The Diplomat
The director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, is in Brazil today to inaugurate the libraries of this institution in the centers of Rio de Janeiro and Salvador de Bahia.
At the Cervantes center in Rio de Janeiro, the second most populated city in Brazil, García Montero will inaugurate today the Nélida Piñon library, named in honor of this Brazilian writer (Rio de Janeiro, 1937), Princess of Asturias Award for Literature and member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, who maintains a deep connection with Spain, the country of origin of her family and from which she acquired citizenship at the beginning of the year. The library will be open to the public from July 5.
The inauguration ceremony will be attended, among others, by the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, and the Spanish Ambassador to Brazil, Fernando García Casas. Afterwards, the honored writer and the director of the Instituto Cervantes will hold a dialogue followed by the signing of the act of donation of Nélida Piñon’s personal library to the Instituto Cervantes, made up of more than 7,000 volumes (some of them with annotations in the margins by the author herself). Her private collection, assembled over more than six decades, includes publications -and some art objects- on the history of the Middle Ages, classical literature, religion, French and English classics and Galician culture. Numerous books are dedicated by Brazilian writers, such as Clarice Lispector, and international writers, such as José Saramago and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Tomorrow’s program of activities will begin in Salvador de Bahia, capital of the State of Bahia in the northeastern region of the country, where García Montero will visit the city council to sign a collaboration agreement with the mayor, Bruno Reis, and will sign another agreement with the Secretariat of Culture of the State of Bahia.
Afterwards, the Instituto Cervantes of Salvador will attend the inauguration of the José García Nieto Library, in honor of the poet who won the 1996 Cervantes Prize, a space dedicated to research and cultural exchange, with more than 7,000 works in Spanish and a digital collection of 14,000 documents. The ceremony will be attended by the director of the Cervantes Institute and municipal authorities of Salvador and the Government of the State of Bahia, as well as García Casas, the Consul General of Spain in Salvador, Carlos Pérez-Desoy Fages, and Paloma García Nieto, daughter of the writer and president of the José García Nieto Foundation.
On Wednesday, García Montero will meet with the governor of Bahia, Rui Costa, and will sign a general protocol of action with the Secretary of Education, Danilo de Melo Souza, for the sale of 40,000 licenses of the AVE Global platform (Aula Virtual de Español) to this region. This agreement will enable the activation of the Instituto Cervantes online Spanish courses in public schools in the State of Bahia, at the primary and secondary levels.
