Panama 9 January 2026. The Ministry of Culture of Panama holds an important event in strengthening its cultural spaces. The project to renovate the public library Omar Torrijos Herrera, located in San Miguelito, has been selected as one of the winners of the 13th Iberlibrary aid call 2025.

To this call 176 projects have been submitted from across Iberoamerica, of which only 125 have been put through the preselection stage. Finally, Panama has been put into place as a select group of 23 winners, with proposals from countries such as Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Brazil.

The award-winning project, "Building communities through reading," aims to transform the library of San Miguelito into a model of management, inclusion and access to culture at the community level.

The initiative was put forward by Micdonia Quiros, a librarian representing the Ministry of Culture, who at this international call identified the key opportunity to advance the modernisation of this important cultural centre.

"My motivation arises from the fact that I have met with the vision of the Ministry of Culture to turn the library of San Miguelito into a model to be followed," said Quiros. "I understand that the goal required not only improvements in infrastructure but actions to strengthen reading as an integration axis, conscious of the limited resources that libraries often have, Iberlibraries became the strategic ally to achieve this transformation."

Following the collection of the fund, the Ministry of Culture will start an operational phase that includes the implementation of administrative and operational improvements at headquarters, the implementation of new activities to promote reading and the establishment of monitoring systems to ensure that the project positively transformed the lives of the residents of San Miguelito.