Cervantes denounces that Trump’s “aggressive attitude” towards Spanish “complicates” the opening of a center in Miami

The director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero has denounced that the ““aggressive attitude” of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, towards the Spanish, “complicates” the institution’s plans to open a center in Miami.

“SYes, it complicates the opening of these types of centers and that is why you have to be cautious. A preparation policy is being carried out with the universities from the center of New York, with the collaboration also from the center of Chicago and we will be able to specify the possibilities in the next year, to see what possibilities there are. The truth is that the attitude of the presidency of the United States with those very aggressive statements that it is making against the European Union complicates things,” García Montero added during a meeting with the media to review the data for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Even so, he has defended that Cervantes is accustomed to this type of “difficulties” and has assured that he will use culture as a tool in an area in which there is confrontation between political institutions.

“Culture is a bridge that sometimes serves to work beneath political confrontations and to create new realities. The Cervantes Institute is very accustomed to this type of difficulties and very accustomed to using culture as an area of ​​twinning when there is a radical confrontation between political institutions,” he noted.

This Tuesday, Cervantes hosts the meeting of its Board of Trustees in Aranjuez, which will be chaired by King Felipe VI and Letizia and attended by both the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Culture, José Manuel Albares and Ernest Urtasun, respectively.

Previously, García Montero presented the results of the course and raised some of the perspectives for the following year. Thus, he has announced that they have a “need” to be present in Canada – “possibly in Toronto” – and in the United States. Although he has mentioned these two countries, the director of the institution has explained that he prefers to wait for This possibility is more “consolidated” and not to advance anything further.

Precisely, the director of Cervantes has assured that Trump maintains his belligerence – and in a “very aggressive” way – against Spanish and its speakers in the United States.

“There are more than 60 million North American citizens of Hispanic origin and more than 40 million who have Spanish as their first language and as their mother tongue.. So Donald Trump’s grievances against the Spanish are not grievances against Spain or Mexico. They are grievances against a very significant part of its population and it is very sad to be attending – as analyzed by the Observatory – to policies that call for ridiculing students from schools who speak Spanish, for example“, he pointed out.

García Montero referred to his last visit to the country, when he met with representatives of the Spanish departments of Harvard University, in Boston (Massachusetts) and Columbia University, in New York, who were “very concerned” about the statements of the president of the United States against Hispanics. Trump has referred to them as “rapists” and accused them of “eating pets.”

Thus, he considers that these statements cause “many parents of Hispanic origin” to try to make their children “forget Spanish” and have English as their only language. “One of the key things that the Cervantes Institute is doing in the United States is to analyze Spanish as a heritage language and see how Spanish can be maintained and promoted in families from first to second generation.“, he stated.