“Our language is a heritage of freedom”

Based in La Rioja, it will be a research center that will study and analyze the situation of Spanish in the world

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Jose Manuel Albares presented this Monday at the Cervantes Institute the Global Observatory of Spanish, a research center that studies and analyzes the situation of Spanish in the world and that seeks to promote knowledge and prestige of the language, and which will be based in La Rioja.

“Spanish is a fundamental instrument of our projection in the world, of how we project ourselves and of how other countries perceive us. We feel our language as a heritage of freedom and dreams, of understanding and encounters.“said the minister at the press conference after the first meeting of the Global Observatory of Spanish, chaired by himself.

Albares has announced that in the plenary session it has been decided that the first two studies of the Global Spanish Observatory will be on the study of Spanish in Brazil and Morocco. “Two friendly countries and two strategic partners of Spain“he stressed.

Furthermore, he stated that studies will be promoted on the importance of Spanish in science, technology and diplomacy.

The minister has praised the latest data from the report ‘Spanish in the world 2023’, from the Cervantes yearbook, which indicated that almost 500 million people have Spanish as their mother tongue, which represents 6.2 percent of the world’s population.

“Spanish speakers currently represent a purchasing power of around 9 percent of the world’s GDP and we have around 500 million speakers. These data speak of a rich and diverse language,” he said.

In this regard, he highlighted that the pending issue for Spanish is to have greater digital weight, where it is already, as he said, the third most used language on the Internet and on social networks. “Our potential would be greater if we manage to digitalize a part of the Spanish-speaking countries,” he indicated.

“A key piece in the definition of actions to promote a language is information about the situation of the language in different areas on an international scale. Therefore, it is essential that Let us generate increasingly reliable data on the number of Spanish speakers in the world in the most systematic way possible. “That we know better the real presence of Spanish on the Internet and on social networks,” he stated.

“A LONG STEP IN KNOWLEDGE OF SPANISH”

For his part, the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, explained that the objective of the Observatory is “reinforce the identity of the Spanish-speaker and project the Spanish-speaking language and culture internationally” and especially convert the center into a “reference” for consulting information about the language.

“Working for Spanish is constantly remembering how a majority language respects, collaborates and is enriched by other languages ​​with which it coexists,” he noted.

Montero has indicated that the Observatory responds to the need to have a “meeting point” that helps create a space for dialogue and coordination to “create common strategies and complementary lines of work.”

“The Cervantes Institute is using the base of the Global Observatory to create a network of observatories. A coordinated and aligned network that in terms of topics reaches the knowledge that is being generated,” he stated.

Cervantes already has an observatory at Harvard University and another in Japan, and is working to create another in Africa and another in Latin America and the Caribbean. The agreement will be signed in December within the framework of the Guadalajara International Book Fair. “If other observatories join this Cervantina network and if we all manage to coordinate our actions, we will undoubtedly be taking a long and decisive step in the collective knowledge of the situation of Spanish in the world.“, he commented.

The Global Observatory of Spanish has also had the collaboration of the Government of La Rioja and the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Function.