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Sergio Ramírez: "Tyrannies can take away your country and believe that they have the power to make you disappear"

2023-03-27T14:00:28.350Z


The Nicaraguan writer attacks the Government of Daniel Ortega at the inauguration in Cádiz of the ninth International Congress of the Spanish Language. Felipe VI proclaims in his speech that "Spanish is a mixed language"


In a city decorated on many balconies with words typical of the Cádiz language, “sieso”, “jartible”, “bastinazo”... with its more relaxed pace of life, which relativises the rush, the voice of the exiled writer Sergio Ramírez, who has had to leave his Nicaragua by the authoritarian government of Daniel Ortega, who has even taken away his nationality, has placed the most serious accent in the speeches at the inauguration this Monday of the ninth International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE), in the Gran Teatro Falla in Cádiz.

The place that a month ago celebrated, as is the tradition, the final of the Carnival groups, the party that laughs at the powerful and bullies, Ramírez has proclaimed: "In Nicaragua we have been fleeing volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes for 2,000 years and tyrants, from the first to grow old in his bed to the last,

that continues to impose silence”.

"It is an old face superimposed on another face of the phantasmagoria."

In a somber tone at times, the author of

Tongolele did not know how to dance

, winner of the Cervantes Prize in 2017, has underlined: "Tyrannies punish the mockery of fiction and they can take away your country, your memory, your past because in the delirium of their capricious arbitrariness they believe they have the power to make you disappear" .

Ramírez, who was a young rebel in the Sandinista Revolution in 1979 and was vice president with Ortega himself, has pointed out: "Literature is the only moral security in society."

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Gibraltar struggles not to lose its plain identity in 'spanglish'

Cádiz is until Thursday the venue for this great triennial event with a language that almost 500 million people in the world have as their mother tongue.

Nearly 280 speakers have come here, including writers, academics of the 23 Spanish languages ​​in the world, philologists... On this occasion the motto is

Spanish Language:

Mestizaje and interculturality

, some words that will surely be repeated in a good part of the ten plenary sessions and the almost fifty panels of the very dense academic program.

Miscegenation, a word that has led King Felipe in his speech to declare “Spanish, from its origins, is a mixed language, and this miscegenation transcends social coexistence, education, and the entire cultural, literary, and artistic world. , infrastructures, architecture, medicine or law”.

An idea in which the writer Soledad Puértolas abounded, "in the mix we recognize ourselves", and the director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE): "Mestizaje was a consequence of coexistence, which gave rise to happier communities."

Don Felipe recalled that this CILE was going to have been held in Arequipa (Peru), but "well-known circumstances advised a change of venue".

The monarch has cited some well-known figures of Spanish: “The second mother tongue in the world, after Mandarin Chinese, and the second language in international communication, second only to English.

There are almost 500 million speakers if the potential users are added”.

For this reason, he has invoked: “If we have that strength, we have the opportunity to make our language increasingly global.

This is Spanish time.

The 21st century must be the century of Spanish”.

The idea of ​​celebrating the CILE was born in 1992, precisely at a conference on the Spanish language in Seville on the occasion of the Universal Exposition of that year.

It was the then President of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo, who proposed the idea and offered his country as the venue for the first one, which was in Zacatecas, in 1997. The first, and only one to date, in Spain was in Valladolid (2001).

King Felipe, during his speech at the International Congress of the Spanish Language. Jorge Zapata (EFE)

The director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, has launched in his words a song to those who suffered in exile, among others, the poet of the Generation of 27 Rafael Alberti, born in the Cadiz town of El Puerto de Santa María, who from Argentina "he longed for the other shore in America, but became aware that a new way of feeling had entered his identity."

García Montero has also warned of the current threat of "hate speech and racism", which is why he concluded with a reference to the local football team, Cádiz, whose motto was: "The fight is not negotiate”.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, and the President of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno, also took part in the act in the Falla.

The writer Elvida Lindo, a columnist for EL PAÍS, where she was born in 1962, has also spoken about this city. "There is no other example of a Spanish and Latin American city, as is the case with Havana."

Likewise, she has highlighted the way of life that is seen in these streets: “Where all drama is transformed over time into comedy.

The trap, the rush, the anxiety, the sanctification of hyperactivity are avoided”.

In this line, the mayor of Cádiz, José María González Santos, has emphasized his countrymen: "We pronounce quickly, we recognize ourselves with Arabic, with the gypsy".

And he has finished with some of those words that can be read on the balconies of the center of Cádiz and that can be heard these days in a city with corners that smell of orange and orange blossom: “Be aliquindoi, [attentive], enjoy the tangai [joking around] ],

Exhibitions, presentations, concerts... for the cultural part

The Cádiz language congress is accompanied by an extensive cultural program with book presentations, exhibitions... and which opens with a

cajoneada

in front of the Falla Theater this Monday at 6:30 p.m.

There will be 64 percussionists who will play the popular instrument that was born in Peru and adopted by flamenco.

An event to which anyone who wants to clap their hands or something else is invited to join.

Next, inside the Falla, the concert entitled

Tempo de luz

, with flamenco artists Carmen Linares, Marina Heredia and Arcángel.


In addition, a special issue of the literary magazine

Granta will be presented

, on the 28th, with several unpublished stories by Peruvian authors;

that day there will also be a concert by guitarist Vicente Amigo at the Falla;

also, a rap workshop, debates on journalism, poetic readings...


On the 29th, the first Map of the Cervantes Institute's translation will be presented, which was featured in EL PAÍS on Sunday.

It is a new tool that allows you to consult the works and authors most translated from Spanish into the 10 main languages ​​of the world from 1950 to the present. 

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Source: elparis

All life articles on 2023-03-27

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