The Diplomat
Queen Letizia inaugurated yesterday the new center of the Instituto Cervantes in Dakar (Senegal), the first in sub-Saharan Africa and “the biggest bet so far to strengthen ties with this multilingual country and to increase the influence of the Spanish language and its culture throughout the subcontinent,” according to the institution.
Ms. Letizia arrived on Sunday at Blaise Diagne International Airport, where she was received by the First Lady of Senegal, Marie Faye Sall, accompanied by the Spanish ambassador in Dakar, Olga Cabarga, and the Senegalese ambassador in Madrid, Mariame Sy Epse Sy.
Yesterday morning, the Queen presided over the inauguration ceremony of the new headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes in Dakar. During the ceremony – the first inauguration held by the institution since 2012, when the Krakow center in Poland was inaugurated – the director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, said that “teaching a language and a culture is a round trip that serves to cooperate, to enrich each other” and to “ensure that knowledge of Spain in Senegal also means knowledge of Senegal in Spain”. For this reason, he advocated building bridges with “a strong country in full economic and cultural development and with many possibilities for the future”. This objective is not limited to Senegal, but extends to the whole of Africa, “the most complex and richest linguistic area in the world”, with between a thousand and three thousand languages.
For his part, the Secretary of State for Ibero-America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Juan Fernández Trigo, expressed his support for the “ambitious challenge” of expanding Spanish on the African continent, a task that should continue with the opening of new Cervantes centers to help consolidate this presence. “We understand language as a vehicle for exchange that builds bridges between the culture of origin, that is, the diverse cultures of the African continent, geographically and emotionally close to Spain, and the culture in Spanish,” he added.
At the same ceremony, Senegal’s Minister of Culture, Abdoulaye Diop, assured that his country is “a land of culture and literature” and, for this reason, the Senegalese are “happy to receive an institution named after the illustrious Miguel de Cervantes, pioneer of the modern novel”. He also expressed his confidence that cooperation between Spain and Senegal “will be strengthened” with the arrival of the Instituto Cervantes.
At the end of the ceremony, which included a brief debate on Spanish in the country and several musical performances, the Queen toured the main facilities of the new center, including the library, whose funds have been transferred (as well as other materials and furniture) thanks to the collaboration of Iberia and IAG Cargo. Finally, she signed the Book of Honor, unveiled a plaque commemorating the inauguration and greeted the Spanish-American ambassadors, Hispanists and representatives of the Spanish colony. After the ceremony, Ms. Letizia moved to the Presidential Palace to attend the luncheon hosted by the President, Macky Sall, and the First Lady of Senegal in honor of the Queen.
The new Cervantes Center
Approved by Royal Decree in April 2019, the creation of the center in Dakar had become one of the main objectives of the Instituto Cervantes as part of its expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region in which, to date, the institution only had two Cervantes Classrooms: the one in Dakar – created in 2010 as part of a collaboration agreement with the Cheikh Anta Diop University and which will continue to operate (and which was visited by the Queen herself on December 12, 2017) – and the one in Abidjan (Ivory Coast), which was recently created.
Directed by Néstor Nongo Nsala, born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and naturalized Spanish, the Dakar Cervantes center occupies a two-story building of 680 square meters located on a plot of 1,500 meters. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, visited the center on April 9, when it was still undergoing renovation work. The center is located very close to the prestigious Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD), which has a Spanish section in the Department of Romance Languages.
In addition to teaching Spanish classes to enrolled students and hosting events that disseminate the culture of Spain and Latin America, the new center will help the 350,000 students and more than 3,000 Spanish teachers in Senegal and will collaborate with the African country’s educational system.
