Albares celebrates Spanish Day, with Spanish being a “global language” that connects 600 million people

On Wednesday 23 April, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, celebrated Spanish Language Day, a “global language” which, he emphasised, “connects us to 600 million people around the world”. 

Albares, who sent his message on social media, commented that Spanish “is a language of culture, literature, science, cooperation and international relations”. And he recalled that the promotion of Spanish around the world is a priority for the Spanish Government's foreign policy.

The Minister, who on Thursday 24 April will also take part in the traditional reading of Don Quixote held every year at Madrid's Círculo de Bellas Artes, has ensured that this year's Madrid Book Fair will have an Ibero-American Pavilion as a platform for disseminating the Spanish language and literary culture in Spanish. 

Before that date, the Bogotá Book Fair begins in the Colombian capital on 25 April, with Spain as the guest country. This represents a new opportunity for the promotion and dissemination of the Spanish language until the fair closes its doors on 11 May.

Meanwhile, a delegation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation is celebrating UN Spanish Language Day this Wednesday, 23 April, at the UN Headquarters in New York, with the presentation of TeresIA. This is a research project on terminology and artificial intelligence in Spanish and in the co-official languages of Spain.

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During the event, to which the permanent representations of the member countries of the Group of Friends of the Spanish Language were invited, the collaboration of TeresIA with the United Nations terminology database, UNTERM, was made public. This collaboration has been facilitated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation and represents an important step for the project, which specifically focuses on institutional translation and interpreting. 

The Spanish delegation is also celebrating Spanish Language Day and Book Day in New York with a visit to Dos Puentes Elementary School, a dual primary school in Washington Heights that belongs to the International Spanish Academies network (schools of recognised educational quality in the United States and Canada that offer a bilingual education curriculum in English and Spanish). At the Cervantes Institute in New York, as part of its Cervantes Week, the Ministry's delegation is also attending the “Voices of Central America” series, which celebrates the rich cultural and literary heritage of this region.