples in order to implement sufficiently homogeneous academic designs and programme plans. This decision was not based merely on reasoning linked to the application of economies of scale in the preparation of teaching materials or other resources, but on a deeper and broader consideration of the shared elements among different peoples and nations. In this way, the Ibero-American University Foundation set out to highlight the widespread mutual intelligibility between the Spanish and Portuguese languages in order to articulate a quality educational offering covering the entire Spanish-speaking and Lusophone space across the different continents, the so-called Pan-Iberian Space or Iberophony. In doing so, FUNIBER also became a real and leading geopolitical actor in the construction of an Iberian World established across all regions of the planet.

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