The Diplomat
Princess Leonor will preside over the beginning of the commemorative events for the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Instituto Cervantes on March 24, as announced yesterday by the director of this institution, Luis García Montero.
García Montero made this announcement during the presentation of the commemorative events, which will begin on March 24 with “an exceptional protagonist”, the Princess of Asturias, who will visit the Cervantes headquarters in Madrid and will deposit in the Caja de las Letras the copy of the Constitution whose first article she herself read in public on October 31, 2018, also at the Instituto Cervantes, as part of the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of the Magna Carta.
It will be the first time that Princess Leonor, 15, will star in a public act without the company of the King or the Queen, and she will do so at the Instituto Cervantes as a “show of support for the flagship of Spain’s cultural diplomacy”, the institution highlighted. “The heiress to the Throne will tour its facilities, learn about the digitalization projects, visit an exhibition of outstanding works of literature in the different co-official languages and will leave in the Caja de las Letras, in addition to the aforementioned copy of the Magna Carta, the same volume of Don Quixote that she read last April 23 together with the Infanta Sofia on the occasion of International Book Day 2020″, it added.
The celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of Cervantes will last throughout this year and will conclude with a big event in the Congress in which the parliamentary groups will read fragments from the different literatures and languages spoken in Spain. The campaign of celebration and dissemination has as its slogan 30 years creating Hispanists, understanding the concept of Hispanist “far beyond the scholar of the culture or history of Spain” to include, as García Montero pointed out, “anyone who, anywhere in the world, is interested in Spanish culture, its cinema, its gastronomy or its sport”.
At the same event, the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Ángeles Moreno Bau, declared that the thirtieth anniversary “is not a point of arrival, but a point of reflection and a starting point for new challenges” and to “establish a new road map” for the Instituto Cervantes, an organization “essential in the External Action Strategy” recently presented by the Government.
For her part, the Secretary General of the Instituto Cervantes, Carmen Noguero, explained the expansion plans, the technological transformation and the Institute’s budgets, and outlined the three priority geographic areas: The United States (a headquarters is being negotiated with the City of Los Angeles and a new extension is being prepared in the border city of El Paso), sub-Saharan Africa (the Dakar center will begin operations this year and there will soon be a presence in Abiyan, Ivory Coast, as well as academic missions in Guinea or Mozambique) and Asia (new areas of expansion are being sought starting with New Delhi, the center with the highest enrollment, and the “promotion” to center of the current Aula Cervantes in Seoul and the opening of a new extension in Ramallah, Palestine, are being prepared).
Noguera also assured that the 2020 accounts were not as negative as feared when the pandemic broke out. Compared to the 54 million euros in own income obtained in 2019, the Cervantes came to anticipate losses of 28 million in 2020, but finally these losses remained at 17.4 million thanks, in large part, to the commitment to the teaching of Spanish online, which was “well received by students”.
