The Diplomat
Queen Letizia yesterday presided over the inauguration of the new headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes in the Californian city of Los Angeles, a “pending matter” of Spanish cultural diplomacy.
The new headquarters, as stated in the Royal Decree that authorizes it, was created with the aim of promoting “Spanish and the dissemination of culture in Spanish on the west coast of the United States, where the Hispanic presence is especially significant”.
For this reason, the creation of this center in Los Angeles, considered the unofficial capital of Hispanics in the United States, “was a pending matter” whose fulfillment became a reality yesterday, said the director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, during a press conference. “We are in front of a blank page convinced that we have many things to tell and to say,” he added.
The event began with the unveiling of a commemorative plaque by the Queen, who then visited some of the building’s rooms and signed the center’s Book of Honor for the first time. This was followed by the inauguration of the new Cervantes center, which was attended by Hispanic cultural celebrities, including the city’s Deputy Mayor for International Affairs, Erin Bromaghim; California Congresswoman Linda Sanchez; Spanish Ambassador Santiago Cabanas; Professor Barbara Fuchs, the Cervantes Institute’s first Eñe Prize winner; and various consuls from Hispanic American countries.
“We knew we had to come here for many reasons” to “consolidate our presence in the United States,” to “give prestige to Spanish and defend the fact that we are a language with future prospects in technology, science and intelligence” and to “proudly claim our culture,” García Montero continued. The director of Cervantes also stressed the importance of disseminating Spanish-language cinema in this city, a mecca for film, and announced that the filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar will travel to Los Angeles to inaugurate the center’s library, which will bear his name.
For his part, the State Secretary for Ibero-America, the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Juan Fernández Trigo, insisted on the “symbolic and historical importance” of the inauguration of a center whose objective is “to make Spanish a first-rate language” in all areas, something fundamental in the U.S. city with the largest number of Hispanics.
According to the director of the center -which will be fully operational in the second half of 2023-, Luisgé Martín (Luis García Martín), “the Instituto Cervantes had to be here”, a crossroads city where creativity is explosive and one of the most powerful and thriving cities in the country. According to Martín, film will play a leading role among the objectives of this headquarters, located in the vicinity of Hollywood, and will pay special attention to the audiovisual industry. Its auditorium, he said, should become “a temple for watching Spanish cinema.
With the new center, there are now seven U.S. cities with Instituto Cervantes headquarters: the centers in New York (opened in 1995), Chicago (1996) and Albuquerque (2000); the Aula Cervantes in Seattle (2007), the Observatory of the Spanish Language at Harvard University (Boston, 2013), the extension in El Paso (inaugurated by Luis García Montero on June 23) and Los Angeles.
On Monday night (early Tuesday morning in Spain), the Queen chaired a working meeting at the Instituto Cervantes in Los Angeles on the current situation and prospects for the growth of the Spanish language in the United States. During this meeting, Letizia suggested the possibility of putting the Hollywood Academy in contact with the film academies of Spain and other countries, a proposal that Luisgé Martín has pledged to move forward.
