Cádiz, Mar 27 (EFE).- “The 21st century must be the century of Spanish”, King Felipe VI assured when he inaugurated this Monday in Cádiz the IX Congress of the Spanish Language, the most important forum for debate on the language , in which he has ordered to preserve, care for and promote a language that is “one of our great heritage”.
With these words about Spanish, Felipe VI, accompanied by the Queen, opened this afternoon at the Gran Teatro Falla in Cádiz the IX Congress of the Language (CILE) which, under the motto “Spanish language, miscegenation and interculturality”, brings together until next Thursday the 30th to some 300 international experts to analyze the challenges of a language shared by almost 500 million native speakers.
An inaugural session in which the director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), Santiago Muñoz Machado; the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero; the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares; the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno; the mayor of Cádiz, José María González, and the writers Sergio Ramírez, Soledad Puértolas and Elvira Lindo.
“This is the time for Spanish, with all its voices, its twists and nuances, with all its accents, with all its richness and diversity. Let’s not miss the opportunity that History puts before us. The 21st century must be the century of Spanish. Let’s make it possible,” said the monarch.
Felipe VI explained how the language congresses have become a fundamental part of the international promotion policy for the Spanish language and culture and it is the most important event in the Spanish language and also, to a large extent, the place where They have laid the foundations of pan-Hispanic language policy.
The message of affection to Peru
With the power and strength of the language and when a new horizon is opening up for Humanity, “we have the opportunity for our language, in addition to being universal —and perhaps more transcendent now in these times—, to be increasingly global.”
Both Felipe VI and the rest of the participants in the act have had words for Peru, whose city of Arequipa was the initial venue of the congress that had to be moved to Cádiz due to the political and social problems of the Andean country: “Of course we want Peru to host” an upcoming language congress, the king has indicated.
José Manuel Albares also remembered Peru and considered that this congress is a great moment for the visibility of Spanish, the mother tongue for 500 million people who become 600 million if they are non-native speakers, and who make up ” one of the few global languages on the planet.”
A language that is “increasingly a protagonist in diplomacy and international relations”, has indicated Albares, who has said that, above all, Spanish is a language of the future, that “it cannot be left behind and must be placed at the very heart of intelligence artificial”.
The director of the RAE has indicated that this institution and its “sister academies” on the other side of the Atlantic, have received “the most beautiful of inheritances”: caring for and enriching a language and “keep away” those who intend to “seize the people their exclusive rights to the creation and transformation of language”.
A reflection on the language
For his part, the director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, has explained how it is a round trip between Arequipa and Cádiz and has indicated that the Spanish language is a common territory “of the one and the diverse” that It has maintained its unity over the years while respecting the nuances of its millions of speakers.
The mayor of Cádiz, has welcomed the congressmen with words “that count Cádiz”: “Be at the liquindoy, take advantage of the collá and conviá, and enjoy the tangai well so that when it is your turn to guasnajar you can say with calm and pride that this congress has been a bastinazo”.
Meanwhile, the Andalusian president, Juanma Moreno, thanked Andalusia for having been chosen as the setting to reflect on a language that is “an immense mosaic, full of tesserae” of nuances and colors and that is “an inexhaustible repertoire” of “opportunities”. and “future”.
The Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez, Cervantes Prize winner, who has been stripped of his nationality by the government of Daniel Ortega, has spoken about language and exile: “Mine is a language without borders, which no one can take away from me and from which no one can banish me , the language, which is my homeland”, he stressed.
The writer Elvira Lindo has vindicated the richness of Spanish through the “immortal literary heritage of the language” kept by the lullabies, rubbish, proverbs and sayings that are displayed in the houses and streets, in a “resistant orality”. “Not all poetry is written.” EFE
