Arequipa to host the 10th International Congress of the Spanish Language in October

Eduardo González The 10th International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE) will be held in Arequipa, Peru, from October 14 to 17, 2025, under the theme "Major Challenges of the Spanish Language: Mestizaje and Interculturality, Clear and Accessible Language, Digital Cultures, and Artificial Intelligence." More than 250 writers, academics, experts, and professionals related to the Spanish language from around the world will participate. This was revealed last Tuesday during the presentation of the Spanish Language Summit in Madrid, which was attended by the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero; the director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and president of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE), Santiago Muñoz Machado; and the president of the Organizing Committee and the Working Group of the 10th CILE of the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Chávez-Taffur. This tenth congress, a triennial event usually inaugurated by the King of Spain, will feature the Andean town council scribe as its logo, an illustration from the work "Good Chronicle and Good Government," written by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, the 17th-century indigenous Peruvian chronicler. "This city is a heritage and example of the mestizaje (mixed races), and this will be a meeting that continues a very useful tradition in raising awareness of the importance of the Spanish language on the international horizon from an economic and social perspective," declared Luis García Montero during the event, held at the Madrid headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes. He also highlighted the "historic moment" of using a language like Spanish, the second most widely spoken in the world, to "defend that equality does not mean homogenization but rather the defense of diversity as a richness against those who want to impose a single language on the world." "Spanish is called to play a very important role, and we consider ourselves heirs to the 1812 Constitution, with its idea of freedom in the face of any totalitarian temptation," he added. Over four days, this event will provide a forum for reflection on the major challenges facing the Spanish language. It will be divided into three thematic sections. It will also include a plenary session in his hometown honoring the writer and academic Mario Vargas Llosa, who died last April and who, as García Montero recalled, "was at the origin of the candidacy." In terms of content, the conference will address current transfers between Spanish and indigenous American languages, the Spanish of the United States and the keys to its present and future, the impact of Quechua, Aymara, and Amazonian languages on the formation of Andean Spanish, clear language and linguistic transparency in the media and advertising, translation as a tool for linguistic access, and the challenge of large-scale language models for the Spanish language, such as translation and proofreading. “Arequipa has been waiting for us for quite a few years. It was proposed to host the Congress, on the occasion of its celebration in Córdoba (Argentina) in 2019, and then it was ratified in Cádiz in 2023,” stated the director of the RAE, who explained that 235 proposals were collected to formulate the academic program, 224 of them “from all the sister academies” of the ASALE, which “have been accepted by the RAE, selected, and agreed upon with the Cervantes Institute.” Arequipa was supposed to host the ninth International Congress of the Spanish Language in 2023, but was forced to withdraw in favor of Cádiz due to the political instability in the country. For this reason, at the end of that Congress (held in March 2023), it was decided to once again entrust the Peruvian city with hosting the next edition.

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