The Queen will preside over the first annual meeting of Cervantes Institute Directors held in the Canary Islands this Monday

The Diplomat The Cervantes Institute will hold its Annual Meeting of Directors from this Monday until Wednesday. This meeting will be held for the first time in the Canary Islands, with the first working session chaired by Queen Letizia. The opening of the Annual Meeting will begin next Monday at 11:45 a.m. in the Auditorium of the University of La Laguna. The institution will host all the working sessions, which will run until Wednesday afternoon and bring together more than 70 officials from the institution in Spain and around the world. The event will be attended by the Director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero; the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares (via virtual address); the President of CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs) and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Josep Borrell; and the Rector of the University of La Laguna, Francisco J. García. The first working session, chaired by Queen Letizia, will begin at 1:15 p.m. in the university's Rectors' Room. Under the title "Spanish as a Border Language," the challenges facing our language in the United States, Brazil, Senegal, and India will be analyzed by the directors of the Cervantes Institutes in Brasilia and New Delhi, as well as the heads of the Global Observatory of Spanish and the Harvard Observatory. At this closed-door meeting, the authorities accompanying Queen Letizia will be the President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, and the State Secretary for Ibero-America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Susana Sumelzo. In addition, the Queen is scheduled to hold a closing exchange of ideas with the directors of the Cervantes Institute, which will conclude around 1:45 p.m. During the three days of work, the Cervantes directors will analyze the work the Institute is doing to promote the Spanish language and Spanish culture worldwide. In addition, they will specify priorities and action plans for the next academic year in the more than 100 cities across 56 countries where the Instituto Cervantes is present. Since 2005 (except in 2020 due to the pandemic), the Instituto Cervantes has held annual meetings with the directors of its centers abroad, where they discuss lines of action for the international promotion of the Spanish language and culture. This will be the first time it has been held in the Canary Islands. To date, eleven autonomous communities have hosted these sessions: Andalusia, Catalonia, Castile and León, Castile-La Mancha, Madrid, Cantabria, Extremadura, La Rioja, Galicia, the Basque Country, the Valencian Community, the Principality of Asturias, and Catalonia. Specifically, the Institute's previous Annual Meetings of Directors were held in A Coruña (2005); León (2006); Córdoba (2007); Soria (2008); Comillas, Cantabria (2009); Alcázar de San Juan, Ciudad Real (2010); Alcalá de Henares, Madrid (2011); Salamanca (2012); Cáceres and Mérida (2013); Logrono and San Millán de la Cogolla, La Rioja (2014); Santiago de Compostela (2015); Madrid (2016); Málaga (2017); Orihuela and Alicante (2018); El Escorial, Madrid (2019); San Sebastián (2021); Granada (2022); Oviedo (2023) and Barcelona (2024).

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