by Vic Larato
ZAMBOANGA CITY, 01 March. (PIA 9) - -The city has sent an early invitation to Mayor Juan Alberto Belloch of Zaragoza, Spain to come to Zamboanga City as guest of honor either in this year’s Fiesta Pilar celebration in October or during the 2013 Dia de Zamboanga.
“I have just written Mayor Belloch, actually inviting him to come to Zamboanga so we can more or less show our appreciation to the hospitality accorded us when we were in Zaragoza. I suggested to him two dates; one is October, this year during our Fiesta Pilar, and the other is February of 2013,” Mayor Celso Lobregat told a news conference Monday afternoon at the Zamboanga International Airport’s VIP lounge before sending off Spanish Ambassador Jorge Domecq back to Manila.
Lobregat in fact asked Ambassador Domecq to help convince Mayor Belloch accept the invitation, to which the latter assured that the first thing he will do when he gets back to the embassy in Manila is to follow up the invitation to Mayor Belloch.
“I was telling him (Belloch) that I will be ending my term come June 2013, so it would be nice if he could come either this or next year,” Lobregat said even as he described as “wonderful” Ambassador Domecq’s visit to Zamboanga along with his wife Lady Rosa Rufino and other officials of the Spanish embassy.
“The coming of the Spanish ambassador and his official delegation will help dispel all the negative impressions that people have about Zamboanga. We thank him and we will be expecting him to come many, many times over in the future. This is an open invitation to the ambassador and his wife,” Lobregat said.
To recal, Lobregat and Rep. Beng Climaco-Salazar headed a delegation of city officials to Zaragoza, Spain in 2008 and forged a sisterhood agreement with Mayor Bulloch.
For his part, Ambassador Domecq also thanked the mayor for the opportunity to visit Zamboanga City for the first time. “It gave me to opportunity to know more about Zamboanga and to see good things where we can do collaborative efforts in the future.”
The Spanish envoy cited collaborative efforts in the cultural, tourism, economic and education where he assured his government can intervene to develop Zamboanga.
“If we continue to have good projects, we will continue to support good projects. If we continue to received well-formulated projects that have worked well, there is no reason why the Spanish government under my authority will not support,” Domecq declared. (JPA/VL/CIO/PIA- ZBST)