García Montero and the President of North Macedonia discuss the opening of a Cervantes Institute in the country

The Diplomat The director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, was received this Wednesday in Skopje by the President of North Macedonia, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, who “has advocated for the opening of a Cervantes Institute in the country, which would deepen cultural ties between Spain and North Macedonia and on which active work is already underway,” according to the institution. The objective of the meeting, which is part of an official trip by García Montero to the Balkans region that began on Monday in Bulgaria, is to discuss the presence and importance of Spanish in North Macedonia. “Although the Institute does not have a direct institutional presence in North Macedonia as a physical headquarters, it does coordinate the administration of the exams for obtaining the Diplomas of Spanish as a Foreign Language (DELE) in the country,” the Cervantes Institute stated. Data on the use of Spanish in the country was compiled in the 2022 Cervantes Institute yearbook. In the overall count for the Balkan region, immigrants of Spanish origin predominate, exceeding 50 percent in Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia, a figure also found in the European Union. García Montero's trip to North Macedonia included a meeting with the country's Minister of Culture, Zoran Ljutkov; a meeting with Goran Sadicario, director of the Holocaust Museum in Skopje ("the Jewish community of Macedonia was Sephardic and was 90 percent exterminated," the Institute noted); and a meeting with representatives of North Macedonian Hispanic studies, professors, academics, businesspeople, and high-ranking state officials, including the Minister of Energy, Sanja Bozhinovska, and the Minister of Sports, Borko Ristovski. García Montero's official trip began this Monday in Bulgaria, where he visited the new Cervantes Institute building in Sofia and presented the Bulgarian translation of Andrés Soria's essay "Language of Drama: Federico García Lorca".

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