Queen Letizia presides this Monday in Jerez at the inauguration of the Annual Meeting of the Cervantes Institute

This Monday, Queen Letizia will chair the Annual Meeting of Directors of the Cervantes Institute to be held in Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz), with the participation of almost a hundred center managers and the institution’s management team.

The opening of the Annual Meeting will take place at 12:00 p.m. at the Atalaya Museums in Jerez, where the main events of this first day will be held. Along with the Queen, the president of the Andalusian Government, Juanma Moreno, and the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Eva Granados, will also be present at the event, and the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, and the mayor of Jerez de la Frontera, María José García-Pelayo, will also participate.

Previously, the director of the Cervantes Institute, the mayor of Jerez and the president of the Caballero Bonald Foundation and daughter of the poet, Julia Caballero Ramis, will offer all the information about this Cervantes event at a press conference in the Gardens of the Atalaya Museum.

The meeting agenda includes closed-door work sessions, round tables and conferences that will revolve around issues such as the figure of José Manuel Caballero Bonald -whose centenary of his birth is celebrated in 2026-, the situation of Spanish in different contexts, or the birth of the Constitution in 1812.

In addition to Jerez, there will be activities in two more towns in the province: Rota and Cádiz, which will host the legacy in tribute to the Cádiz writer Fernando Quiñones (Chiclana de la Frontera, 1931 – Cádiz, 1998), at the Casa de Iberoamérica.

As part of the opening program there will be a round table, in which the challenges of the Spanish language in the European Union and international forums, in Africa and in the post-Brexit United Kingdom will be analyzed, by the directors of the Cervantes of Brussels and Casablanca, as well as the person in charge of the London center.

At its conclusion, there will be a musical performance by the artists La Macanita and Vicente Soto ‘Sordera’ with compositions around Caballero Bonald. Flamenco will also be the protagonist of the start of the day with a conference by the dancer Leonor Leal in the auditorium of the Museos de la Atalaya.

KNIGHT BONALD ON HIS CENTENARY

During the three days of work, Cervantes directors will analyze the work carried out by the Institute to promote the Spanish language and culture in Spanish throughout the world. In addition, they will specify the priorities and action plans for the next academic year in the more than 100 cities spread across 56 countries in which the Cervantes Institute is present.

Thus, on Tuesday, July 28, a colloquium will be held around the figure of José Manuel Caballero Bonald (Jerez de la Frontera, 1926 – Madrid, 2021), in which García Montero himself will participate; the director of the Manchester center, Martín López-Vega; and the writer Juan Bonilla. The meeting, moderated by the foundation’s project director, Josefa Parra, will begin at 12:30 p.m. at the Caballero Bonald Foundation.

This 2026, the tribute to the Jerez writer is being celebrated thanks to an extensive program of cultural activities promoted by the foundation, in which the Annual Meeting is one of its axes and which will coincide with the launch of an anthology of the poet, En los celestes mastiles del tiempo.

This same day, at 5:30 p.m. at the foundation’s headquarters, the meeting ‘The AECID-Instituto Cervantes academic missions’ is scheduled with the intervention of the academic director of the Institute, Álvaro García Santa-Cecilia and the director of academic and scientific relations of the AECID, Santiago Herrero.

In the afternoon, the Meeting moves to Rota, where at 7:30 p.m. at the Castillo de Luna, the conference ‘Spanish in the United States’ will take place given by the director of the Global Spanish Observatory, Francisco Moreno, and the director of the Spanish Observatory at Harvard, Francisco Javier Pueyo. Previously, there will be some welcoming words from the city’s mayor, José Javier Ruiz Arana.

CLOSURE AND LEGACY OF FERNANDO QUIÑONES

The following day, Wednesday, July 29, the closing session of the Annual Meeting will be held in the Alcázar of Jerez, at 10:30 a.m. The director of Cervantes, Luis García Montero, and the general secretary of the institution, Carmen Noguero, will present the conclusions of the three days of work.

At this event there will also be an intervention by the mayor of Jerez de la Frontera, María José García-Pelayo, and, by video, by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares.

That same day, at 1 p.m., the conference ‘The Constitution of 1812’ is scheduled to be held at the Casa de Iberoamérica in Cádiz, by the professor of Contemporary History at the University of Cádiz, Alberto Ramos.

Likewise, at 1:30 p.m., the delivery of a legacy to the Caja de las Letras in tribute to the Cádiz writer Fernando Quiñones (Chiclana de la Frontera, 1931 – Cádiz, 1998), a key figure in the dissemination of the New Andalusian Narrative and the Spanish-American boom, will serve as the closing of this Annual Meeting.

The Cervantes Institute has been holding annual meetings since 2005 (except in 2020 due to the pandemic) with the directors of its centers abroad and its entire management team, in which its lines of action for the international promotion of the Spanish language and culture are discussed.

This will be the first time it is held in Jerez. Until now, twelve autonomous communities have hosted these sessions: Andalusia, Catalonia, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Madrid, Cantabria, Extremadura, La Rioja, Galicia, the Basque Country, the Valencian Community, the Principality of Asturias, Catalonia and the Canary Islands.