The King of Spain affirms that "the house of the Spaniard must be virtuous and humble"

The King and Queen of Spain presided over the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Cervantes Institute at the Royal Palace in Aranjuez (Madrid) on Tuesday, at which King Felipe stressed that Spanish "continues to be in very good health", reminded the audience that "we are strongly supporting" the work of the institution and affirmed that "Spanish as a language of scientific communication is an unavoidable objective and a very relevant opportunity".

The Director of the Institute, Luis García Montero, summarised the figures for the last academic year before the trustees, which for the King are "optimistic and encouraging" in terms of the number of enrolments, students and Spanish courses around the world, although "the pre-pandemic levels have not yet been recovered".

The monarch celebrated the fact that the Institute has resumed face-to-face activity, "with classrooms that are finally full again", and that the session of the institution's highest governing body will take place "in a context that is quite different from our last meeting last year: without security distances, without masks and (...) without the uneasiness that was still felt at that time".

The good figures for Spanish are evidenced, he added, by the nearly 600 million speakers (including native speakers, potential speakers and learners) and the nearly 24 million students around the world.

The King recalled the elegy of the poet Joan Margarit to the architect José Antonio Coderch in which he said: "The house must be virtuous and humble. Neither independent nor vain. Neither original nor sumptuous". These verses, he said, "can be extrapolated and applied to our own language".

"This is how the house of Spanish should be projected: virtuous, to serve as an example and a reference; and humble, but aware of its power. It should not be independent or alien to those who speak it, who are the ones who build it; nor vain of words in its multiple accents. Neither so original that we do not recognise ourselves in it, nor so sumptuous that it diverts our attention from its beams and cements".

"At this current juncture we must dedicate all our efforts to continue building and strengthening this house, and do so hand in hand with the new generations of Spanish speakers".

In addition to Don Felipe and Doña Letizia, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, Education, Pilar Alegría, and Culture, Miquel Iceta, also took part in the meeting of the Board of Trustees.

The Director of the Instituto Cervantes informed the Board of Trustees of the most important projects and the figures recorded in the last academic year.

The most immediate challenge is the inauguration of the Los Angeles centre, which will be presided over by Queen Letizia on 12 December. Located in a building between the Hollywood studios and directed by the writer Luisgé Martín, this new centre is already working to promote Spanish-language culture in the United States, especially Hispanic film and music. The United States, the country with the second largest number of native Spanish speakers, has four other centres: New York, Chicago, Albuquerque and the Observatory at Harvard University.

The next centre to open will be in Seoul. Luis García Montero reported that a suitable building has already been found in the South Korean capital, and it is hoped that the Council of Ministers will approve the necessary procedures (the file is at the Ministry of Finance) before the end of the year.

The third great challenge will be the opening of the Spanish Language Observatory to be located in the Valle de la Lengua, in La Rioja, an "ambitious" centre that will study the situation of our language in multiple aspects. It will be set up thanks to the PERTE "New economy of the language", which recognises the role of language as one of the decisive factors in technological and business development. Three million euros have been allocated to Cervantes, which has applied for a staff of seven people.

In addition, on 26 October the Institute will present the "Anuario 2022 El español en el mundo", whose content focuses on artificial intelligence and its close relationship with the language. On the other hand, the IX International Congress of the Spanish Language, which will be inaugurated by the King and Queen of Spain in Arequipa (Peru) next March, will be dedicated to Spanish and the culture of miscegenation.

With regard to the figures for the 2021-2022 academic year, the Director of Cervantes highlighted "the effort to recover normality after the two years of the pandemic. Little by little we are achieving this". For García Montero, "the data, without yet reaching the figures for 2019, are encouraging" for the organisation, which is present in 92 cities in 45 countries.

In the last academic year, more than 118,000 registrations were recorded (4.5 % more than the previous year), both for students and teachers (training courses) and licences for the AVE (Aula Virtual de Español) platform.

In terms of certification, there were 135,935 candidates for the DELE Spanish Diploma, an increase of more than 16 %. There were 1,228 examination centres in 118 countries.

SIELE certification, created by the Institute and the universities of Salamanca, Buenos Aires and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), grew by almost 30 % to 17,475 candidates, in a total of 1,667 examination centres in 91 countries.

The Spanish Constitutional and Sociocultural Knowledge of Spain (CCSE) test, a requirement for nationality, was taken by 107,614 candidates in almost 300 examination centres.

The commitment to culture, fundamental to the Institute's work, was reflected in the 6,744 cultural events held, with almost one million people attending, of which 300,000 were in person and 669,000 online. The network of 61 libraries exceeded 29,600 active members and 1,400,000 volumes. The e-library formalised 29,000 electronic loans.

On social networks, more than 1,770,000 users follow Cervantes' activities. On the Internet, almost 61 million documents are available on its various portals. The staff is made up of 950 employees, mainly teachers, to which must be added 700 collaborators.

The Cervantes budget this year was 161,104,830 million euros, of which 134,728,000 euros correspond to the regular budget programme, while the remaining 26,375,000 euros are part of the European funds of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

In this respect, the secretary general of Cervantes, Carmen Noguero, said in a previous meeting with journalists that "we are moderately optimistic that the figures will recover", including the Institute's own income from its teaching, cultural activities, etc., which exceeds 43% of the annual budget. She believes that there will be "significant growth" in transfers from the State next year, which could increase by more than four million euros.

Among other patrons, the annual Cervantes meeting was attended by the director of the Royal Spanish Academy, Santiago Muñoz Machado; the rector of the University of Salamanca, Ricardo Rivero Ortega; the Colombian author Piedad Bonnett, the Mexican narrator and essayist Gonzalo Celorio, the film director Isabel Coixet and the flamenco singer Carmen Linares.

Before the start of the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees, King Felipe VI presented the Ñ 2022 Award to philologist and professor Gabriele Morelli (Campofilone, Italy, 1937) in recognition of his work in the dissemination and international promotion of the Spanish language. He is also a researcher, author and editor and is considered the doyen of Italian Hispanists.

Submitted by José Antonio Sierra, Hispanismo advisor.