The Cervantes Institute has “everything ready” for the reopening of its center in Gibraltar

Eduardo González The director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, announced this Monday that the institution has “everything ready” to proceed with the reopening of the center in Gibraltar, which has been closed since 2015, following the signing of the agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom on the future of the Rock. García Montero made this announcement during the opening of the institution's Annual Meeting, held in Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz), which was attended by Queen Letizia. In the press conference prior to the meeting, the director of the Cervantes Institute recalled that the Gibraltar center had “a very significant role” until its closure, as it became a cultural center for “dialogue throughout the Campo de Gibraltar region and strengthened the teaching of Spanish at a time when there were policies that sought to eradicate the language in order to impose English.” “We provided significant support for children learning Spanish, especially those who might not have had the opportunity to study it in schools, and we accomplished a very important task,” he continued. “Unfortunately, it was closed due to political disagreements in the past, and now we believe it is appropriate to reopen it because of all that it represents,” he added. For this reason, he assured, “everything is prepared and planned,” and the institution has even included a budget allocation in this year’s draft budget to launch the center’s reopening so that “it will be operational next year.” However, he clarified that the decision does not depend solely on the Cervantes Institute, as it will also require approval from the Council of Ministers, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Cervantes Institute center was opened in 2011 by the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (PSOE) within the framework of the Córdoba Agreements reached at the Trilateral Dialogue Forum, promoted by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Ángel Moratinos. Subsequently, the government of Mariano Rajoy (PP) described the opening of a Cervantes Institute center in a territory considered Spanish as a “mistake,” and the center was closed in 2015 by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel García-Margallo, on the grounds that “the Rock is national territory and there, except for the monkeys, everyone speaks Spanish.” Annual Meeting Following this announcement, Queen Letizia inaugurated the institution's Annual Meeting, which will take place over three days—from Monday to Wednesday—with the participation of nearly one hundred center directors and the institution's management team. The inauguration was held at the Atalaya Museums in Jerez. In addition to the Queen, the event was attended by the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Eva Granados, and included speeches by Luis García Montero, the President of the Regional Government of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, and the Mayor of Jerez de la Frontera, María José García-Pelayo. The Andalusian president wished the meeting “every success in the world” and stated that “language is an essential tool that must be used not only to expand culture, but also to understand each other, and that is the main challenge.” Spanish in the EU As part of the opening program, a round table discussion was also held to analyze the challenges facing the Spanish language in the European Union and international forums, in Africa, and in the post-Brexit United Kingdom. At this meeting, Teresa Iniesta, director of the Cervantes Centre in Brussels, acknowledged that Spanish is not a working language in several European institutions, unlike English, French, and German, although she highlighted “a very different reality in daily life.” “Civil servants tell us that they use Spanish a lot to communicate with their colleagues,” she stated. The director of the Brussels center celebrated the contract awarded to the Cervantes Centre last year to teach Spanish to all EU civil servants, and highlighted, for example, that this year around 2,500 students have been taught in this area, divided into some 160 courses, and that 26 teachers have been involved. For his part, Víctor Ugarte, director of the Cervantes Institute in London, recalled a recent British Council report showing that Spanish has now overtaken French and is, for the first time, the most chosen foreign language in the country's secondary school English exams. Since 2005 (except in 2020 due to the pandemic), the Cervantes Institute has held annual meetings with the directors of its centers abroad and their entire management teams to discuss strategies for the international promotion of the Spanish language and culture. This is the first time the meeting has been held in Jerez and the fourth in Andalusia. To date, twelve 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, Catalonia, and the Canary Islands. Specifically, the previous Annual Meetings of Directors of the Institute 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); Logroño 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), Barcelona (2024) and La Laguna, Canary Islands (2025).

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