The programme, which ran from 7 January to 22 December, featured a total of 700 artists and speakers, involving 92 venues, and the staging of more than 300 shows and performances, with the overall theme ‘Past and Present’.

Contacted by Lusa, Pinto Ribeiro said the results of the event had been "very positive", but that he had had relatively little time to prepare the event – just six months – and a "quite limited budget" of around €3 million.

He expects that Lisbon’s stint as Ibero-American Capital of Culture "has left a mark on people and organisations that shows itself in the medium and long term."

According to Pinto Ribeiro, the risk had been that a programme of this kind, away from the city’s usual “mainstream” cultural agenda, was “daring because it brought into question some ethno-centrism of cultural programming and journalism."

He said that he had noted “the difficulty of people, of institutions and of some media in receiving this kind of programming, which was very offbest, but I hope that it has been a learning [experience] for everyone, from the intellectual point of view and of the relationship with the arts and with the world.”

This was the second time that Lisbon had been chosen by the Union of Ibero-American Capitals (UCCI), which oversaw the event along with the city council. The first time was in 1993, the same year in which it was European Capital of Culture – for which reason, according to Pinto Ribeiro, the last event had less visibility than this year’s.

The audiences for the 2017 stint were very varied, according to Pinto Ribeiro.

He looked forward to the continuing impact of the event on the city’s cultural scene over the next five to 10 years.

Next year’s Ibero-American Capital of Culture is La Paz, Bolivia.