Salamanca, Spain's Cultural Centre was the host city for the World Youth Philatelic Exhibition Espaņa 2002 held from 17 - 24 November 2002.

This exhibition was different from others I have attended in that the exhibits were housed in 'tents', huge structures with air flow inside vinyl roofs with Perspex and aluminium walls conveniently situated throughout the old town in five different localities.  These could be reached by following a series of yellow dots on the footpath, which led the viewer in a circular route from one section to the next.

The starting point of this Philatelic Walk was the Plaza Mayor where the official activities, presentations, conferences and showing of films were held. This Plaza also contained a separate exhibit entitled "A Stroll through Writing".

Onwards to Plaza de Anaya where 137 exhibits were on display with the philatelic theme of Culture, then next to the Technology tents in the Plaza de Las Agustinas housing 26 exhibits.  Here also was a bank of computers where the elements related to the exhibit "El Bosque Animado" ("The Living Forest") could be viewed if one queued long enough!

Calle de Las Ursulas was a large venue because as well as the 80 exhibits on Nature, another large structure housed several bureaus, bin room and rooms for Commissioners and the Jury.  This was the first port of call for Commissioners after checking into their hotel the Catalonia and registering with the Secretariat, also in residence there.  The last tent in the walk, Plaza de Los Bandos, had 28 exhibits on the theme of Sports and the 20 Literature entries.  From here a short stroll brought the viewer back to the Plaza Mayor.

The Spanish Post Company was the major sponsor of this exhibition and they had a post office in each of the 5 locations with postmarking and posting facilities.  Each day a new stamp was released with a special presentation where the stars of the theme e.g. "Press", "Radio", "Cinema" etc. were present and gave a short discourse on their involvement then were available to autograph covers or other material.

All events were conducted in Spanish, however a small device could be hired which had several translation possibilities and fortunately English was one of them so I could understand what was being said.

We had a coach trip to Segovia on the one fine sunny day of the 10 days of the Exhibition.  The upper part of this City has been of major strategic importance since Roman times with its aqueduct, an impressive working structure, linking to the moat of its castle, El Alcazar, first mentioned as a fortress in the 12th century, but used more recently as a Military Academy.

Official functions were well run and enjoyable occasions, but there was an absence of children, even at the Post Office functions.  As this was a youth exhibition, I had expected to see more young people viewing the exhibits and buying stamps, even if the only place to do this was the Post Office There were no other dealers there.  The Committee cared for their visitors very well and any problems were cheerfully rectified. Exhibitions are a wonderful way to meet people from all over the World and from all walks of life, some old friends others to become new friends to add to the great family of Philatelists.

Australia had entered 5 exhibits, one a Literature entry which, although it arrived in Spain at the designated address for the Exhibition was not collected during the 6 weeks it sat there and was returned via sea mail arriving back in Australia two days after myself.  The other entrants and their results were: