Xavi Ayén, Madrid, 15 July 2024
Photo: Luis García Montero, director of the Instituto Cervantes, during the interview at the institution’s headquarters // DANI DUCH
Luis García Montero, Director of the Instituto Cervantes talks about the world meeting of the directors of all its centres, which will be held in the Catalan capital for the first time.
The Instituto Cervantes is about to make history, with the annual meeting of all the directors of its centres around the world, which for the first time will be held in Barcelona from 22 to 25 July. At the institution’s headquarters in Madrid, its director, Luis García Montero, welcomes this newspaper.
Why are you coming to Barcelona?
Because this meeting has never been held in Catalonia before. I proposed it and we spent time talking with different institutions that have collaborated, especially the Institut Ramon Llull and Barcelona City Council.
What are the specific features of this meeting?
Normally, we look for the specific features of the city or territory chosen, so that the Cervantes Institute’s management can understand how to disseminate its culture throughout the world, and significant visits are scheduled. In the case of bilingual cities, their languages and literatures form part of this heritage that must be disseminated. In this case, we are going to hold a tribute concert to the poet Joan Margarit, in Sant Just Desvern, where he lived, given by his son Carles, who has a jazz group with which Joan had worked a lot.
Does the Cervantes Institute take on the defence and promotion of all the languages of Spain?
Yes. Since its formation, it was decided that it should also disseminate, on the one hand, Spanish culture and languages, and on the other, culture in Spanish, understood in a broad sense because we Spaniards are only 8% of the 500 million native speakers of the language.
In the case of Catalan, what are they doing?
We offer Catalan classes in our centres, especially in Germany: Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt… and also in Vienna. We have been able to offer more than 145 enrolments in one year. By the end of 2024, we will have organised around 8,000 cultural events worldwide. And the presence of Catalan, Galician and Basque, added together, is around 50% of the activities.
In the case of Catalan, what do you do?
The offer of classes in Catalan in our centres is very strong, especially in Germany: Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt… and also in Vienna. We have been able to offer more than 145 enrolments in one year. By the end of 2024, we will have organised around 8,000 cultural events worldwide. And the presence of Catalan, Galician and Basque, added together, is around 50% of the activities.
50% in other languages?
From 2019 to now, the presence of Catalan culture in the activities of the Cervantes Institute has increased by 234%. Contrary to what happened, in the United States where when the State was formed they wanted to impose a single language, in Europe respect for diversity is a sign of a democratic nature. The European Union has 24 official languages and 200 real languages. We will celebrate this September 26, the Day of European Languages, in Lisbon and poets from the different languages of the State will be invited, such as the Catalan Míriam Cano.
But not all Cervantes Institutes teach Catalan…
Well, sometimes there isn’t the necessary demand. But we have taken measures: if, to form a Spanish course, we require a minimum of 10 students, for the other official languages of the State, it is enough for there to be three students who request it for us to look for a teacher.
Barcelona is a Cervantes city, it appears in no less than Don Quixote, but it has always been said that this is not very visible. What do you think?
Another of the activities that we have organized is an activity about Cervantes and Barcelona, professor José Manuel Lucía, biographer of Cervantes, is coming. I believe that the issue is well studied in the history of literature, but it has not become popular. Martín de Riquer has a wonderful study on the presence of Barcelona in Don Quixote and Aurora Egido has written a thorough analysis of the meaning of the entire part of the second volume of Don Quixote that takes place in Barcelona. Don Quixote arrives in the city at a time when great chivalric festivals were celebrated, and delves into the medieval tradition, detailing even the type of dresses that the knights wore, which were a bit carnivalesque, adorned with crystals, like the ones he wears. the Knight of Mirrors, who defeats Don Quixote on the beach. And, of course, the character’s visit to the Barcelona printing press is very significant. Even the end of that experience in Barcelona, when he feels defeated and returns to his homeland to die… It’s all incredibly rich.
And they don’t propose any step forward?
We will ask ourselves if we want a Cervantes itinerary in Barcelona. This city can lead the Network of Cervantes Cities in the world. Few have more merits, Barcelona should be one of the most important. We are going to raise it with the city council.
“I don’t understand that there is a Catalan who doesn’t understand the good that bilingualism means for Barcelona, which has meant it being the cultural capital not only of Spain, but of Latin America.”
Where it is theoretically said that Cervantes could have been, now he is a 24-hour Pakistani grocery store.
From what some people say, it seems that perhaps Cervantes could even have been in Barcelona twice, once when he was young and once later. But there is no evidence.
Some pro-independence supporters have come out saying that Mayor Colboni wants to Spanishize the city with things like this meeting that you are going to hold.
A disservice is done to democracy and coexistence by introducing linguistic dogmatism into political debates. The Cervantes was founded very late compared to other European institutions. The Alliance Française dates back to the end of the 19th century, and the British Council to the beginning of the 20th century. The Germans, as soon as they came out of the Second World War, in the 50s, founded the Goethe… and the Cervantes Institute had to wait until democracy. In the dictatorship that was unthinkable. Because? Because in the relationship with 92% of the speakers of our language, imperialist ideas were cultivated. And later, in internal use, the dictatorship persecuted Catalan, Galician, and Basque. We had to wait for a consolidated democracy, in 1991.
Do you feel politically attacked?
They call me ‘red’ and it is published that I want to put an end to Spanish because I defend Catalan, Galician and Basque. The same stupidity is, for me, that there is a Catalan who does not understand the good that bilingualism means for a city like Barcelona, which has meant it being the cultural capital not only of Spain, but of Latin America for years. I do not understand that someone wants to give up feeling the second language of the world as their own in native speakers, considering that they betray Catalonia if they speak it.
Do they tell you, director of Cervantes, that you want to put an end to Spanish?
We are used to such nonsense. I think that everything that involves supporting the cultural richness of Galician, Catalan and Basque is a task that concerns all of us Spaniards… and, especially, an institution like Cervantes. Catalan is a language with speakers, it does not have the dangers of very small languages like Basque, but it does face the risks of digital transformation, which causes many young people who live on the networks to use other languages before Catalan.
What language is spoken in Valencia?
Look, I am a professor of philology, and this was resolved many years ago by Fernando Lázaro Carreter and the RAE itself, which established that the same language is spoken in Valencia as in Catalonia. As director of the Instituto Cervantes, when I see that some people argue that Valencian is a different language, I get nervous, because these shoddy nationalists are opening the door to the fact that in Mexico, they say that they do not speak Spanish but Mexican. If they don’t speak Catalan in Valencia, then we can only sit and wait for them to tell me that in Honduras or Argentina they speak a language other than Spanish.
Your time at Cervantes is characterised by expansion, many centres are opening.
Well, within our means. There was a very difficult moment in the 2008 crisis, with Mariano Rajoy, because the budget, which was already limited, was cut by 40%. Headquarters buildings had to be sold to pay for ordinary expenses. To give you an idea, France’s transfer to the Alliance Française is 350 million euros, Germany’s transfer to the Goethe is 300 million. We have an overall budget of just over 140 million, and the transfer from the State is half of that, about 70 million. The rest is self-financing, with courses, certificates, enrolments….
But this is not the situation now….
Little by little we are making a comeback and this year we have been fortunate with the European funds that have allowed us to sustain the whole process of technological transformation and to set up the great Global Observatory of Spanish in the World, in San Millán de la Cogolla.
What is the latest centre you have opened?
Dakar. The demography in Latin American countries is halting and what is going to multiply by 30 is that of sub-Saharan Africa. That’s where we have to be present, to facilitate knowledge of the two shores, which has to be something more than a dynamic of pateras. That is why we decided to open a centre in Dakar, another in Ivory Coast and we are working on the possibility of developing in sub-Saharan Africa. After that, we have to make Spanish not only the language of Mario Vargas Llosa, but also a language where science and technology are made.
And how?
In that sense, we have opened a centre in Los Angeles because the US is now the second country in terms of native Spanish speakers, and that’s where Hollywood and technology companies are. And the third centre we have opened is in Seoul. It has been approved, the building is ready, and it is possible that it will start its activities at the beginning of next year.
And then?
One of the tasks that will be discussed at the congress is the reality of Spanish as a heritage language, both in the USA and in Europe.
What about that?
According to our studies, in Europe there are already the same number of speakers of Spanish outside the peninsula as inside the peninsula. Yes, because there are many Latin American emigrants, and Spanish families who emigrated in the 1960s and have kept the Spanish language alive. If there are almost 100 million Spanish speakers in Europe, half of them are abroad. We need to make special programmes for Spanish as a language of adherence, to see how it can be maintained from parents to children or from grandparents to children. In Trump’s time, and maybe we are going back to that, there was an attempt to shame Spanish as a language of the poor, so that children would give up speaking it in schools. The important things were spoken in English. All this impoverishes coexistence.
How many Cervantes are there in the world?
They all come to Barcelona. There are now almost 70 centres around the world. What happens is that our presence in numbers is more accurate if we say that we are in 102 cities around the world in 54 countries, because there are centres as such, but then they have extensions and work with agreements with universities or institutions in other places.
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