The Diplomat
All institutions interested in the defense of Spanish in the Netherlands, including the Instituto Cervantes, have launched the Nationaal Platform Spaans to promote Hispanism in this country.
The aim of the Nationaal Platform Spaans, which was officially presented on May 12 in the city of Nijmegen, is to bring together the Hispanic community in the Netherlands to give visibility to the interest in Spanish in this country and to promote its teaching. To this end, institutional partners from all over the country cooperate in the platform, including the Instituto Cervantes, the Department of Education in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg of the Spanish Embassy in The Hague, Spanish teachers’ associations, colleges and universities.
The platform also wants to become a spokesperson for people and organizations that are interested in defending and promoting the teaching of Spanish in the Netherlands, in order to serve as an interlocutor with the institutions that have the power to make decisions and that influence the relevance of Spanish in all areas of Dutch society. “This is the first time that all the institutions interested in the defense and promotion of Spanish and studies related to the Hispanic world at all levels of education have come together,” said Centro Cervantes Utrecht. “The platform will be a point of exchange of information and a meeting place where important issues that need to be tackled can be detected, in order to work hand in hand to defend the interests of the Spanish language,” it added.
The first initiative of the platform has been to create a web page to make visible to Dutch society the work of the groups in the different fields of Hispanism. Another project is to organize a day every year, in addition to launching a strong campaign to celebrate Spanish Day.
The official presentation of Nationaal Platform Spaans and its website, www.platformspaans.nl, was attended by ambassadors from Spanish-speaking countries, including the ambassador of Spain, Consuelo Femenía, as well as representatives of the different Hispanic groups that collaborate in the platform, who spoke about their vision for the future of Spanish in the Netherlands. “I am happy to have participated with other ambassadors in the launch of this website. Spanish, with all its cultural and economic value, adapts to the digital world,” said the Spanish ambassador on her Twitter account.
