<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>King Felipe VI defended this Wednesday the need to give a “greater strategic focus” to the Spanish language in order to project the voice of Spanish speakers “in an uncertain global panorama.” The Monarch spoke these words during the opening ceremony of the 10th International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE), held in the Peruvian city of Arequipa amid an institutional crisis in this Andean country resulting from the impeachment of President Dina Boluarte.</strong></h4> “This is an ideal place to celebrate the Spanish language, because our language is for all of us Spanish speakers what Arequipa was for Vargas Llosa: the family home, a space with more than 600 million speakers, fertile in communication, science, literary creation, ideas, and projects, the home we have all built and today nourished by brotherhood and culture for the better future we long for,” the King stated during his speech. “This International Congress of the Spanish Language is a testament to a thriving, dynamic language, a meeting point for the entire Spanish-speaking community, a CILE that speaks to us, certainly, of the future: of how we can give our language an even more strategic focus, helping us project our voice in an admittedly uncertain global landscape,” he added. The King arrived in Peru this Tuesday accompanied by the Secretary of State for Ibero-America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Susana Sumelzo, and was received by, among others, the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun. On the first day, the Monarch visited the Vargas Llosa House Museum, where he was accompanied by the House Museum's director and the writer's cousin, Luis Llosa, and the writer's daughter, Morgana Vargas Llosa. <h5><strong>Vargas Llosa</strong></h5> In fact, Tuesday's session was largely dedicated to the figure of the Spanish-Peruvian Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. The Cervantes Institute presented the "Mario Vargas Llosa Dictionary. He Inhabited Words," an A-Z tour of the writer's literary and geographical universe. The event, held at the Arequipa library named after the author of works such as "Conversation in the Cathedral" and "The City and the Dogs," was attended by the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero; the writer Carlos Granés; and the photographer and daughter of the Nobel Prize winner, Morgana Vargas Llosa. This dictionary, published by the Cervantes Institute in its "Los galeotes" collection, brings together a hundred voices that run through all the letters of the dictionary, entrusted to a hundred "writers"—family members, friends, storytellers, philosophers, filmmakers, poets, professors, readers—who evoke the books and life of Mario Vargas Llosa. Likewise, the Instituto Cervantes' Caja de las Letras (Box of Letters) received a legacy in memoriam of Mario Vargas Llosa, which includes, among other objects, a pen he received as part of the 1985 Ritz Paris Hemingway Award for his work "The War at the End of the World," presented to him by French actress Catherine Deneuve. In addition, Vargas Llosa's family has provided a personal photograph of the writer at his desk in Lima, taken by Morgana herself, which shows the pen that "accompanied him throughout his life" and the views of the Barranco coast that he had in that office. Both objects will travel to the Cervantes Institute in Madrid, where the Caja de las Letras is located. The Language Congress began on October 14 and will close on the 17th. During these days, the capital of Arequipa will host more than 260 international speakers and lecturers, including academics, writers, linguists, historians, professors, and other specialists. In addition, around 500 people will attend the academic events in person as the general public. The majority of these are students and professionals from higher education institutions in Arequipa, Chiclayo, Huánuco, Lima, Moquegua, Tacna, and Trujillo. Representatives from universities in Spain, the United States, Sweden, and South Africa have also arrived. The motto of the 10th CILE in Arequipa is “Major challenges of the Spanish language: fusion and interculturality, clear and accessible language, digital cultures and artificial intelligence”, which summarises the three axes of this forum that seeks to reflect on the situation, problems and challenges of the Spanish language. <h5><strong>The crisis in Peru</strong></h5> The holding of the Congress, including the presence of the King, comes amid a new institutional crisis at the highest level in Peru. On October 10, the Peruvian Congress removed President Dina Boluarte due to the country's serious security problems and appointed José Jerí, the current head of the legislature, in her place. He will serve until July 2026, following the April general elections. Peru has had seven presidents since 2016: three removed by Congress (including Boluarte), two who resigned before meeting the same fate, one who completed his interim term, and the aforementioned José Jerí. Curiously, the ninth edition of CILE, which was scheduled to be held in 2023 in the same city of Arequipa, was also marred by a serious political crisis in Peru, in this case due to the self-coup perpetrated in December 2022 by former President Pedro Castillo. As a result, the Association of Spanish Language Academies proposed that the meeting be moved to Cádiz, a move immediately accepted by the Spanish government. At the end of the Congress in the Andalusian city, held in March 2023, it was decided to once again entrust the Peruvian city with hosting the next edition. The CILEs have been held triennially since 1997 and are organized by the Instituto Cervantes, the RAE (Royal Academy of Spanish Language), and the Association of Spanish Language Academies (ASALE) together with the host country. With the Arequipa congress, Peru joins the ranks of countries that have hosted the most important event dedicated to the Spanish language for more than 25 years. Previous CILEs were held in Zacatecas (Mexico, 1997), Valladolid (Spain, 2001), Rosario (Argentina, 2004), Cartagena de Indias (Colombia, 2007), Valparaíso (Chile, 2010, held online due to an earthquake), Panama (Panama, 2013), San Juan (Puerto Rico, 2016), Córdoba (Argentina, 2019), and Cádiz (Spain, 2023).
