The Queen of Spain will inaugurate the Cervantes of Dakar and the Annual Meeting of the Institute's Directors in San Sebastián

The Queen of Spain will preside over two important Cervantes Institute activities this December: on 13 December, she will inaugurate the new centre in Dakar (Senegal), the first to be opened in sub-Saharan Africa; and on 20 December, she will open the Annual Meeting of Cervantes Directors to be held in San Sebastián (Guipúzcoa) over three days.

The presence of Doña Letizia at the official ceremony in Dakar (the first inauguration of a Cervantes centre since 2011, when Hamburg, in Germany, was opened) is an endorsement of the Spanish language in the African subcontinent - where almost two million people study it - and support for the Institute's commitment to having a physical presence in this strategic area with great potential for economic growth.

The Queen will be accompanied by the Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta, the Director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, and the Spanish Ambassador to Senegal, Olga Cabarga, as well as Senegalese authorities.

The new centre comes eleven years after the launch (in 2010) of the Aula Cervantes in Dakar, which the Queen visited on 12 December 2017. The Aula, which has acted as a spearhead for the Institute in that country, will continue to operate.

The opening ceremony will feature two experts who will speak on the situation of Spanish in Africa and its prospects for growth, as well as a musical performance. Afterwards, the Queen will tour various parts of the building, which has four classrooms, a library, a multi-purpose room and several offices, and will unveil a plaque.

Directed by Néstor Nongo Nsala, born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and naturalised Spanish, the Dakar Cervantes Centre occupies a two-storey building of 680 square metres on a 1,500-metre plot. These open-air spaces will be able to host cultural, academic and leisure activities.

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, visited the facilities on 9 April, when they were still undergoing renovation work. The centre is located at 125 Cheikh Anta Diop Avenue, very close to the prestigious Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD), which has a Spanish section in the Department of Romance Languages.

In addition to giving Spanish classes to the students enrolled and hosting events that disseminate the culture of Spain and Latin America, the centre will also aim to help the more than three thousand Spanish teachers in Senegal and to collaborate with the African country's education system to strengthen the importance of our language.

On the other hand, the Queen will inaugurate the Annual Meeting of Cervantes Directors on 20 December in San Sebastian, which will take place in the Basque Country for the first time. The meeting of the heads of the institution - both in Spain and in the centres around the world - will last three days, until 22 December.

The opening ceremony will take place at 11:30 a.m. at the Tabakalera international centre for contemporary culture in the capital of Gipuzkoa. It will be an event open to the media, preceded by a press conference (10 a.m.) given by, among others, the director of the Cervantes Institute, the poet and professor Luis García Montero, the Minister of Culture and spokesperson for the Basque Government, Bingen Zuripia, and the Deputy for Culture of the Provincial Council of Guipúzcoa, Harkaitz Millán.

The various working sessions behind closed doors will serve to analyse the situation of the institution in depth and to set out the strategies for the coming years, among which the challenge of digitalisation stands out. There will be thematic sessions, conferences, presentations (of the Canoa Network, of the institutes that promote other languages) and a cultural programme that will include visits to the Chillida-Leku Museum in Hernani and the Basque Culinary Center.

An exceptional guest will be the actress Ángela Molina, who will hand over a personal legacy to Luis García Montero to be deposited in the Caja de las Letras at the Cervantes headquarters in Madrid.

This type of annual session has been organised since 2005 in different Spanish cities, although this is the second time that it has been held in a community with a co-official language. The last working meeting of Cervantes directors was held in the summer of 2019. Last year it was not possible to organise it in person due to the health situation.

Submitted by José Antonio Sierra, Hispanismo advisor.