The Digitisation Plan and cultural and academic projects are the focus of the Instituto Cervantes directors' sessions in Granada

The second day of the Annual Meeting of Directors of the Instituto Cervantes, which was inaugurated on Monday by Queen Letizia in Granada, took place this Tuesday in the town of Fuente Vaqueros, on a Lorca day in which the figure of its most illustrious neighbour, the Granada poet Federico García Lorca, came to the fore. On Tuesday, the Centro de Estudios Lorquianos hosted the first three working sessions of the Cervantes directors, dedicated to the academic activity of the institution, the dissemination of culture in Spanish and the digitisation plans, which include multiple digital transformation projects with the help of European funds.

The Mayor of the small town in the Vega of Granada, José Manuel Molino, and the First Vice-President of the Provincial Council of Granada and responsible for Culture, Fátima Gómez, welcomed the Cervantes family to the doors of the Centro de Estudios Lorquianos, an autonomous entity attached to the Provincial Council, which acquired the building in 1982, where the school in which the author of "Romancero gitano" took his first steps as a schoolboy was located. 

These facilities are now a reference point for the study and dissemination of the figure and work of Lorca through cultural visits, publications and an extensive educational project in collaboration with the University of Granada, where the poet began his studies in Law and Philosophy. 

On this intermediate day of the three days celebrated by the more than seventy Cervantes directors, three basic issues were discussed in the work of the Institute: academic and cultural activity and the projects of the institution's digitalisation plan. 

The first working session, behind closed doors, was given by Carmen Pastor, academic director, who detailed the data of the Aula Virtual de Español (AVE) or Grama-Exprés, a virtual teaching environment that focuses especially on Spanish grammar. She also discussed the new ways of teaching Spanish, such as the inverted classroom, gamification and the bimodal classroom, in which face-to-face and online students interact, a project that is still in the pilot phase but is achieving very good results. 

Carmen Pastor announced that a unified platform of course offerings has been launched thanks to PRTR funds (Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan) and the e-learning platform has been updated. In terms of Spanish courses for minors, the Albuquerque centre (USA) stands out thanks to its teaching programme for low-income children in rural environments in the state of New Mexico. On the other hand, the number of students enrolled in DELE Spanish diplomas has recovered to 120,000, a figure similar to that of before the pandemic. 

The academic director closed her speech by mentioning the new Geolexi tool, which allows synonyms to be looked up by comparing the lexicon of different Spanish-speaking countries, as well as the demolinguistic studies of Spanish in different parts of the world (the latest focused on Switzerland and Germany). She also announced that next year they will begin to analyse data on the teaching of Spanish to non-Spanish-speaking foreigners in Central and South American countries. 

For her part, the Director of Digital Transformation at Cervantes, Tíscar Lara, explained the Cervantes Digitalisation Plan, a vast set of projects to update and modernise the organisation's operations, adapting them to the new reality thanks to financial support from European PRTR funds. 

Among the multiple projects, which will have to be a reality by December 2025, are the CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) for a unified management in which all information is interconnected. Also, solutions to digitise the entire Spanish exam certification process, from the first stages (exam generation) to self-correction with artificial intelligence technologies. The renewal of some 800 computer systems is already underway, and an application will soon be created to reinforce the security of remote exams, both in terms of photo identification of those taking the exams and the recording of oral tests. 

Other initiatives in this modernisation plan include the signing of a framework agreement to contract specific projects with digital content production companies; the so-called IT governance methodology, with project management tools, and a constellation of innovations related to security, quality and the storage and use of data. Also, the digitalisation of the Cervantes libraries, the online teaching platform Moodle 4.0, or the progress on a new comprehensive website, whose architecture will show other changes such as the redesign of the Institute's corporate identity. 

The last working session on Tuesday, presented by the Director of Culture, focused on the activities organised by the institution to promote the culture of Spain and Spanish-speaking countries around the world. 

Raquel Caleya presented the Cultural Action, Libraries and Digital Culture Plan 2023-2026, which focuses on the institution's specific plans by region (Canoa Plan, Europe Plan, Mediterranean Plan, Brazil Plan...) and explained the lines of action of the cultural programme, as well as the library and documentation departments; the meaning of the cultural action of the Instituto Cervantes, the evolution of digital culture and how it is reflected in the programming of the centres around the world. She also pointed out the new Banca Cervantes project, which integrates physical and digital spaces for cultural projects and the dissemination of the language. 

The day in Fuente Vaqueros began and ended with a "Lorca stamp". In the morning, the directors visited the Museo-Casa Natal de García Lorca, located opposite the headquarters of the Centro de Estudios Lorquianos. In that house, the poet was born and spent the first years of his life with his parents, Federico García (a small landowner) and Vicenta Lorca (who was a teacher until she married), and the two brothers who followed the first-born, Luis and Paco (the other two brothers were born in a later family home). 

The day could not end without a special finale: the theatrical performance of "A vueltas con Lorca", starring the actor Carmelo Gómez. 

Submitted by José Antonio Sierra, Hispanismo advisor.