Cervantes bends its “deterioration curve” but cannot meet the strong demand for Spanish

2023-12-04 14:32:09

The Cervantes Institute is beginning to look at the crisis in the rearview mirror. After difficult years of budget cuts, staff cuts and center closures between the 2008 crisis and the pandemic, the institution that ensures the dissemination and study of Spanish overcomes “the deterioration curve, with a good wind”, according to its director, Luis Gracia Montero. It slightly increases its staff and its number of centers and its budget, “but even so we cannot meet all the demand we have.” García Montero said it on the same day that the Cervantes Board of Trustees met under the presidency of the Kings and in which he confirmed that he will continue this term at the head of the institution.

With a budget for this year of 143.2 million euros (43.5% is its own income), Cervantes received a transfer from the State of 80 million last year. Even so, it does not reach the figures of 2009, when the transfer was 90.3 million and the budget suffered a 40 percent cut. The workforce was also reduced, which reached 1,126 people before the crisis, but in 2009 it fell to 937 workers. Now there are 984 employees among the 748 who work in the hundred headquarters distributed in 50 countries around the world and the 236 who do so in Spain.

“We have broken the dynamic of loss and after a paralysis of ten years we have been able to open new centers,” boasted the director of an institution that registered 132,776 enrollments in the last academic year, 12.26% more than the previous academic year, with 118,275. registrations.

The Kings chair the meeting of the Board of Trustees that analyzed the challenges of the Institute, present in 99 cities in 50 countries

With almost 600 million Spanish speakers in the world, the demand for learning our language “is unfathomable,” as the general secretary of the Institute, Carmen Noguera Galilea, also recognized. She highlighted that the digital transformation plan is “the great challenge of the institution” that has significantly increased its presence on the Internet with 12.9 million users on 136 web portals totaling 77 million visits. “Technological transformation is the great challenge, now that the importance of the economic value of Spanish has been recognized,” said the senior official.

After years of hardships and cuts, García Montero recognizes that “we are living in a better time and good winds are blowing.” «In 2018 we had to sell a building in Brussels to the Ethiopian government. “They were very difficult times, but today we are optimistic.” «The curve of the deterioration of the institution has been bent, but even so we have not achieved everything. There is a growing demand that we cannot satisfy now that Spanish is being promoted in the world and citizens have become aware of its importance,” he summarized. He also highlighted that activities aimed at promoting the co-official languages ​​of Spain have increased by 225% in this legislature.

It expects a contribution of 90 million euros from the State for the next budgets. But García Montero highlights that this figure “is very far from the 350 million that Germany contributes to the Goethe Institute and the 300 that the French State contributes to the Alliance Française. The director recalled that the state contribution was 66.3 million in 2018 and that it reached 81 million in 2023.

suck the pot

“We do not want to be a burden on the public treasury, but culture continues to be the poor sister,” said Luis García Montero. «We have a bad habit of discrediting culture, with a right that says that when you invest in culture you are sucking off the boat. And we are very clear that culture is not clientelism,” he added.

There were certain doubts about his future at the head of Cervantes that he himself took it upon himself to dispel. “When the new Government was formed, I spoke with the Foreign Minister and he told me ‘let’s continue’. Therefore, I have felt ratified and I am very happy to continue in this responsibility,” he declared.

He said this shortly before joining the meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Cervantes Institute that the Kings presided over in the Palace of Aranjuez and which was attended by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, his Ministers of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and of Education, Pilar Alegría. , and Culture, Ernest Urtasun. A meeting that is held around October 12 and that was delayed this year to wait for the presidential inauguration.

It was a solemn ceremony in which the King presented the Ñ Prize to the German Hispanist Dieter Ingenschay (1948), former president of the German Association of Hispanists, decorated with the Order of Isabel la Católica for his merits in the dissemination of Spanish culture in Germany. Her main areas of research are postmodern, postcolonial and postdictatorial aspects of Hispanic literatures and gender studies.

After the annual meeting, the Kings planned to offer the traditional lunch to the patrons of the Cervantes Institute, the Spanish-American Diplomatic Corps accredited in Spain and other guests. Among them the writer, academic and winner of the 2023 Cervantes Prize, Luis Mateo Díez.