The Diplomat
The First Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño, announced yesterday an investment of 2.5 million euros for the International Spanish Language Center of the University of Salamanca (CIEUSAL), within the framework of the PERTE of the New Language Economy.
Calviño made this announcement during the second meeting of the Advisory Council of the Alliance for the New Language Economy, held yesterday in a semi-presential manner to analyze the pace of execution of the Strategic Project for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE) New Language Economy.
The aim of this investment is to help promote language teaching by opening it up to new markets and boosting the digitalization of learning methods. CIEUSAL is a center for linguistic and methodological research that will host outreach and learning activities related to Spanish. It will also include a space for projects and initiatives by companies and entrepreneurs in projects directly related to Spanish. “In short, CIEUSAL will act as a promoter of Spanish as a language for the development of science, knowledge, culture, business or diplomacy,” the Ministry reported in a press release.
This funding is part of the PERTE of the New Language Economy of the Recovery Plan, approved by the Council of Ministers on March 1, 2022 with the aim of promoting the use of Spanish in artificial intelligence, science and culture, and favoring its teaching and learning. It has a budget of 1.1 billion euros in public investment. Former Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Ibero-America Cristina Gallach (who was present at yesterday’s meeting) is the Special Commissioner for the Alliance for a New Language Economy.
During yesterday’s meeting, the main lines of work for 2023 were specified, including the development and consolidation of the Intelligence Center for the New Language Economy in La Rioja, which has an investment by the Government of Spain of more than 20 million euros and which was presented on December 7 in San Millán de la Cogolla by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez; the President of the Autonomous Community of La Rioja, Concha Andreu; and the Director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero.
Likewise, in 2023, continuity will be given to the projects approved in 2022 within the framework of PERTE, such as the launch of the Global Observatory of Spanish (approved last June 7 by the Council of Ministers and which will serve as a guide for the Cervantes Institute for the promotion of the language in the world, under the presidency of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares), the financing of the Spanish Language and Artificial Intelligence (LEIA) project of the Royal Spanish Academy and the subsidy to four regional scientific projects so that technologies can adequately process Catalan (Aina project), Valencian (Vives project), Basque (Gaitu project) and Galician (Nós project), among others.
Yesterday’s meeting was the second meeting of the Advisory Council of the PERTE of the New Language Economy since its creation last June. It is made up of a total of 36 members from institutions related to the promotion of the language -including three members from each of the co-official languages of Spain- and representatives from the fields of culture, the performing arts, the audiovisual world, science and technology.
The meeting took place in a blended learning format and was attended by several members of the Council, including the director of the Royal Spanish Academy, Santiago Muñoz; the president of the Royal Board of Trustees of the National Library, Daniel Fernández; the director of the National Cancer Research Center, María Blasco; the writer Lorenzo Silva; and the professor of Spanish Language at the University of Barcelona, Estrella Montolío, among others.
