New Cervantes Institute status to give director political punch

New times require new rules, and a new law for the Cervantes Institute - the equivalent of the British Council or the Alliance Française - could be ready within two years' time. For the time being, the incoming director will play a different role from his predecessors, reflecting the Popular Party government's wish to turn the institution into a major flagship of Spanish culture worldwide.

Víctor García de la Concha, the former head of the Spanish Royal Language Academy who is now the Cervantes director, will be ranked on the same level as a secretary of state under the new system, and his role will be much more political and diplomatic than technical. Instead, the day-to-day executive work will be handed over to his secretary general, Rafael Rodríguez-Ponga.

García de la Concha - who accepted the position only after the Peruvian-Spanish Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa turned it down - has already insisted on playing a more institutional role that will make good use of his extensive network of contacts in the Spanish-speaking world. For one thing, this 78-year-old linguist wishes to reinforce the alliance with Latin America, a plan that would require creating infrastructure in every Spanish-speaking country in the world. To that effect, he is planning to incorporate cultural departments into the Cervantes that now answer to the Spanish International Cooperation Agency (AECI).

That move necessitates a legislative change that will be around two years in the making, and also underscores the tug-of-war in which the Culture and Foreign ministries have been engaged for years over control of the Cervantes Institute and its concomitant soft power.

Although so far the foreign department has managed to retain its strong hold on the prized agency, everything indicates that cultural authorities will do their best to wrest at least part of that power from it in the coming months and years.

Created in 1991, the Cervantes Institute is now present in 44 countries and 77 cities. Besides offering Spanish courses and issuing official language certificates, the center also trains teachers, maintains extensive libraries and schedules a significant number of events ranging from film screenings to symposiums.