Diversity characterises today’s societies, in which concepts such as miscegenation and hybridisation are defining features of the contemporary. Madrid, the only European capital of Arab foundation (Mayrit) responds to this pattern and people of very diverse origins coexist and dialogue in it. This round table will deal with the ways in which Arabs are represented and the way in which this representation is expressed in communication and in the field of creation. A round table in which the particularities of Spanish society with a common secular history with the Arab-Islamic world are analysed. Topics addressed in a conversation between Nuria Medina, Casa Árabe’s culture coordinator, Yolanda Álvarez, a journalist with long experience in the Middle East and author of the book “Naúfragos sin Tierra”, Said Messari, a visual artist born in Tetuán (Morocco) and Muhsin Al Ramli, a writer born in Sedira (Iraq).

The strong networks of cultural exchange that linked the Iberian Peninsula and Egypt during the Middle Ages explain the extraordinary collection of objects of Egyptian origin preserved on the Peninsula. In addition to the rock crystal objects and the silver and ivory chests of Fatimid origin, the collection of bronzes from Denia, the treasures of Fatimid coins and the Egyptian ceramics that reached al-Andalus or, conversely, the Andalusian ceramics found in Fustat, have recently been added. At the round table discussion Sumptuary arts: specificities and similarities, several specialists will debate the reflection of these cultural connections in the sumptuary arts and the problems posed by the identification of the origin of the luxury products preserved in the Iberian Peninsula, Egypt and other parts of the Mediterranean. These objects are the best testimonies of a globalised Mediterranean where a dynamic cultural and artistic dialogue existed.