The Diplomat
The director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, will travel today to Peru, where during the week he will be awarded honorary doctorates by two prestigious universities, will meet with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, César Landa, and will have first-hand knowledge of the preparations for the next International Congress of the Spanish Language, scheduled for 2023 in Arequipa.
García Montero’s busy schedule begins this Monday with the awarding of an honorary doctorate by the Universidad Nacional San Agustín, of Arequipa. Founded almost two centuries ago, in 1828, it is the second largest public university in Peru, with 24,000 students.
Arequipa, the city where the Spanish-Peruvian Nobel Prize for Literature winner Mario Vargas Llosa was born, was chosen in 2019 to host the next International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE), which is expected to be held next year. For this reason, Luis García Montero will hold several meetings in Peru to learn about the status of the preparations and make progress in the organization of this triennial event, which is organized by the Instituto Cervantes, the Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Language Academies (ASALE).
In Arequipa, he will meet with the mayor of the city (the second most important in the country, after the capital, Lima), Omar Candia Aguilar; with the manager of culture of the Provincial Municipality, Nilo Cruz, and other officials of the prefecture, and with the regional governor, Kimmerlee Gutiérrez Canahuire.
In the second stage of the trip, in Lima, García Montero will meet on Thursday with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, César Landa, at the Torre Tagle Palace, and with the director of the Inca Garcilaso Cultural Center, Guido Torot. This organization, under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, promotes Peru’s culture in the rest of the world and maintains close contacts with the Instituto Cervantes, whose Madrid headquarters houses the delegation of the Inca Garcilaso Center in Spain. A meeting is also scheduled with Marco Martos, president of the Peruvian Academy of the Language, the organization which, as the host country, will be responsible for many of the organizational responsibilities of the International Congress of the Spanish Language.
The second honorary doctorate that García Montero will receive will be from the Ricardo Palma University in Lima, on Friday, April 8. At the investiture ceremony, headed by the rector, Iván Rodríguez Chávez, Luis García Montero will deliver the keynote lecture Un poeta mendigo y sus ilusiones de mestizaje (A beggar poet and his illusions of miscegenation). At the same academic ceremony, the Ricardo Palma University will award the title of Honorary Professor to Carmen Pastor Villalba, Academic Director of the Instituto Cervantes, who will accompany García Montero on this working trip.
