The Diplomat
The director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, arrived yesterday in Argentina, where he signed a collaboration agreement with the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) to develop joint academic and cultural activities aimed at the dissemination of Argentine, Spanish and Ibero-American culture.
The agreement, signed with the rector of the UBA, Ricardo Gelpi, contemplates support for the academic link between the UBA and Spanish higher education institutions, as well as the intensification of participation in the International Certification System for Spanish as a Foreign Language (SICELE).
The SICELE Association is a multilateral initiative of higher education institutions of the Spanish-speaking community that brings together 38 institutions from six countries: Argentina (two), Chile (two), Colombia (four), Spain (25), Mexico (four) and Peru (one).
The signed agreement also aims to intensify the participation of the UBA in the platform for the international dissemination and promotion of culture in Spanish ‘Canoa’. Precisely, the University of Buenos Aires was the first entity to join Red Canoa, the pan-Hispanic network to reinforce Spanish and its culture promoted by the Instituto Cervantes (Spain) and three large entities from Colombia (Instituto Caro y Cuervo), Mexico (National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM) and Peru (Inca Garcilaso Cultural Center). The projects that are disseminated in the Canoa Network pay special attention to the promotion of science and research.
This pan-Hispanic project takes the symbolic name of “canoa” (“canoe”) because this is the first word of the native peoples of America that was adopted by the Spanish language. The projects that will be disseminated on the Canoa Network will pay special attention to the promotion of science and research.
The collaboration between both institutions contemplated in this agreement may be developed by the signatories both in Argentina and Spain or through the Instituto Cervantes centers abroad.
