Philadelphia is "about to become global," with "a little help from its friends" at the AL DIA Foundation, the non-for-profit corporation associated with AL DIA News Media.

Thanks to a agreement we have worked on for the best part of the last six years, the Philadelphia-based foundation is signing with the University of Valladolid, in Valladolid, Spain, a transoceanic collaboration I don't hesitate in call ing"historic" in nature.

I was my privilege to represent in Valladolid — former capital of the Spanish Empire — a delegation from the AL DIA Foundation in Philadelphia, invited by the president of the university, Mr. Marcos Sacristán.

On Thursday, April 10, at 12 noon in Spain (6 a.m. in Philadelphia), I was given the honor of a red carpet treatment in the historic building of the "Colegio Mayor de Santa Cruz," seat of the University of Valladolid, and site of an educational institution more than 530 years old.

President Sacristán welcomed into his executive suite Dr. José Russo, oncologist of Argentine descent who heads the Fox Chase Cancer Research Center in Philadelphia, and the founder and chairman of the AL DIA Foundation, Hernán Guaracao (yours truly),  to what was an hour of warm conversation on the possibilities of bringing Philadelphia (former Capital of the United States) and Valladolid (former capital of Imperial Spain) closer together through an educational exchange the potenial of which is yet to be measured.

Stay tuned for the details as they unfold….

For now, suffice to say that Valladolid, located only nine hours away from Philadelphia (a seven-hour direct flight to Madrid, plus two on a train north to the capital of the "Comunidad Autónoma de Castilla y León") is an amazing urban enclave, both modern and ancient, sitting exactly in the convergeance of the reknown Pisuerga and Esgueva rivers, not far from the very famous "El Duero" Wineries.

More trivia includes that Queen Isabel I of Castilla and Fernando II of Aragón married here, in 1469, and through that marriage went on to skillfully  form Spain as a nation and, as consequence, give birth of the Spanish Empire — all fueled by the "Discovery of America" by Don Cristobal Colón (C. Columbus), who died in Valladolid in 1506, only 14 years after Queen Isabel decided to financially support him and his "crazy adventure" of heading West, into the unknown, with three small ships named "La Niña, La Pinta and La Santa María."

Queen Isabel, who is somewhat of a "Virgin Mother of Spain," is known to have given up her jewelry to finance Colombus' trips to the New World, relentlessly opposed by all sorts of court intrigues. Women prevailed, as they often do, and the rest is history.

Valladolid, besides its politics, had a very active literary life, with local residents of the stature of Don Francisco Quevedo y Villegas, author of "Poderoso Caballero, Don Dinero," and Don Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra, author of "El Quijote," both universal writers from 16th century Spain whose intellectual prestige far outlived that of the disappeared Empire in whose capital they lived.

Philadelphia, the AL DIA Foundation based here in our city, and not only the Latino community of our city, now 13 percent of its population, but the rest of it, will hopefully remember this day as one in which an international exchange, mutually enriching for Valladolid and Philadelphia and all its residents, began with a simple three-day trip, two strokes of a pen, and, more importantly, one providential force keeping it all together.