The communicator Mercedes Martín has been in charge of presenting the start of the Blue Economy and naval industry event, which brings together national and international experts to more than a thousand attendees in the Cadiz capital
Culture, very present in this edition, has offered a great show at the beginning with the performance “Sea of silver, deep blue”, a scenic and plastic work created by the artist and academic Paco Pérez Valencia for this international event.
The State delegate, Fran González, opened the institutional inauguration together with the CEO of Navalia and expressed satisfaction with the consolidation of the Blue Zone Forum as the great event for the sector and the strength of the Blue Economy ecosystem of the Free Zone
Successful participation of companies, entrepreneurs, administrations and students on the first day of the event, which has offered a wide range of topics in its program, from marine renewable energies to maritime transport
Authorities and attendees have visited the exhibitor area, which has on-site demonstrations by some of the Incubazul startups
"Nature is the best mirror we can access. It helps us understand who we are. We have to be able to rethink who we are in relation to our environment." With these words Odile Rodríguez de la Fuente has appealed to the public attending the opening of the Blue Zone Forum Navalia Meetin 2025, especially the younger public whom she usually addresses more regularly. The daughter of the well-known naturalist Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente has been in charge of opening the great event of the Blue Economy in its third edition, organized by the Free Trade Zone of Cádiz jointly with Navalia.
Odile Rodríguez de la Fuente, who has described it as an honor to be able to participate in this Blue Economy forum, has remembered her famous father whom she has described as a pioneer and has emphasized his message, which already in 1971 urged to live in harmony with nature, arguing that "in nature everything is interconnected."
Led by the well-known meteorologist and communicator Mercedes Martín, the State delegate in the Free Zone, Fran González, and the CEO of Navalia, Javier Arnau, have inaugurated the event accompanied by the mayor of Cádiz, Bruno García. The president of Navantia, Ricardo Domínguez, and the first vice president of the Government and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, wanted to show their support for the event and have been present electronically since their agenda has made it impossible to attend in person.
Fran González welcomed all attendees and was “very excited since this year we are repeating the event for the third time.
consecutively with the strength that the union with other entities gives us, this time with Navalia, which gives us an interesting perspective, with a more business approach. We turn Cádiz into an important center of reflection that shows us that we are moving forward to become the hub of the Blue Economy. We believe that the ecosystem is already consolidating and that we only have to continue connecting points and promoting synergies so that all the key pieces of this sector work together and complement each other to continue moving forward."
After the institutional inauguration and the presentation by Odile Rodríguez de la Fuente, the authorities toured the stand area, where they greeted the exhibitors and were able to attend some demonstrations by the startups and entities located there.
The day has been full of spaces of knowledge for all tastes. Special interest has been aroused by the table held in the morning, after the presentation by Odile Rodríguez de la Fuente, dedicated to “Marine renewable energies beyond wind power”, in which Iolanda Piedra, president of the Maritime and Logistics Cluster of the Balearic Islands, participated; Pablo Alcón Valero, director of offshore activities for Spain and Portugal at Qair Group, a company specialized in renewable energies, especially wind energy; and Pedro Mayorga, CEO and co-founder of Enerocean S.L., a company specialized in the development and manufacturing of technology for offshore wind energy, especially floating systems for offshore wind turbines. All of them have been moderated by Laura Rodríguez Couce, business development director at Instra Ingenieros.
In the afternoon, the ports played a leading role in the table “Strategy for port and maritime transport cooperation to improve the skills of the Iberian Pole”, which featured interventions by Gerardo Landaluce, president of the Port Authority of the Bay of Algeciras; Nieves Roqueñí, president of the Port Authority of Gijón; and Joaquim Gonzalves, executive administrator of the port of Leixoes, one of the most important ports in Portugal, moderated by Teófila Martínez, president of the Port Authority of Bahía de Cádiz.
Another of the spaces that has aroused great interest today has been the "Blue Thinkin Table. Blue Economy Initiatives for the competitiveness of the territories", which was attended by experts from the General Secretariat of Fisheries, the University of Cádiz, the CEI Mar and the town councils of Cádiz and Algeciras.
Great cultural presence with a careful performance at the opening The Blue Zone Forum Navalia Meeting 2025 is endowed with a great cultural component and this first day has had a spectacular start with a space shared with the sea and culture. “Silver Sea, Deep Blue” has kicked off the Blue Economy event by putting on the stage of the Conference Center a scenic and plastic work created by the artist and academic Paco Pérez Valencia, with a deep poetic sensitivity.
This cultural start, channeled through the alliance between the Zona Franca de Cádiz and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Cádiz, has as its central theme “counting the oceans, dreaming life” and is made up of two parts: the representation on stage and a sea flag, which has been raised in the Plaza de Sevilla.
According to its creators, the work that opened the Blue Zone Forum on the stage of the Palacio de Congresos represents a tribute to all the stories contained in the seas, in all the oceans. The large auditorium, in the dark, without any introduction, started with a video that showed "a moment of life, of dreams and hope, a shipwreck in the middle of the deepest night, which speaks of sailors, travelers, shipwrecked, dreamers, refugees... that contains all the stories, all the journeys, where everyone you care about is, with the same shared fate, the same fear of the unknown, the same hope to continue."
With light, the actress Belén Quirós, like an actress from Ancient Greece, has remembered some of the most beautiful passages of universal literature, from the Odyssey, by the poet Homer; Melville's Moby Dick; The sea dog, by Jack London; The Old Man and the Sea, by Hemingway; Captain Silver's song in Treasure Island, by Stevenson, and verses from Sailor's Land, by Alberti.
The creator of the work, Paco Pérez Valencia, is a full academician of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Cádiz, a professor at the Loyola Andalusia University and a doctor from the University of Seville. He is a specialist in contemporary languages, a prominent innovator of exhibition practice in our country and regularly teaches classes at numerous universities in Spain and Latin America, in the field of Creative and Experimental Museography.
The Blue Zone Forum-Navalia Meeting 2025 is part of the ZF Blue Core-Vivero of Companies 4.0 project, financed by 85% by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) within the Plurirregional Operational Program of Spain Feder 2021-2027, through the INCyDE Foundation.
