The Cervantes Institute invites visitors to discover the unknown cultural legacy of the Philippines to the Hispanic world

The Cervantes Institute inaugurated on Thursday the exhibition 'Na linia secreto del horizonte. El legado de Filipinas al mundo hispánico: la literatura hispanofilipina' (Na linia secret of the horizon. The legacy of the Philippines to the Hispanic world: Hispanic-Filipino literature), which, through the library collections of the Instituto Cervantes in Manila, reveals many works written by and for the Philippines in Spanish, a valuable collection that the Cervantes now invites visitors to rediscover. The exhibition demonstrates the fundamental conservation work carried out by the library to keep alive a legacy that seemed destined to be forgotten, and illustrates the cultural, political, artistic and religious relations between the two countries.

Comprising a total of 94 books and publications dating back to 1840, this bibliographic cabinet delves into various territories which, although diverse, converge on the horizon line, i.e. the contribution of the Philippines to the Hispanic world.

Luis García Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute, said at the presentation that these "marvellous" collections summarise the entire Hispanic-Philippine literary tradition and highlight the importance that the Hispanic world has had in the culture of that country. They also highlight the brotherly relations established between the Philippine and Hispanic cultures through Mexico, which are important because "culture creates ties that enrich the processes of knowledge and brotherhood". These ties, he insisted, continued after independence (in 1898) throughout the 20th century. And which justify the fact that Manila is "one of the Cervantes Institute centres with the most students and the greatest interest in our work".

Rafael Rodríguez-Ponga, President of the Spanish Association of Pacific Studies (AEEP) and former Secretary General of the Cervantes Institute, also attended the opening, regretting that the Spanish language is "in danger of extinction" in the Philippines; Adrián Elmer Cruz, Consul General and Deputy Head of the Philippine Embassy in Spain; José Rodríguez Rodríguez Rodríguez, Honorary President of the Academy of the Philippine Language, and Francisco Javier Pérez, Secretary General of the Association of Spanish Language Academies (ASALE) were also present.

Javier Galván, Director of Cervantes Manila, and Beatriz Álvarez Tardío (King Juan Carlos University), curator of the exhibition, discussed the contents of the exhibition and the work they both carried out to maintain and catalogue over several years the valuable Filipino collection housed in the Miguel Hernández Library in Manila, a part of which can now be seen at the Institute's headquarters in Madrid.

The bibliographic cabinet brings together grammars, dictionaries, newspapers, Don Quixote translations, stories, guidebooks, novels and poems. It helps to highlight the existence of a Philippine literature written in the Spanish language, nowadays identified as "Hispano-Filipino literature" and still little known. It highlights the literary pieces that the Cervantes Institute in Manila has been working to rescue since its inception (in 1994) through the collection Clásicos hispanofilipinos ("Hispanic-Filipino Classics"), which began in 2009.

The exhibition recalls the work of intellectuals such as José Rizal, the main architect of Philippine independence, or the vindication of his figure by Miguel de Unamuno, and covers many creative works in the Spanish language. Among the most representative pieces, according to the curator, are the story of María Paz Zamora Mascuñana, who wrote a diary of her flight through the city during the battle of Manila between February and March 1945, or the poetry cultivated by authors such as Manuel Bernabé and Benigno del Río, which reflects the hardships suffered by Spanish-Filipino literature and the relevance of the conservation work carried out.

'Na linia secreto del horizonte' reveals, for example, the Japanese seal that allowed the Spanish-Tagalog grammar of the linguist Rosendo Ignacio to be saved from the burning of books by the Japanese occupation army in Manila. Also noteworthy is the book by Adelina Gurrea published by the Institute in its collection 'Los Galeotes'.

Publications from the second half of the 20th century can also be seen, which, despite being more recent, are hardly known; among them, the work of Federico Licsi Espino, a multilingual poet in Spanish, English and Tagalog, whose ignored life trajectory serves as the epitome of this literature.

Among the works awarded the prestigious Enrique Zóbel Literary Prize (which has been awarded every year since 1920 to the best of Philippine literature in Spanish), the 'Prontuario de palabras y frases mal empleadas en Filipinas', a work by translator Manuel de los Reyes, stands out, showing the evolution of Spanish in the Philippines in the face of the onslaught of English. This manual had repercussions in the legal field, as it was used by jurists to correct translations into Spanish, the legal language of the time.

To complete the Hispanic-Philippine studies, the linguistic connections of the Spanish language are also discussed in three aspects: its contribution as a language for linguistic research, the history of Spanish teaching in the Philippines and, finally, the great current vitality of Chabacano (a Creole language resulting from mixing Spanish and several native languages), as shown in the poem by Francis Macansantos which gives the exhibition its title.

The exhibition also traces the journey of the Spanish language around the world, from its arrival in the archipelago via Mexico, its return to Spain in the 19th century with the novels of José Rizal, its decline after independence from Spain (1898) and, in the present day, the survival of Chabacano in the former Spanish colony.

Venue of the exhibition: Instituto Cervantes (c/ Alcalá, 49, Madrid).

It will remain open to the public until June 20.

Submitted by José Antonio Sierra, Hispanismo advisor.