As a founding member of the TetouanAsmir Association and its Vice-President, I was kindly invited by Professor Miguel Angel Matran to participate in the organisation of CICOP’s 16th International Congress at Tetouan. As a result we created CICOP-Marruecos. This was a very important event for both CICOP and the Tetouan Asmir Association. It has been important for CICOP, because while this international concederation of cultural heritage centers and associations has been organising conferences in numerous European and Latin American nations since 1992, organisng a conference at Tetouan was its first major event in the African continent. For the Tetouan Asmir Association, participating in a congess of this magnitude and the creation of CICOP-Marruecos as partners of the association, meant opening the range of our cultural heritagea ctivities to a new international horizon. CICOP-Marruecos would constitute the bridge.

CICOP-Marruecos- next step was to contact a newly created national Moroccan confederation of Morocccan associations in some of the nation’smost important cities in Tetouan, Tangier, Ra bat-Salé, Marrakech, Fes, Casablanca, Azemmour and El Jedida and Safi. Each of these associations was created to defend the cultural heritage of its medina or historical city.

CICOP-Marruecos has prepared an ageement to besigned by CICOP-Espana and the Collectif Maroc-Mémoire. This would enable each of the eight members of the Collectif Maroc-Mémoire to benefit from the more experienced members of CICOP in both Europe and Latin America. It would also enable CICOP-Marruecos to introduce Morocco-s cultural heritage to the CICOP members.

The forthcoming signaure of this agreement at Granada during CICOP’s next international congres is truly symbolic since it will be organised inside the Alhambra Palace of Granada.

CICOP-Marruecos is therefore happy to share the new web site with the Tetouan Asmir Association. We hope that this experience with Tetouan will grow to include other Moroccan cities. This willallow CICOP-Marruecos to project Morocco’s cultural heritage a broad. It will also enable it to learn from CICOP-International’s long experience in the field of restoration and the conservation of Morocco’s rich cultural heritagecities.