Spain’s education, culture and sports minister called for the creation of a common cultural market of the Spanish language at the close of the annual meeting of directors of the Instituto Cervantes.
“The consumption of British and American products by Britons and Americans is practically indistinct. We’re still not close to that, (even though) the language — Spanish — has a level of convergence in all its areas (that is) probably superior to that of English,” José Ignacio Wert said at the conference in Merida, Spain.
To the directors of the Institute, the minister said that Spanish is an engine of “intelligent development” and one of the main strengths of the country and of Iberoamerica.
Wert emphasized that Spanish is the world’s second-most-widely used language in terms of number of speakers, in business and among students, and the third-most-used language online.
In his address, Wert pushed for adapting Spanish to the scientific and technological sphere and to the Internet.
The minister gave his support to the idea of the Iberoamericanization of the Instituto Cervantes, as Crown Prince Felipe discussed previously in comments to the institution’s leadership, and he emphasized the importance of promoting the organization in Mexico, “the main niche in the Spanish market,” and in the U.S., where there are some 50 million people who speak it.
