The New Iberia Spanish Festival will be receiving two special guests from New Iberia’s sister city of Alhaurin de la Torre, Malaga.

Dignitaries Manuel Lopez Mestanza and Jose Manuel deMolina will be attending the Spanish Festival to dedicate a mosaic tile from their city which will be dedicated on April 22 at 10 a.m. at the Founding Families Pocket Park being developed by Mayor Freddie DeCourt and the New Iberia City Council. DeCourt will also read a proclamation to reaffirm the twinning between the two cities.

Manuel Lopez Mestanza is a councilor from the city and led an official delegation in 2009 from Alhaurin de la Torre to New Iberia to officially twin the two cities. In 2011, he was part of the official delegation that welcomed then New Iberia Mayor Hilda Curry to Alhaurin de la Torre to complete the twinning process.

Mestanza has served as provincial deputy of the Popular Party Group (2019-2023), culture delegate councilor of the Alhaurín de la Torre City Council from 2015 to the present, delegate of Historical Heritage and Museum of Education, spokesperson for the Municipal Group of the Popular Party and has a degree in Philosophy and Letters (geography and history).

Bautista is a historian and archivist-librarian in the Center for Research and studies Julian Sesmero in Alhaurin de la Torre. He is the author of several historical research books on towns in Malaga.

Among them, “History of Alhaurin de la Torre in the Modern Age” which began the twinning between New Iberia and Alhaurin de la Torre which improved the recognition of the Spanish heritage in Cajun culture.

He is also a member of the Order of Living Legends by the Acadian Museum in Erath, being the first Spaniard to receive the honor.