Spain's queen visits displaced people in Colombia

Spain's Queen Sofia on Wednesday visited a poor neighborhood of this Colombian city where Spanish aid will finance a large part of a sewer project serving more than 50,000 residents.

Accompanied by Colombian first lady Maria Clemencia Rodriguez, the queen walked through the narrow, unpaved streets of Cartagena's Nelson Mandela neighborhood, whose sewer system should be completed within about a year.

Spain's AECID international cooperation agency is providing half of the sewer project's $7.2 million budget, according to AECID's coordinator in Colombia, Miguel Gonzalez Gullon.

The project is in keeping with the Water Fund, approved in 2007 by the Spanish government and which over a six-year period is designed to funnel $1.5 billion to projects providing potable water and sewer facilities in 18 countries in Latin America, Gonzalez said.

Living in the Nelson Mandela neighborhood are some 53,000 Colombians who arrived there over the past few years from different places in the northern part of the country fleeing from guerrilla or paramilitary violence.

Queen Sofia was set to leave this Caribbean resort city later Wednesday for Ecuador.