The Portuguese-Spanish land border is a region with a long past of marginality and low densities relatively to the main poles of the two Iberian countries._x000D_
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The integration of Portugal and Spain into the EEC (now the EU) opened up new possibilities for cooperation. In this context, there have been many projects and lines of investment that aim to make the border a region of effective cooperation with positive effects on a local scale._x000D_
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As it is believed that institutions can be important in this strategy, it is intended to evaluate the impact of the Center for Iberian Studies (CEI) in the border territory, especially in the city of Guarda (Portugal)._x000D_
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Materializing the idea of the Portuguese writer and thinker Eduardo Lourenço regarding an Iberian communion of values for a common development strategy, CEI was born from a protocol between the Municipality of Guarda and the Universities of Coimbra and Salamanca. Founded in 2000, it is a multi-territorial institution anchored in the links between two of the oldest universities in Europe._x000D_
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In this perspective, innovation is understood as an enhancement of local resources, but also as a process of creating institutions that, in the respective territories of influence (in this case, on a cross-border scale), streamline networks of economic, social, political and institutional._x000D_
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Using methodologies such as direct observation, interviews and the collection of quantitative and qualitative data, it is intended to reflect to what extent this institutional innovation fulfilled Eduardo Lourenço’s ideas and opened up to cross-border local communities, promoting their empowerment or if, on the contrary, it reproduces a walled institutional model, self-centred and distant from local realities. Basically, the intention is to analyse to what extent the CEI can leave a positive trail and be a driving force in this cross-border region._x000D_

Tiago Mesquita; João Luís Fernandes
Department of Geography and Tourism, University of Coimbra

 
ID Abstract: 322