The Queen inaugurates the Annual Meeting of Directors of the Cervantes Institute more than two years after the previous one

The Queen opened the Annual Meeting of Directors of the Cervantes Institute in San Sebastián on Monday, an event which, after not being able to be held in 2020 due to the health situation, faces multiple challenges, including digitalisation and expansion into new countries. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, and the Minister of Culture and spokesperson for the Basque Government, Bingen Zupiria, took part in the ceremony at the Tabakalera cultural centre in the capital of Gipuzkoa.

It will be three days of self-examination in which issues such as the digital transformation process, the repercussions of the pandemic, the different modalities of teaching Spanish (face-to-face and online), the situation of the staff or the extension of the institution in strategic areas such as the United States, Asia or sub-Saharan Africa will be addressed.

A long-awaited annual meeting that has enjoyed the collaboration of the Provincial Council of Guipúzcoa, the Basque Government and the City Council of San Sebastián. It is the first time that the more than 70 directors of the Institute in Spain and in a total of 47 countries have met in the Basque Country, and the second time in a community with a co-official language (the previous one was in Galicia in 2005).

José Manuel Albares stated that this annual meeting "is one of the most important events in which a Minister of Foreign Affairs can participate, because the Instituto Cervantes is an emblem of Spain's external action".

He stressed that in 2022, the Government is going to launch a strategy to promote the international dissemination of Spanish and its teaching, in close cooperation with various ministries, which will help to strengthen the language of almost 600 million people. It will also aim to facilitate its implementation in international organisations and consolidate its presence in digital platforms and "start-apps" in these times of the rise of Artificial Intelligence.

And the fact is that "from the Government we assume the responsibility of optimising the full potential of Spanish", for which the Secretary of State for Ibero-America, the Caribbean and Spanish in the World has recently been modified with new tasks related to the language. The Cervantes Institute "must lead this strategy", as it is "an international benchmark" in the promotion of Spanish, a language that is a common heritage and that "we have the obligation to protect and project even more".

With this meeting, the Institute closes the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of its creation, approved by a law widely agreed in 1991 by all the parliamentary groups. "This spirit of consensus continues to be fundamental at a time when some prefer shouting to dialogue", is "an example that together we can go much further", said the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation.

The Director of the Cervantes Institute thanked the Queen for her presence at this meeting, which "for the Cervantes family is decisive": it cannot be held in 2020 and now "decisions have to be made" to respond to certain problems and situations. The 2020-2021 academic year "has been harder than the previous one, but we can be proud because the response of the Institute has been remarkable".

Among the challenges to be faced, he explained the expansion in three key areas: the United States (the government approved in July the opening of a centre in Los Angeles), South Korea (whose Aula Cervantes, currently dependent on Tokyo, will be upgraded to the category of centre, for which the necessary budget has been approved), and sub-Saharan Africa. In this subcontinent, Dakar (Senegal) stands out, inaugurated by the Queen on Monday, and which will be complemented with classrooms (such as the one in Abidjan) and an observatory of the Spanish language.

García Montero made a passionate defence of the co-official languages because "we assume linguistic diversity as a richness, we assume the democratic pride of a country that defends its linguistic plurality with a will to understand".

Insisting on the idea of respect for the diversity and plurality of languages and cultures in Spain, she stressed that, of the more than seven thousand cultural activities held in the last academic year, more than a thousand were related to the co-official languages; of these, some 350 were related to Basque and Basque culture.

For his part, the Minister of Culture and spokesman for the Basque Government focused his words on the defence of the Basque language: Spain is a multilingual state, he said, and "it is the obligation of the Government, the Crown, the various institutions and the Cervantes Institute to spread the plurinational nature".

After recalling the Biscayan Sancho de Azpeitia who appears in 'Don Quixote', and the Navarrese priest Bernat Etxtepare who wrote 'The first fruits of the language of the Basques', the first work printed in Basque, Bingen Zupiria said that Spanish is not at risk in any country in Europe, the rest of the living languages of Spain are". And, "as a Basque speaker proud to speak the oldest language in Europe", he expressed the "tragic feeling that many of us have for our languages and their survival, relegated to the shadow of Spanish".

The opening speeches were followed by a panel entitled '30 years of the Instituto Cervantes: evolution and future prospects', with the directors of Casablanca (María Jesús García), Tokyo (Víctor Ugarte), New York (Richard Bueno) and Brussels (Ana Vázquez).

García Montero moderated this meeting in which the four directors, one for each continent, explained the current situation and foreseeable evolution of the Spanish language in their respective countries.

Before the inauguration, the Director of the Institute and the President of the Provincial Council of Guipúzcoa signed a collaboration agreement at the headquarters of this body to hold this Cervantes event, which will continue until Wednesday. The working sessions, most of them behind closed doors, are being held in the large Tabakalera building, a major cultural centre of reference in the capital.

Submitted by José Antonio Sierra, Hispanismo advisor.