It does not exist in people’s minds or in the infrastructures that make it possible. But it is the name we give to the space between Madrid and Lisbon, conceived as an axis of flows spread throughout the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, understood not as a static territory of sites, delimited by borders, but as a corridor of flows of people, goods, knowledge and energy generating wealth and life and connected in global networks.
It does not exist because it does not have the infrastructures to generate abundant and dynamic flows, nor does it exist as a concept of connected space in the minds of the general public, decision-makers, the media and political and private representatives and civil society in general. It neither exists as a continuous and connected concept, nor is it taken into account in decision-making as a priority of the two States.
The Southwest Iberian Corridor and its publications are intended to promote the concept and the infrastructures. A concept and infrastructures that can transform the territory of the Iberian Southwest, but also the two peninsular capitals, the two countries and Europe.
Whether this is possible will depend on making it possible. Promoting a process that must lead to an understanding of how a connected territory has different emerging characteristics, which are far superior and more complex than the mere sum of its resources and elements. To make this possible, connection infrastructures are essential. And their existence, as in other places, will demand new connections.
The following publication that we link to at the end of the text is not a finished and closed product, but an incipient one that is under construction. It aims to serve as a support to visualise the possibilities and stimulate the collective creation of a concept of unreachable dimensions. On this path we want you to accompany us and verify how, in a few years, a secular reality can be transformed, embedded in our minds.
