Opening the Peace Embassy in Madrid

On April 13, 2008, we celebrated our first gathering of Ambassadors for Peace in the new headquarters of the Universal Peace Federation in Madrid. Over two hundred guests came, many more than we had expected according to the confirmations in previous days. The house was filled with the joy of meeting long-time friends and new guests. All of them praised the facilities and the beauty of the new Peace Embassy. Some already started to propose future activities in the beautiful halls.

Among the guests were representatives of different embassies and government agencies, priests and nuns of diverse Catholic institutions, representatives of different religions and NGOs, poets, musicians, artists, and journalists—an incredible variety of walks in life and nationalities united by the common ideals of peace and love.

The program flowed in a very spontaneous way, keeping a family atmosphere. After some welcoming remarks by Armando Lozano, director of UPF-Spain, we had the great honor to have the Catalan singer and composer Toti Soler, a leading figure in the musical revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Toti sung few poetical songs and showed his mastery in guitar playing. Toti Soler was introduced in a very moving way by Sebastian Badosa, who explained Toti’s musical career spanning 37 years crowned in recent years by the highest government recognitions. Toti came to our program invited by Encarna Salgado, a UPF Ambassador for Peace who works in the area of Christian-Jewish dialogue. Both are preparing a new record of Sephardic music, which they promised to present in concert in our Peace Embassy.

Next in the program we invited several guests’ speakers: Gonzalo Haya, Catholic theologian; Teodoro Rubio, a poet with national and international awards, and Elena Oyarzabal, a Catholic nun and great defender of the interreligious dialogue.

For the prayer of blessing on such a special occasion we asked Ananda Marga leaders, who have been friends of our movement for a long time, to offer a mantra, and it enchanted the audience gradually until everybody joined in the singing and the following meditation.

To end the program, we asked a very dear friend, Laura Tabanera, to perform several flamenco dances accompanied by her husband, Antonio Mandillo in the vocals and Rodrigo Martin Munuera on the sitar. Laura is an expert in ancient art, and Antonio is an astronomer working for NASA—not the stereotype image for flamenco. They truly created a wonderful atmosphere, a beautiful end filled with grace and passion.

To complete the evening we had food and drinks prepared by our UPF brothers and sisters and Ambassadors for Peace, a real festival of multicultural “tapas” (delicacies) from all over the world, a perfect setting for an extra two hours of sharing and getting to know each other.