The King describes Trump’s decision to close the White House’s Spanish-language website as “striking”

Eduardo González King Felipe VI on Wednesday described the decision of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to close the Spanish-language page of the White House website as “striking” and the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, denounced the “arrogance” of the American president, who has reduced Spanish to “a language of the poor and migrants”. "It was sad news, because I thought that after the support he had had from a good part of the Latin population, maybe he would change his attitude, and because Latins make up a very significant part of the North American economy, but he has not changed," said García Montero during an informative breakfast prior to the meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Instituto Cervantes, held this Wednesday at the Royal Palace of El Pardo in Madrid and presided over by the King and Queen. "He valued that he was going to remain neutral and he has removed Spanish from the website, reuniting Spanish with a language of the poor and migrants," he continued. “It's not just about defending the prestige of Spanish, it's about refusing to humiliate people for being migrants or poor. I find this very derogatory and it's a dynamic that is spreading throughout the world and is very worrying,” he added. According to data from the Instituto Cervantes, the United States has around 60 million Spanish speakers, making it the second country in the world in terms of the number of Spanish speakers, only behind Mexico. In addition, forecasts indicate that 27.5% of the US population will be of Hispanic origin in the coming years. For this reason, García Montero warned of the need to “consolidate the prestige of Spanish as a language of culture in Latin cinema and music, but also as a language of science and technology.” “The Los Angeles center has that mission,” declared the director. “We are studying the launch of an extension and a center in Miami, which will be a center that will not serve so much to give Spanish classes, but to promote the prestige of Spanish culture and train teachers,” added García Montero. However, Carmen Noguero, general secretary of the Instituto Cervantes, clarified that the creation of the new center in Miami will not be “possible if we are in a budget extension.” On the other hand, the director of the institution reported that the Instituto Cervantes and the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) are considering the possibility of holding the next International Congress of the Language in the United States. In 2025, the International Congress will be held in Arequipa, Peru. The King considers Trump's decision "striking" After this meeting with the press, King Felipe VI chaired the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Cervantes Institute. The event of the highest governing body of the institution was also attended by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares; and of Culture, Ernest Urtasun. In his speech, the King stressed that, "today, there are already more than 600 million people around the world who speak or can communicate in Spanish." "Our linguistic community includes all the Latin American countries, but also Spanish speakers residing in other countries," he continued. “This is the case in the United States, where the Instituto Cervantes has five centres and where Spanish far exceeds other languages in secondary and university education; a country that will have almost 100 million Spanish speakers in 2050,” he said. “Spanish is so alive in America, it is so vibrant, that it can be said without fear of exaggeration that its future evolution will depend largely on America,” he added. For this reason, Felipe VI described the decision of the US government to remove the Spanish language as “an instrument of communication” from the White House as “striking.” “It will surely be temporary, because due to demographic and democratic events it will end up being the second most used language and with political influence,” he added. For his part, Pedro Sánchez highlighted the work that the Instituto Cervantes has been doing for more than thirty years as a “fundamental instrument” for the universal promotion of the teaching, study and use of Spanish. Data of the year Among the figures highlighted this year at the meeting, there was a 20% increase in enrolments and candidates for the DELE Diploma in Spanish as a Foreign Language, reaching almost 160,000. Likewise, there have been more than one million candidates for the CCSE test of Spanish nationality since its establishment in 2015 and 7,748 face-to-face and online cultural activities have been held, with almost two million attendees in a network of centres that extends to 103 countries. For his part, Luis García Montero took stock of the last academic year in which he highlighted that Cervantes has achieved 43.5% self-financing of a budget of 143 million euros in 2024. The workforce has also grown, with a total of 1,012 employees, of which 243 work in Spain and 769 do so in the network of centres. Ñ Award Before the meeting began, Felipe VI presented the Instituto Cervantes 2024 Ñ Award to the Korean Hispanist Park Chul (1949), professor emeritus of Hispanic Literature at Hankuk University in South Korea and one of the greatest experts on Cervantes and Quixote issues in his country. Park, who upon receiving the award joked about the fact that some people around him have called him the “Korean Don Quixote”, celebrated this award as “a collective recognition” shared with professors, students and institutions that have worked “tirelessly” to strengthen ties between Korea and the Hispanic world. For his part, the King conveyed to him his “warmest congratulations for the award” and his “sincere and emotional gratitude for a lifetime and an academic career dedicated to Spanish”.

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