Instituto Cervantes will remove almost a third of its directors around the world on September 1

Eduardo González A total of 21 directors of centers of the Instituto Cervantes will change their destination from September 1 to other centers in the network, which will affect between a third and a quarter of the institution's headquarters around the world. According to a resolution of the general secretariat of the institution approved by the Board of Directors, the new destinations of the directors abroad are Juan Vicente Piqueras (current director of Amman), who will direct the center in Tangier; Yolanda Soler (Beirut), who will move to Amman; Josep Maria de Sagarra (Belgrade), assigned to Budapest; José Ignacio Olmos (Berlin) to Beirut; Ana Vázquez Barrado (Brussels) to Milan; and Javier Valdivielso (Budapest) to New York. Likewise, Anastasio Sánchez-Zamorano (current director of Chicago) will be the director of Rabat, Juan Carlos Vidal (Stockholm) will direct the Sofia centre, Miguel Ángel San José (Fez) the Marrakech centre, Ignacio Abad (Lisbon) will go to Belgrade, Javier Galván (Manila) to Stockholm, Teresa Iniesta (Milan) to Brussels and Mila Crespo (Bremen) to Vienna. Felipe Santos (Munich) will move to Warsaw as director, Óscar Pujol (New Delhi) to Fez, Richard Bueno (New York) to Lisbon, Daniel Gallego (Salvador de Bahía) to Sao Paulo, Juan Manuel Casado (Sao Paulo) to Curitiba, María Luisa Santos (Sofia) to Chicago, Abel Murcia (Warsaw) to Bucharest and, finally, Ignacio Martínez Castignani (Vienna) to Berlin. On July 30, the director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, appointed - at the proposal of the general secretary, Carmen Noguero, with the approval of the secretary of State for Ibero-America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World and president of the Board of Directors, Susana Sumelzo, and after hearing the Board of Directors - the new directors of the centers in New Delhi (María Gil Bürmann), Tel Aviv (Francisco Fernando del Río), Manila (Francisco Javier López Tapia) and Munich (Carmen Pastor Villalba), as well as the executive director of the Observatory of the Instituto Cervantes at Harvard University, Francisco Javier Pueyo. This extensive remodeling was adopted after the annual meeting of the directors of the Instituto Cervantes in the world, which took place in the last week of July in Barcelona and in which Queen Letizia encouraged those responsible for the institution to continue with their “mission of promoting and disseminating Spanish, Hispanic cultures and co-official languages.” It was the first time that the Annual Meeting of the Instituto Cervantes was held in Catalonia. Since 2005, they have been held uninterruptedly (except in 2020 due to the pandemic) in various cities in a total of ten autonomous communities: Andalusia, Castile and León, Castile-La Mancha, Madrid, Cantabria, Extremadura, La Rioja, Galicia, the Basque Country, the Valencian Community and the Principality of Asturias. The Instituto Cervantes currently has 77 centres around the world in (44) countries: 37 in Europe (five in Germany, four in France and Italy, three in the United Kingdom, two in Poland and one each in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Slovakia, Slovenia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Sweden and Turkey), fifteen in America (eight in Brazil, six in the USA and one in Canada), twelve in Africa (six in Morocco, two in Algeria, two in Egypt, one in Tunisia and one in Senegal, the only one in Sub-Saharan Africa), ten in Asia and Oceania (two in China and one each in Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, India, Japan and Indonesia) and three in the Middle East (Israel, Jordan and Lebanon). The centre in Syria is temporarily closed.

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