Twenty-sixth of February 2010. Juan Pablo de Laiglesia, Secretary of State for Latin America, held a briefing with Latin American bloggers on Tuesday. The session was followed live on-line by more than 30,000 people, with 60,000 accessing it over the following 24 hours. The Secretary of State answered over 50 on-line questions posted by more than 300 bloggers from 14 countries.
The Secretary of State explained the programme of the Spanish Presidency of the European Union regarding Latin America.
Following the briefing about European Union-Latin America relations guidelines, the Secretary of State for Latin America answered questions posted by Latin American bloggers on relations between the regions. Among the issues arousing most interest were those concerning the outlook for technological and innovation cooperation between Latin America and the European Union, the subject of copyright and Internet access. However, there were also questions on Spain's role in defending human rights and the commitment of Spanish businesses in Latin America. Bloggers also voiced their concerns over the political and social situation in Cuba, Honduras and Venezuela.
The briefing session with bloggers is a new approach by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. This is the first time a foreign ministry presents an international summit on social networks establishing a broad, live, bicontinental conversation. The entire presentation made by the Secretary of State was transmitted live on the blogosphere via video-streaming and textual transcription.
The experiment was enormously successful and widely followed: the video received over 60,000 hits in the first 24 hours. In the words of the Secretary of State for Latin America, this has been “an extremely enriching experience. It has been particularly gratifying to be able to connect live with part of the Latin American civil society”.
The video of the entire session (lasting two hours and broadcast from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation), was first broadcast live on the Ministry web page(www.maec.es where it is still posted).
The video of Secretary of State de Laiglesia's briefing with bloggers can be found on the MAEC webpage (www.maec.es), on the page of the online agency in charge of the video streaming www.agoranews.es, on www.lasindias.coop (the consultancy organising the participation process). and is also embedded in nearly one hundred Latin American blogs.