France/Saint-Georges-sur-Loire. Sister City Program: Our Spanish Friends Are Back

This year, the Sister City Committee is hosting a group of fifty people (seventeen families) from Mancha Real from August 9 to 15.

As part of her Spanish curriculum, Paquita, a teacher at Jean-Racine Middle School, could not imagine her work without immersing her students in the country—just as I experienced it after my ninth-grade year. So, with the support of the school’s two principals, René Lemeur and Nicole Brossard, I organized student exchanges—one student per host family from 1985 to 1989—with the Santa Engracia public middle school and the Huarte de San Juan and Castulo de Linares public high schools.

“French instruction had declined so much in Linares that we didn’t have enough Spanish students for the exchanges. So we continued with Porcuna,” the teacher continued.

A meeting every two years

He adds: “From 1990 through 1993, we partnered with the Nuestra Señora de Alharilla public high school in Porcuna, and from 1993 through 2014 with the Sierra Magina high school in Mancha Real, where my colleague Dona, a French teacher, was transferred.” So we followed her and discovered Mancha Real, located just 20 km from Juan, the provincial capital. From 1993 to 1994, the mayor of Mancha Real, Don Alfonso Martinez de la Hoz, wanted to twin Mancha Real with Saint-Georges-sur-Loire. The twinning was formalized in 1998 by Denis Mercier, mayor at the time, and Don Pedro Cuevas Raya, mayor of Mancha Real, first in Saint-Georges-sur-Loire and then in August 2000 in Mancha Real. Since then, we have been meeting every two years.

It should be noted that these Spanish friends were welcomed this Sunday, August 9, by Mayor Hubert Gaudin.

Source: www.ouest-france.fr/