Spain: The World Land-Bridge’s Bridge to Africa and Ibero-America

The new, Spanish-language edition of the Schiller Institute pamphlet, “Development Drive Means Billions of New Jobs, No Refugees, No War,” includes a chapter on Spain’s role in the World Land-Bridge, “Spain: The World Land-Bridge’s Bridge to Africa and Ibero-America,” which emphasizes projects such as the Strait of Gibraltar Tunnel, and the crucial importance today of the historic tradition of the 13th Century Spanish King Alfonso the Wise. (The theme of Alfonso the Wise was also developed by the Pope in his June 6 Royal Palace address in Madrid.) The following is an excerpt from that chapter.

This would not be the first time in its history that Spain has played a catalytic role at the crossroads of cooperating civilizations. Under the personal guidance of Alfonso X, “The Wise,” King of Castile and Leon from 1252-82, the Castilian capital of Toledo was built into Europe’s most important scientific center of the time, and the nexus for the transmission of the Greek Classics and the highest achievements of the Arab Renaissance into continental Europe. Alfonso was especially known for his work in astronomy, and for his Toledo School of Translators, which brought together the outstanding scholars of the world’s three major monotheistic religions—Islam, Christianity and Judaism—to render the most advanced religious and scientific texts of each culture, into the languages of the others. It is past time for a new “Alfonsi Era.”