Commemoration of Santa Fe's 400 years as a city will wrap up next month with five planned closing ceremonies that might feature visits from ambassadors to and from Spain and Mexico.

Although during early planning stages organizers had visions of receptions with President Barack Obama, Spanish royalty and the leader of Mexico, spokeswoman Leslie Lujan said this week that volunteers on the Santa Fe 400th Anniversary board of directors have given up on those ideas.

"We kind of made that less of a priority just due to all things concerned such as the timing, the closing of the 400th," she said. "It does not look like we are going to get a presidential or a royal visit. It just came at such a cost."

Lujan said the group is still working on details of wrap-up events but is planning to install four new plaques on the Santa Fe Plaza that explain major periods in the city's history: Native American, Spanish, Mexican and as the capital of a U.S. territory and a state.

"We want to do the due diligence of honoring all of those periods," she said, noting that each "unveiling" will feature unique speakers.

Arturo Sarukhan, Mexican ambassador to the United States, and Miguel Angel Fernandez de Mazaramboz,  consul general of Spain in Texas, have both tentatively agreed to attend ceremonies. A final closing ceremony is set for March 27, but Lujan said time and place are still undetermined.

When the city agreed to pay $20,000 for the visits, its resolution for a "Spanish state visit" and "Mexican presidential visit" stated that the money couldn't be used for any other purpose. An amendment before the City Council would add the phrase "or his designee," which Lujan said would cover diplomats.

Planners who laid out a framework for marking the anniversary have faced a number of challenges along the way, including arguments from the outset that events shouldn't be labeled as "celebrations" because part of the city's history features bloody conquest.

After that was settled — and official resolutions about the events were stripped of the word — questions remained about timing. Since historical accounts of the city's official beginning put the year both in 1607 and 1610, the planning committee decided to schedule commemoration events beginning in the summer of 2008 and stretching through New Year's Day in 2011.

But financial hurdles caused organizers to call off a gala planned for next New Year's Eve and a number of other plans.

The event that most Santa Feans will probably remember from the anniversary project is a three-day festival last September at the Fort Marcy Park.

About a month after the Viva Santa Fe festival, the nonprofit board of directors admitted it had fallen short of fundraising goals and was out of cash. Its executive director and two other full-time staffers lost their jobs, and the committee terminated two big contracts for advertising and fundraising.

To date, the nonprofit has spent about $1.6 million in cash from the city of Santa Fe's lodgers tax revenues and general-fund reserves. Another $350,000 came from state contracts from the sales of special license plates. Area businesses and banks have also contributed in-kind donations and cash.

Organizers are now going through the City Council fund allocation process for what they say will be the last time. A measure before the governing body would give another $20,000 to the project. Last year, Santa Fe County's Tax Advisory Board agreed to kick in up to $10,000 more for the diplomatic visits from its lodgers tax revenue. Lujan said the 400th committee is also still talking about how much money will be needed to close down the organization and cap off unfinished projects.

Commemoration activities and other associated events did garner interest from international visitors over the last two years, including Spain's Crown Prince Felipe de Borbón y Grecia and Princess of Asturias Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano, who visited on Oct. 6, 2009, and an official from Granada, Spain, who delivered historic documents to the New Mexico History Museum in November 2010.

The consul general of India, the Honorable Susmita Gongulus Thomas, also visited Santa Fe to deliver mini renderings of the Taj Mahal and the Golden Temple to be included in a time capsule. That capsule now also contains poems by area youth and other items from the current era, and will be buried on the grounds of the city's convention center.

The city also played host last year to a conference of the Union Latina and a cultural-exchange event attended by Spain's Consul General in Puerto Rico, Ambassador Eduardo Garrigues.

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.

Final events

Next week, the Santa Fe 400th Anniversary nonprofit is putting on the 1610 Pueblo Colloquium, an event billed as a scholarly conversation about the Native American cultural history of Santa Fe. The free event is from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday in the Santa Fe Community Convention Center and will feature presentations by archaeologists, historians and anthropologists.

The event is one of the last for a formal commemoration that has spanned a three-year period. Four ceremonies to unveil new plaques at the Santa Fe Plaza and a final closing ceremony are planned next month.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story gave the wrong title for Mazaramboz.