The Cervantes Institute strengthens its action in the US with a center in Los Angeles that will open on December 12

There is already a date for the inauguration of the new center of the Cervantes Institute.

It will be on December 12, in the United States, in a city with unequivocal Spanish origin in its name, Los Angeles.

A space that will become number 65 in the worldwide network of the body that oversees the dissemination and defense of Spanish and its culture, as well as the rest of the State's languages.

It was announced this Tuesday in Madrid by the director of Cervantes, Luis García Montero, minutes before attending the annual meeting of the institution's Board of Trustees, in Aranjuez, chaired by King Felipe and Queen Letizia and with the assistance of the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez.

"The queen will be at the inauguration," said García Montero, from the Los Angeles center, which will be directed by the writer Luis García Martín, known as Luisgé Martín.

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García Montero has recalled that the election of the director of each center is a public call and that among the candidates presented ", for the commission that decides, "he was the one who seemed the most suitable".

The last center opened in Dakar, in December 2021. The next stop will be Seoul (South Korea) in 2023. Between the centers and the extensions, which are smaller venues, the Cervantes is in 92 cities in 45 countries.

In a press conference, García Montero has broken down the budget data of the organization and its cultural and educational activity.

The center of Los Angeles, which joins those of New York, Chicago and the Harvard Observatory on US soil, "is located next to the Hollywood studios" and in an area where there are "12 million native Spanish speakers."

“In addition, it is about taking advantage of Hispanic cinema and music.”

While King Felipe has highlighted in his toast at the Board of Trustees that "in Los Angeles, Spanish is not a foreign language, but its own".

In fact, if the growth of Spanish in the US continues, it is expected that around 2060 it will be the second country in the world in terms of native speakers of this language, behind Mexico.

Another fact: "If Hispanics were separated from the US, they would be the seventh largest economy in the world," added García Montero.

On October 26, Cervantes will present its annual report on the evolution of the language.

García Montero, in the Board of Trustees, has already confirmed that in 2022 the number of people who speak Spanish in the world has grown from 493 to 496 million (6.3% of the population).

If we add to these those who speak it, even if it is not their mother tongue, and study it, the figure reaches 595 million, compared to 591 million last year.

Asked about the situation of the Cervantes in Moscow, García Montero pointed out that its director “was one of the Spanish representatives expelled from Russia”.

“However, we decided not to close and to be at low activity, but that will allow us to be better prepared for when it can continue.

Putin is reprehensible, but we decided to cut him off from our relations with Russia."

He also recalled "the leading role" of the organization in the Strategic Project for the Recovery and Economic Transformation (Perte) of the New Language Economy, a plan for which the Government has provided 1,100 million euros.

Included in this great project is the new Global Spanish Observatory, based in La Rioja, in the so-called Valley of the Language, the cradle of Spanish.

Among its functions: "Analyze the work of Spanish teachers in schools, improve the certification processes of knowledge of the language and the challenge of addressing the demands of Artificial Intelligence with Spanish."

The Observatory will have a budget of 3.9 million, as this newspaper anticipated.

"We have asked for a staff of seven people."

Regarding the Artificial Intelligence project, “3.5 million are expected”.

Precisely about the Cervantes budget, the general secretary of the institution, Carmen Noguero, has spoken: in 2022 it is 161,104,830 euros, of which 134,729,830 are "the usual budget program".

"The Cervantes is financed in 43.3% with its own income (teaching, cultural activity...) and the remaining 56.7% are transfers from the State".

Of those 161 million, 26,375,000 come from European funds, the so-called Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR) and will be spent on the digitization of Cervantes.

On the agreement of the latest budgets of this legislature, reached by the PSOE and Podemos this Tuesday, Noguero has declared that an increase in the transfer of the State of about four million is expected.