García Montero accuses the RAE of making an attempt to impose Panama because the venue for the subsequent Language Congress | Culture | EUROtoday

The director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, accused this Tuesday his counterpart on the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), Santiago Muñoz Machado, of eager to “impose” Panama because the venue for the subsequent International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE). “It is up to the Cervantes Institute (IC) to propose the venue for the meeting, this has been the case for 37 years,” he recalled. It was not even essential to ask the top of Cervantes concerning the open struggle between the 2 establishments, which broke out every week earlier than the final version of the CILE, held in Arequipa (Peru) final October: “I continue to maintain what I said, that the Academy should have a quality philologist as director, not a business lawyer.”

The Cervantes Institute now has “two situations,” mentioned García Montero: “The first, that it finds out (about the imposition) because other academies tell it that the director of the RAE has decided on his own that it be Panama,” he mentioned. “From there we have to avoid offending the country, because we are interested in international relations.” The second: “Do not allow offenses to a State institution like the Cervantes Institute, to which the director of the Royal Spanish Academy has accustomed us,” García Montero said on the Cervantes headquarters earlier than totally different media, together with EL PAÍS.

Given these statements, sources from the RAE have assured this newspaper that the settlement to designate Panama because the venue for the subsequent International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE) has not been an initiative of the director of the RAE however of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE), of which 23 academies are half, which adopted it unanimously in Arequipa,” they clarify. “It was not communicated then by determination of the Academies, amongst different causes as a result of there are nonetheless three years till the subsequent Congress and since the state of affairs of pressure and disagreement that the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, prompted in Arequipa meant that it was not the most effective time for the announcement. However, the director of the RAE personally communicated this to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, the identical day he returned from Arequipa,” the identical sources add.

García Montero’s new statements got here shortly earlier than the assembly this Tuesday of the Board of Trustees of the Cervantes Institute, chaired by the King and Queen on the Palace of Aranjuez, to current the “remarkable results” that “the institution achieved” within the 2024-2025 educational 12 months, based on the director of the establishment. 170,102 registrations had been registered, which represents a rise of 6.67% in comparison with the earlier 12 months. “When I came to direct the Cervantes, it was selling its buildings to be able to support itself, due to a cut in the budget,” mentioned the director. “That we can now buy buildings instead of selling them speaks of the good situation we are in,” he added. The IC funds stays at 143 million euros, 43.5% comes from self-financing and the remaining from State transfers.

For the primary time, neither the director of the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Machado, nor the final secretary of ASALE, Francisco Javier Pérez, nor the tutorial Luis Mateo Díez, have attended the assembly of the Board of Trustees, “to highlight the discomfort of the RAE and ASALE with the inexplicable behavior of Mr. García Montero,” clarify the identical RAE sources. The absence “was reported a few days ago,” they make clear.

In his assembly with the press, García Montero additionally pressured that the truth that the General State Budgets are usually not authorised “is a serious problem” and took the chance to launch a mirrored image towards those that “do internal politics” with this problem: “It is very unpatriotic to go to the rest of Europe and speak badly about Spain and try to prevent the Budgets from being published.” The three-year freeze “makes it difficult” to increase Cervantes and “create new centers.” The IC’s presence on this planet is structured by way of 103 cities in 52 nations.

The director identified the “need to be present in Toronto (Canada) and to carry out extensions in the United States, possibly in Miami.” And he talked about that “the attitude of the United States presidency and its very aggressive statements against the European Union complicate things.” Even so, García Montero assured that the RAE “is very accustomed to this type of difficulties and to using culture as an area of ​​twinning when there is a radical confrontation between political institutions.”

More than 60 million residents of Hispanic origin dwell within the United States and greater than 40 million have Spanish as their first language. “For this reason, Donald Trump’s grievances towards the language affect a very relevant part of his own population,” García Montero emphasised. The Global Spanish Observatory – which will depend on Cervantes – denounces “how these attitudes fuel policies that legitimize mockery of students or workers who use Spanish in their daily lives,” he famous. This causes many Hispanic households to “try to get their children to abandon their language.” Faced with this problem, the Cervantes Institute works to “analyze Spanish as a heritage language and see how it can be maintained and promoted in families who are involved in the vertigo of silencing their language,” said García Montero.