The Cervantes Institute celebrates Cervantes Week 2021 with a major programme of events

The Cervantes Institute is celebrating Cervantes Week 2021 with a programme of cultural activities that will culminate in a visit by Their Majesties the King and Queen of Spain to the institution's headquarters in Alcalá de Henares on Friday 23rd in an event organised jointly with the Ministry of Culture. Until then, and under the slogan 'My witness, reader, I place in your hands', a verse by Francisco Brines, the latest winner of the Cervantes Prize, the Institute is organising numerous events at its headquarters in Madrid and Alcalá de Henares as part of International Book Day, all of them related to "reading awareness".

A programme that is being extended to the centres and which, according to Luis García Montero, "has to do with the daily work of the Cervantes Institute": the prominence of Spanish as one of the most important languages in the world (which is why there is a significant presence of Latin American authors), the defence of the co-official languages of the State and the commitment to the representation of the different literary genres: theatre, poetry, essays, novels, as well as artistic disciplines such as film and music. This was announced at an online press conference at the Ministry of Culture, where he was accompanied by the Director General for Books and the Promotion of Reading, María José Gálvez.

Cervantes Cervantine Week 2021, marked once again this year by the pandemic, will include more than 60 activities in Spain and at its venues around the world. In Spain, it kicks off this Tuesday at the headquarters in Madrid with an unprecedented event, the presentation of bequests in the Caja de las Letras by nine guests: six prominent writers (Antonio Muñoz Molina, Manuel Rivas, Bernardo Atxaga, Carme Riera, Luis Alberto de Cuenca and Cristina Fernández Cubas) and three heads of publishing houses: Pilar Reyes (Alfaguara), Valeria Ciompi (Alianza) and Manuel Borrás (Pre-Textos).

García Montero, accompanied by María José Gálvez, will present the collective presentation of these legacies in homage to the book, an activity that can be followed live on the Cervantes Institute's Directo 1 channel and on YouTube.

On Wednesday, the events move to Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes. At 10 a.m. the Cervantes Institute Space will be inaugurated at the Learning and Research Resources Centre (CRAI) of the University of Alcalá de Henares. It will bring together around 10,000 works from the Instituto Cervantes on teaching and learning Spanish and on applied linguistics. These are materials that until last year were housed in the library at Calle Barquillo, 6, Madrid: general and specialised courses, materials for children, graded readings, multimedia courses, preparation for the official DELE Spanish diploma and many other resources for teachers and students of Spanish as a foreign language. The rector of the University of Alcalá, José Vicente Saz Pérez, and Luis García Montero, will explain the contents of this space, which also includes a section on Hispanism, grammars, studies on the lexicon, histories of the language, style books and translation theory.

At 11.30 am, at the historic Cervantes headquarters in Alcalá, the Institute's Heritage Library will be inaugurated, "so that we do not forget that we must respect the heritage we receive from the past", said García Montero. It will be launched with the exhibition 'Los libros de Jesús Munárriz' (The books of Jesús Munárriz), which brings together almost 400 of the 7,500 titles donated by the poet, publisher and translator Jesús Munárriz (Hiperión). This collection will be renewed periodically so that the public can discover his most representative works and editions. Munárriz will participate in the presentation together with García Montero and Javier Rodríguez Palacios, Mayor of Alcalá de Henares.

The Heritage Library will be dedicated to the preservation and research of bibliographic collections of Pan-Hispanic literatures, and will be gradually expanded with donations and purchases of collections, which can be consulted by researchers, users and the public who wish to discover the enormous wealth of the Cervantes heritage collection through the different bibliographic displays.

On Thursday (12 noon) the Institute will present at its headquarters in Madrid "History of the Enchanted Knight", a book published in Shanghai in 1922 which is the first Chinese version or interpretation of Don Quixote, made by Lin Shu from the English version of Cervantes' novel. This literary jewel is now being published in Spanish in an edition for Spain and Argentina (with the publishers Ginger Ape Books & Films and Mil Gotas, respectively) in a ceremony in Madrid with Luis García Montero and the translator of the work, the sinologist and professor at the University of Granada Alicia Relinque, among others.

According to the director of the Institute, a virtual assistant called Dulcineia will be presented which, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, will help students of Spanish to understand and communicate on issues that appear in the First Part of Don Quixote.

Also participating online will be the directors of the Instituto Cervantes in Beijing, Inmaculada González Puy, and of the Miguel de Cervantes Library in Shanghai, Isabel Cervera; the Spanish and Chinese ambassadors in their respective countries, the translator, Zhao Zhenjiang; the Hispanist Dong Yansheng and the professor Chen Kaixian. Live broadcast on the Cervantes Institute's Directo 1 channel and on YouTube.

The visit of the King and Queen of Spain to the Cervantes Institute in Alcalá de Henares on Friday (11:30 am) will bring Cervantes Week to a close. It will be a high-level institutional event organised in conjunction with the Ministry of Culture, with the presence of authors, readers, publishers, booksellers, etc. It will include dramatised readings from the Golden Age by young actors from the Centro Dramático Nacional, the reading of texts by Miguel Delibes and Antonio Machado by the great actor José Sacristán, and a video recording of the Cervantes Prize 2020 winner, Francisco Brines (who for health reasons has been unable to travel to Madrid) reading some of his poems.

Don Felipe and Doña Letizia will tour part of the recently inaugurated Heritage Library of the Institute, unveil a commemorative plaque and chat with guests, including the Minister of Culture and the Secretary of State for International Cooperation. Live broadcast on YouTube and Radio Televisión Española.

In addition, on Friday 23rd, the Institute's headquarters in Madrid will host a special Radio 3 programme, which will be dedicated to books in all their facets for 13 uninterrupted hours (from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.). Writers, publishers, booksellers and other protagonists of reading will take part in the programme, which will also include live musical performances by Javier Ruibal, Kiko Veneno, Marwan and Zenet, among others. Live broadcast on YouTube.

Sent by José Antonio Sierra, Hispanismo advisor.