The City of Guadalajara (Mexico) Receives the UPF-BSM ‘Cultural Figure of the Year 2025’ Award

• The award has been granted to Guadalajara in recognition of its cultural leadership and its sustained commitment to a vision of culture as a tool for social transformation, international projection, and community strengthening.
• The Director General of UPF-BSM, José M. Martínez-Sierra, handed over the award to the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, who presented the distinction to Verónica Delgadillo, Mayor of Guadalajara.

The UPF Barcelona School of Management (UPF-BSM) awarded the ‘Cultural Figure of the Year 2025’ prize this Saturday to the city of Guadalajara (Mexico), in recognition of its cultural leadership and its commitment to culture as a tool for social transformation, international outreach, and community strengthening. Political authorities, business leaders, and representatives of the Consulate of Mexico in Barcelona attended the award ceremony, where the prize was received by Verónica Delgadillo, Mayor of Guadalajara.

José M. Martínez-Sierra, Director General of UPF-BSM, opened the ceremony and also handed the award to Jaume Collboni, Mayor of Barcelona, who formally presented the distinction to the award recipient. The ceremony was also attended by Alfonso Navarro Bernachi, Consul of Mexico in Barcelona, as well as other representatives from civil society, the business sector, and institutional spheres of the city.

This is the first edition of the award granted by the UPF Barcelona School of Management. “The UPF-BSM ‘Cultural Figure of the Year’ awards were created to recognize individuals and institutions that, through culture, generate a positive impact on society, inspire new generations, and turn culture into a true engine of social change,” explained José M. Martínez-Sierra, Director General of UPF-BSM.

“Today we have the honor of recognizing a city that fully embodies these values: Guadalajara, Mexico. Its cultural leadership, its ability to foster social cohesion, and its international projection as a benchmark for cultural and social innovation make it deserving of this recognition,” Martínez-Sierra emphasized.

For her part, Verónica Delgadillo expressed her gratitude for the award: “What we receive today is a recognition of a city that encompasses many dimensions. In Guadalajara, culture is built first and foremost in markets, public squares, and the living dynamics of everyday life. We have shaped our identity through these cultural processes that fill us with pride.”

“Guadalajara is the face of Mexico to the world, but above all it is what it nurtures internally: it protects that identity, that diversity, that culture, and every day rethinks its transformation with an eye toward the future,” she affirmed.

“Today, Guadalajara seeks to work toward and consolidate culture as an instrument for development, care, and coexistence. For a long time, we have been working to make culture a right for everyone, not just a privilege for a few. As a city, we are committed to ensuring that access to culture exists in every corner, regardless of where you were born or the resources you have; that cultural expression and richness are always within reach,” Delgadillo concluded.

A City Committed to Barcelona

Eva Vila, Commissioner for Culture and Creative Industries at UPF-BSM, was responsible for reading the merits of the award recipient. Vila highlighted Guadalajara’s role as a cultural capital in 2025 with the celebration of the 39th edition of the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL), an especially significant edition for UPF-BSM, as Barcelona was the guest city of honor.

“This fair has consolidated the city as an editorial and cultural epicenter of Ibero-America and the Spanish-speaking world,” explained the Commissioner for Culture. “The cultural relationship between both cities has also been strengthened recently with the signing of an institutional agreement between Guadalajara and Barcelona, which establishes a stable framework for cultural and institutional cooperation,” Vila noted.

Vila also emphasized that beyond the FIL, Guadalajara stood out throughout 2025 for a sustained and diverse cultural program, citing the 40th edition of the Guadalajara International Film Festival, one of the most important film festivals in Latin America. She also mentioned LATE, Guadalajara’s permanent cultural festival, aimed at guaranteeing the human right of all people to freely participate in the cultural life of the city.

Jaume Collboni presented the award to the Mayor of Guadalajara and also closed the ceremony. The Mayor of Barcelona congratulated Delgadillo on the recognition and praised “her leadership capacity, as the first woman mayor in the history of Guadalajara, her great sensitivity, her ability to empathize with the concerns of her citizens and lead her city, as well as her ability to connect, to remain open to new experiences and new projects to share with other cities.”

Hence the shared commitment to Barcelona’s participation in the Guadalajara International Book Fair, “the most relevant event for revitalizing a cultural, university, academic, and economic relationship between both cities, which was very well represented at the FIL. Barcelona was able to explain itself and proudly present itself not only in Mexico, but to the entire Ibero-American community—something that had not happened for far too long,” Collboni underscored.