The Diplomat
The Peruvian city of Arequipa could host the next International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE), which was forced to renounce this year in favor of Cadiz because of political instability in the country.
This was implied during the last day of the ninth CILE, which was closed yesterday by the Minister of Territorial Policy and spokesperson of the Government, Isabel Rodriguez, and the directors of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis Garcia Montero, and the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and president of ASALE, Santiago Muñoz Machado, after four days of intense discussions in Cadiz.
According to the Instituto Cervantes, all the participants mentioned Arequipa as the most likely venue for the next edition, but no decision could be taken in the final session because “time has beaten us, the Academies have not been able to deliberate“, according to the director of the RAE.
However, Luis García Montero was quite explicit in this regard during his speech: “I hope that the next congress can, in a round trip, settle the debt that, due to political difficulties, we have not been able to fulfill in this one. It would be wonderful”. Everything points, then, to the Peruvian town of Arequipa recovering the status of host of the next pan-Hispanic summit, after being replaced in extremis by Cadiz just three months ago.
According to the secretary general of the Congress (and academic director of the Instituto Cervantes), Carmen Pastor Villalba, the CILE in Cadiz was attended by 1,300 people in person and another 6,300 by telematic means from a total of 70 countries, including those in which Spanish is an official language. The 263 speakers came from 29 nations around the world. The parallel cultural program included 78 events before and during the Congress, with more than 5,000 participants in concerts, exhibitions, recitals, book presentations, a cajoneada (in which even the King started to play) or a rap workshop. The impact generated in the media is estimated at some 60 million euros.
With these figures, the director of the Instituto Cervantes described the Congress as a “success”. “Our expectations have been met, it is a happy balance,” he said during the closing ceremony. Likewise, Luis García Montero insisted on the need to “overcome nations and nationalisms” and that hegemonic languages should know how to coexist with non-hegemonic languages, and warned that States should “invest in the cultivation of culture and language, because it is everyone’s business”.
For his part, Santiago Muñoz Machado said that, among the challenges highlighted at the Congress, was “the growth of Spanish, a leading language that is showing its primacy in the networks”. He also warned about the risks of the fragmentation of our language, and about the danger to the survival of some native languages in countries where they coexist with Spanish.
Isabel Rodríguez, for her part, celebrated the “explosion of our language on a global level” and predicted further growth thanks to the recovery funds from Europe, which will devote “a huge amount of resources to the language as a factor of growth”. Likewise, the mayor of Cadiz, José María González Santos, thanked “those of you who have believed that Cadiz could and have seen that it has been able” to organize a congress of academics which, “far from being confined to the halls, has spread throughout the city”.
On the previous day, the First Vice President of the Government and Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, urged to work to “get Spanish on board the train of the digital revolution” and thus protect “one of our most precious assets”. In her opinion, “the future of languages is digital” and, therefore, it is necessary to make Spanish “one of the leading languages in the digital world”. To this end, he said, the so-called PERTE of the New Economy will devote substantial funds to the field of languages, to strengthen “the invisible bridge” that unites the pan-Hispanic community.
