St. Petersburg to Receive Participants in "St. Petersburg - Window to Ibero-America" Forum

An international business forum "St. Petersburg - a Window to Ibero-America will be organized on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, formerly the capital of the Russian Empire and now a city having an unofficial status of the second capital of Russia.

Guests from Spain and Latin America will arrive in St. Petersburg to attend the celebrations, the Estrella Digital paper reports. The participants in the forum will consider matters related to cooperation in the past and at present and look into possibilities of promoting cooperation in business. The organizers of the forum expect that personal contacts among its participants will help attain these goals.

In the days when the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg is celebrated a memorial plate devoted to Spanish engineer Augustin Betancur, who lived and worked in Russia in the 19th century, will be unveiled. Betancur had done a good deal for the development of Russia's railways. He founded and then headed the educational establishment, which later developed into the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers. It is believed that the broad gage railway which, apart from Russia, exists only in Spain, is a result of the activities of this Spanish engineer and leader.

The forum St. Petersburg - a Window to Ibero-America is slated for April 11-12. However, according to Estrella Digital, preparations for the event in Spain are in full swing today.