Luis García Montero
Director of the Instituto Cervantes
Alberto Rubio
Poet, like Lorca. And born in Granada, like Lorca. Luis García Montero recalls that “it was one of the authors I read as a teenager and it had a great impact on me; it made me understand culture as something very closely linked to the life and history of a society”. Perhaps that is why he is now at the head of Instituto Cervantes, promoting the dissemination of Spanish culture, which he loves unconditionally. “Being a poet helps, because your vocation gets you involved in cultural projects, but you also have to keep your feet on the ground and know what you’re talking about”.
Don’t you also have to be a dreamer, like Federico García Lorca, to run the Cervantes?
When it came to directing the Institute, I entered with great enthusiasm because I knew it as a teacher and as an author. I had travelled to many Cervantes offices around the world. For those of us who started writing in the late 70s and 80s, with the beginning of democracy, the founding of Instituto Cervantes was a great event. It was the launching of democracy in our culture. We knew what the British Council, the Alliance Française, the Goethe Institute were doing, and we were missing something that shouldn’t be simply a ‘Casa de España’ but a great institution.
When I arrived here I knew that it was not enough to list whether I had written about Becquer or edited works by Alberti. I had to start analysing the needs of the staff, the possibilities of the centres, the international cultural policy of interest to Spain and the mechanisms we can use to treat the image of Spain, its culture and its language, as it deserves to be treated abroad.
So, yes. I am a dreamer like Lorca, but since I entered the university and worked in university extension I understood two things: that you have to keep your feet on the ground and that there is nothing more poetic in culture than money. If you want to support culture, you have to make budgets that boost investment in culture.
That’s why I asked you: do we invest enough in culture, starting with ourselves?
I think we do not. If you look at the budgets of local councils, communities and the state itself, the budgets for culture have little to do with those of other nearby countries. Germany, France or the United Kingdom invest much more in culture than Spain. This comes from a loss of cultural investment during the dictatorship and the post-war period. Little by little, the budget has been increasing, but it still hasn’t reached the level that I think is right.
Investing in culture is investing in democracy and coexistence because culture creates community. On the other hand, it means taking seriously everything that culture contributes to this country’s GDP. Look, Spanish is the second language in the world in terms of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese. And our industries in the publishing, education and audiovisual sectors produce a great deal of wealth and many jobs. For that reason alone, it would be worth supporting them more.
But look at one example. Given the identity tensions that we have unfortunately suffered, such as the ‘procés’ in Catalonia, one would think that those who want to affirm their identity would invest much more in culture, but the Generalitat’s investments have not been up to the level of neighbouring countries. In Spain we lack awareness of how important culture is. Now an election is coming up and someone immediately proposes abolishing the Ministry of Culture and merging it with the Ministry of Education. Of course, culture and education are linked, but precisely because of these links and their depth, rather than diluting the attention with a single ministry, it would be better to focus on a dialogue with both ministries. In this sense, I believe that we are not up to Europe’s standards.
Let me give you some more facts: due to 2008 crisis, the budget of the Instituto Cervantes was reduced by 40%. Buildings had to be sold in order to maintain structural expenditure. In recent years we have managed to increase it a little and we are recovering a budget that is reminiscent of what it used to be. But to give you an idea, the Goethe Institute receives a transfer of 350 million euros from the state; the Alliance Française, 300 million… The Cervantes receives little more than 70 million! And to complete our budget of 140 million a year, almost half of it comes from self-financing: classes taught, certificates issued, teacher training courses and a few subsidies outside the state budget. That is why we are always grateful for any attention.
Had been already implemented the 800,000 euros of ‘Next Generation’ funds allocated to the institute by the Government?
Yes, part of these funds are already allowing us to modernise, create a new website, enter into digital transformation, facilitate enrolment, prepare digital platforms for distance learning. It is a whole technological transformation of the institute. That is why I always say that, if any government raises its budget a little and helps the Ministry of Culture or Instituto Cervantes, it is not throwing money away, but rather it is working for the best of our society.
Access to these funds makes it possible to see Spanish and the new language economy as an investment, with enormous economic potential. Investments and trade agreements are multiplied many times over when they take place between countries that know the same language because it generates trust. Not to mention what it means on the international scene to be part of a community of more than 500 million native speakers. And we are also one of the official languages in the African Union thanks to the presence of Equatorial Guinea.
And apart from native speakers, there are 24 million learners of Spanish in the world at the moment. Spanish is the second language in 18 of the 27 EU countries.
All these figures are all well and good, but don’t they make us Spaniards a bit chauvinistic?
We should not lose sight of the fact that Spaniards only make up 8% of that community. There are more Spanish speakers in Mexico or in the United States, where 60 million natives live. Carlos Fuentes defined it very well as he received the Cervantes Prize when he said that “the strength of Spanish is the community”. None of the countries with the most Spanish speakers would be strong enough to impose a Hispanic horizon on the world if it were fragmented. The strength comes from dialogue and the awareness that we all go together.
We have a common language, but nobody owns the language. The language belongs to the speakers. And the best way to defend its unity is to respect diversity. Spanish is no better spoken in Bogotá than in México, Buenos Aires or Madrid.
Are we aware of the strength of our language?
We Spaniards can be proud of what we have done. Philologists quickly understood the importance of the unity of the language, which can only be maintained with respect, as Andrés Bello said in the middle of the 19th century in the prologue to his ‘Gramática castellana para uso de los americanos’ (Castilian grammar for the use of Americans).
And steps have been taken that I value highly: that the RAE (Spanish Royal Academy) has integrated many corresponding academics from Latin America; that ASALE, the Association of Spanish Language Academies, has been set up, with academics from all countries, including the United States; that now the RAE dictionary is no longer produced, but the dictionary of the Spanish Language, where they all work together.
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Instituto Cervantes, we published the book “Lo uno y lo diverso” (“The one and the diverse”), in which writers from all countries defend their mother tongue and the value of the fact that we can understand so many millions of speakers. I think it is a great wealth that we Spaniards have understood that we are part of a community where no one owns the language and where we all have to collaborate and feel connected.
Should linguistic and cultural promotion be a state policy?
That is the policy of the Cervantes. We have to learn to respect that, in addition to Spanish, there are in our country other languages such as Catalan, Basque and Galician. An institute like the Cervantes has to be very interested in articulating Spain. And perhaps some people need to understand that the unity that the different languages can give us through the Cervantes is beneficial, it normalises us. How annoying it is to hear once and again short-sighted people who talk about Spain and then want to create confrontation!
We have made some progress anyway, haven’t we?
During the dictatorship, what we had were very ridiculous false discourses, because Spain had lost a lot of prominence in the world. And that was noticeable. When in the 1980s I began to travel to Colombia or Mexico, the contempt for current Spanish culture was very strong. They only spoke to you about the exiled writers, about Max Aub, Luis Cernuda, García Lorca. And you had to make people understand that democracy allowed us to talk about all that, but not with the melancholy of the past but with the pride of the present. Now, more than half of our cultural activities are carried out in collaboration with embassies, major universities and Latin American institutes.
How is the collaboration with the Catalan, Basque and Galician governments?
We have signed agreements with the institutions that represent these official languages. And we also collaborate in projects to study Asturian, the diversity between Western and Eastern Andalusian or the differences between Valencian and Catalan. We make agreements with all kinds of institutions. But as far as the dissemination and teaching of languages is concerned, we only act within the framework of the four official languages.
I think we need to make an effort to standardise, to work together. Unfortunately, political disputes sometimes affect us. Suddenly there is someone in Catalonia who commits the stupidity of thinking that Spanish is not a Catalan language, without knowing what the richness of a bilingual country means, and others tell you that you are subject to blackmail from the Catalans, the Basques or the Galicians, when we should be proud of the diversity of Spanish culture.
The ‘Glosas Emilianenses’ teach us that Spanish was born from Latin in a territory where Basque was spoken, in La Rioja, in order to be able to understand each other along the Camino de Santiago. And then it became so valuable because it had to coexist with Arabic, from which it took on thousands of words and through whose influence the unity of language, thought and religious spirituality came to be identified. When it arrived in America, religious diffusion meant that missionaries taught Spanish to the Indians, but also that they learned their languages. And that created a historical community that has nothing to do with the colonialism of other powers.
How can we defend Spain’s image in this context? By following the tradition of dialogue and renouncing, shall we say, any imperialist temptation. In Spain we are only 8 per cent of a community shared with 500 million other people.
Are we diplomatically stronger if we take on and enhance our membership of that community?
Of course we are. Teaching a language is much more than teaching a vocabulary. It is teaching a set of values that create community. The EU is now much more supportive of the concept of interculturalism than of cultural diplomacy. When a minister gives an opinion, it is the opinion of a government. But if an actor or a singer gives an opinion, that represents a society. Cultural diplomacy glues culture to governments. Interculturality creates a community, which is a much stronger bond.
When some people wanted to spread the idea in Europe that there was no democracy in Spain because the Catalan language was being persecuted, it was very important that someone like Joan Manuel Serrat said “I have sung in Spanish and Catalan, and in Spain there is democracy, even if there are mistakes on one side or the other”.
What comes from culture is not a political fight, but the spirit of a society. And Spanish society can give many lessons on democracy in Europe and the world. We should defend tooth and nail the place we have occupied in the defence of democracy. That is why I say that culture is very important for Spain’s image. And carrying a language around the world is much more than carrying a vocabulary.
When we open new Instituto Cervantes centres like the one in Dakar we say that it is important to bring Spanish and European culture, but we are going to make a round trip to tell people that in Africa there are not only boat people, but also traditions, culture, religion, economy, literature… And getting to know each other in this way, in both directions, avoids prejudices and perhaps getting to know each other better can help us put an end to this drama of migrant boats.
Does culture still have to overcome the battle against the infamous fake news?
Lies have always been used for corrosive purposes. It was the English who invented the name ‘Invincible Armada’ to discredit Spain. Nowadays, lies are more prominent due to the speed of social networks, which are here to stay and can bring us many good things. But let’s be careful with the negative side, because there are also tremendous possibilities for manipulation.
We live very complicated times, where there is more and more individualism and loneliness, and more discrediting of all the values that seemed important. This makes it possible for ‘fake news’ to play with us, because we are more willing to believe them and reproduce them. A recent study by the Complutense University of Madrid says that more than 90% of Spaniards have reproduced fake news more than once. This is very dangerous. We must vindicate decent journalism with a profound democratic value in the face of hoaxes and lies.
Do we read too little or too fast?
In the same way that it is dangerous to confuse information with communication, with social networks involved, it is dangerous to confuse reading with the capacity for knowledge. The analysis made by academics is that social networks make it very easy to rush, to renounce comprehension, to stick with an idea without knowing what lies beneath it, and to replace thought with opinion trends that have lost their critical awareness.
Sometimes I am accused of defending reading because poetry might disappear. But poetry, literature, will never disappear because when a human being falls in love he has to know how to say “I love you”, and to express that feeling through writing.
Pedro Salinas distinguished between active readers and pasive readers. And today the social networks have too many pasive readers. Active readers are those who have the capacity to understand and reach the depths of the human soul through a book. Rousseau said that the moral imagination, the territory of reading, helps you to understand how others experience love, death, rebellion or fear. Whoever wants to know the other will never give up reading. There will be an elite who will keep reading because it gives you power over others. What will be at stake is democracy when, instead of active readers, we all become pasive readers.
Antonio Machado in ‘Juan de Mairena’ said that true freedom does not lie in saying what we think, but in thinking what we say. What we think is very important, but that is not enough. We must also be free to think what we say, otherwise we will be parrots at the service of others.
Let’s talk about Asia. How important is it for us nowadays?
The balance of power, there is no doubt, has already shifted to the Pacific. It is very important to be present there. In Asia we have a centre in Beijing; we have managed to obtain authorisation for another in Shanghai; we also have Tokyo and Manila centres; and the Council of Ministers has already approved the opening of one in Seoul.
As for India, the Cervantes centre with the highest enrolment is the one in New Delhi. We have proposed opening an extension in Bombay. From the point of view of international relations, we are trying to use our culture to establish relations. And we try to adapt to the reality of each country. It’s important to be there, where we can claim Spanish culture and therefore democratic values.
While you’re on the subject of values, is the Cervantes in Moscow still open?
It is a debate that was opened up because of the war in Ukraine. Some people said it should be closed. It was said that keeping it was supporting Putin and offending Ukraine. In the end, the director was expelled as a punishment to the West, but the centre is still open. When I assess the situation, I think how important it is for Spaniards, their descendants or Russians who want to know Western opinions, to be able to go to the centre and read the press. What I can do is to reduce cultural activities. I can’t risk Putin imprisoning a lecturer for speaking out his mind. But I keep the Spanish classes. And that’s where we’re holding our own.
In each case, we play with circumstances and realities. For example, we detected that the most interesting thing about Spain in Japan is the football league. So we made a Japanese-Spanish dictionary of football terms, which was a complete success! Now we have also made a Spanish-Hindi edition. And it has worked wonderfully.
That means that you have to take advantage of what allows you to establish links. That’s why we are celebrating the new translation of ‘Don Quixote’ in India and we have collaborated in the re-edition of its old Chinese translation. But we are also concerned about other translations and we try to get interesting young spanish authors translated there and which ones from these countries we can make known here.
Hopefully you will have time to develop all these projects.
I hope so. Then there is everything that one cannot solve because it has nothing to do directly with the management of Instituto Cervantes: lack of budget, staffing situation, contracts abroad, the Public Treasury.
Have we come up against the Public Treasury?
Well, the Treasury has to think about the Spanish economy and not just about what the Cervantes would like to do. I understand the situation, and I am grateful. For years our staff was greatly reduced by retirements or because staff were offered better jobs and they left. Now I am grateful because they are allowing us to fill vacancies. You see, as I said at the beginning, it is very important to dream, but keeping our feet on the ground.
