2023-11-16 12:22:35
“The Board seeks to consolidate the leadership of Castilla y León in the field of teaching Spanish to foreigners, not only in Spain, but worldwide,” said the Vice-Minister of Cultural Action, Mar Sancho, at the inauguration.
The meeting, organized by the Spanish Federation of Associations of Spanish Schools for Foreigners (FEDELE), seeks to promote language tourism in Salamanca, Castilla y León and the rest of the communities.
Sancho has described the profile of the language tourist who opts for linguistic immersion stays as “a responsible, cultural tourist with a level of spending and stay above the average for the Spanish community.”
In total, there are more than 250 registered participants participating in the educational, training and economic activities that began this Wednesday, after the digital edition took place on Monday and Tuesday with more than 350 participants.
More than 650 business meetings have been scheduled between educational centers, agents and international teachers, as detailed by the mayor of Salamanca, Carlos García Carbayo, in the presentation of the event.
This is the fifth time that Salamanca is the official venue for one of the FEDELE events, something that is aligned with the City Council’s objectives to “consolidate and expand the language tourism brand Salamanca, City of Spanish.”
In that sense, Carbayo referred to the opening a little over a year ago of the International Spanish Center of the University of Salamanca, located in the former headquarters of the Bank of Spain in Plaza de los Bandos.
“It is a fact that has been a boost to climb another step in the race to conquer this type of tourism, we want to turn Salamanca into the Cambridge of Spanish and this center will be its visible face,” he indicated.
The City Council’s forecast is that this year Salamanca will have more than 34,000 Spanish students, a visitor profile that leaves an average of 3,600 euros per person, according to its estimates.
Salamanca schools will benefit from the arrival of 3,500 more students through the new platform online so that centers belonging to the Hispanic Association of Universities (HACU) in the USA can carry out certified training in Spanish.
As he usually does in every event related to Spanish, Carbayo has demanded adequate financing for this language industry in the city, according to “his tradition, vocation and merits in the teaching of this language.”
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