The Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding at the Moncloa Palace to strengthen cultural ties with Türkiye by means of cooperation between the Cervantes Institute and the Yunus Emre Institute.
Within the framework of the high-level meeting being held today between Spain and Türkiye, the minister signed the cooperation agreement between the two institutions to reinforce cooperation, strengthen cultural and scientific ties, undertake joint activities and projects, exchange ideas and support each other in educational and cultural activities to be organised.
Under the agreement signed today, the Cervantes and Yunus Emre Institutes also undertake to encourage reciprocal participation in each other's training programmes, to promote each other's institutions through their institutional media, and to evaluate, on a case-by-case basis, the possibility of jointly participating in high-impact conferences.
Spanish presence
Last January saw the opening of the new extension of the Cervantes Institute in Ankara, located on the Baglica campus of Baskent University and attached to the Cervantes Institute of Istanbul. Since March, Spanish classes, workshops and seminars have been held, and cultural initiatives have been carried out to promote the learning of Spanish and to reinforce the presence of Spanish culture in Türkiye.
This latest inauguration in the capital completes the teaching and cultural activity of the Istanbul centre, which since its inauguration in 2001 has increased the number of annual enrolments to learn Spanish to more than 3,500. Spanish is, in fact, the second foreign language of most interest to Turkish pupils and has established itself as the third language for adults, behind only English and German.
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