García Montero inaugurates a library at the Cervantes Institute in Shanghai on the eve of Sánchez’s trip to China

The Diplomat The director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, inaugurated the “Marcela de Juan” Library this Thursday, which is part of the Cervantes Institute in Shanghai, just hours before the start of the fourth visit of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to the People's Republic of China, in which several agreements will be signed to promote education, the teaching of Spanish, cultural exchanges and museum cooperation. According to the Institute, García Montero has traveled to China to, among other activities, inaugurate the “Marcela de Juan” Library at the Cervantes Center in Shanghai. This library honors the Chinese-Spanish translator and writer Marcela de Juan (born in Havana in 1905 and died in Geneva in 1981), the daughter of a high-ranking mandarin diplomat who spoke Spanish and a Belgian citizen. She lived between Madrid and Beijing from a young age, becoming integrated into the social and cultural life of both countries. Marcela de Juan (whose birth name was Huan Ma Cé) was responsible for the first direct translations of Chinese poetry in Spain and a chronicler of her time through articles and reports published in Madrid magazines and newspapers—such as ABC, Revista de Occidente, and Estampa—that debunked myths and stereotypes about China. She was fluent in several languages and worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in addition to participating in international conferences and founding the Spanish Professional Association of Translators and Interpreters (APETI). During the ceremony, which also included the participation of the director of the Cervantes Institute in Shanghai, Isabel Cervera, García Montero highlighted “the Cervantes Institute’s recovery of the figure of Marcela de Juan to share the work of a pioneer in cultural relations between China and Spain.” The library of the Cervantes Institute in Shanghai was inaugurated in 2007 by the then Prince and Princess of Asturias, now King and Queen of Spain, Felipe and Letizia. Carmen Caffarel, the then director of the Cervantes Institute, presented the library with its first collection that year—a total of 4,000 books. Since 2025, the library has added nearly 1,500 titles of Spanish literature translated into Chinese to its local collection and has published the Catalogue of Spanish Literature Translated into Chinese, a free downloadable publication from the Cervantes Institute website. This catalogue traces almost 110 years of shared history through titles and authors from Spain and Latin America writing in Chinese. The Cervantes Institute has had a presence in China since 2006, when it opened a center in Beijing's Chaoyang district. A year later, in 2007, the then Prince and Princess of Asturias inaugurated the Miguel de Cervantes Library in Shanghai. Until 2019, this library was under the jurisdiction of the Spanish Consulate but managed by the Institute. In 2024, it was transformed into a new center, inaugurated by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, making Spain the only country with two cultural centers in China. According to the Cervantes Institute, the growth of Spanish in China has been exponential and is on track to become the second most in-demand foreign language in the country, after English. The demand for Spanish is also increasing in primary and secondary education. Furthermore, since 2018, the Chinese Ministry of Education has included Spanish as an optional subject in secondary school, and students can choose it, instead of English, in the national university entrance exam, the Gaokao. There are approximately 60,000 active Spanish students in formal education institutions, and China is among the top countries in terms of the number of students registered for the DELE (Diplomas de Español) exams in the Cervantes Institute network (in 2023, more than 5,500 students took the exams). In the case of the Shanghai center, a total of 950 applications were registered in the 2024-25 academic year, with 772 students enrolled.

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