The presence of the economist Ramon Tamames After his intervention in the recent motion of no confidence in the Government, the absence of the Nobel Prize Mario Vargas Llosa after having been the main promoter of the Congress of the Language in Arequipa or the controversy over thea tilde in ‘solo’ are some of the keys that mark the beginning this Monday the International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE).
Cádiz will host from this Monday to March 30 the IX edition of CILE, an event attended by around 300 participants from all over the Hispanic world and which will be inaugurated by King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia.
The opening day will also feature the director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis Garcia Montero; the director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and president of the Association of Spanish Language Academies (Asale), Santiago Munoz Machado, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Jose Manuel Albares.
At this event some 300 congressmen will discuss the reality of Spanish, its past, its present and its future. Tamames will be one of the speakers at a round table entitled ‘The Andean space, native languages and Spanish’. Together with him, the researcher and philologist Marleen Haboud and the Bolivian language academic, Spain Villegas.
His participation coincides with the announcement by the director of the Cervantes Institute of the absence from the Congress of Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the promoters of this academic meeting in his hometown Arequipa.
Therefore, the text to participate in Arequipa that I had prepared will not be read and will be delivered to the Instituto Cervantes on the occasion of a tribute that will organize you on April 11 and 12, under the direction of the writer Sergio Ramirez.
Updated
On Wednesday the RAE will present the update of the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts. In addition to the novelty, this news also represents the inclusion in this dictionary of the norm change of the tilde of ‘only’, which generated some controversy among academics.
Muñoz Machado affirmed that he is open to debating any controversy that arises around the linguistic norms, but “not outside the plenary sessions” because the institution “cannot be discussing at the front door” on these issues and, furthermore, because the debates “wear”.
Prudence
For his part, García Montero called for an exercise in “modesty and prudence” because it has recognized that in recent times there have been frictions between institutions. “What interests us all is that the Congress goes well and that the news is the importance of the cultural event. Nobody owns the language and it is convenient to establish unity frameworks so that the union is maintained. We have to make an effort to be prudent and forget about internal controversies,” said the poet.
The director of Cervantes also referred to the controversy over the accentuation of the adverb ‘solo’. “It is important maintain some rules of the game for the language unit. The accent is a bit funny and perhaps has to do with the personality and character of some people, but we would be wrong to give up that interest in deciding joint rules because in syntax and spelling, even more than in vocabulary, it is very convenient to maintain the unity of Spanish so that processes like the one that has happened with Arabic or with the one that has happened with Portuguese in Brazil do not occurthat being the same language they do not understand each other, because they have been separating,” he warned.
Rap, Drexler and bestsellers
Related news
Cádiz, the second Spanish city to host this congress after Valladolid, host in 2001, will feature, in addition to literary talks, music by Jorge Drexler and rap by the academic program of the RAE.
Among the prominent names that will take part, it is worth mentioning numerous writers, such as Fernando Iwasaki, Carme Riera, Santiago Roncagliolo, Ana Santos Aramburo, Carmen Iglesias, María Dueñas, Héctor Abad Faciolince, Enrique Vila-Matas, Carmen Posadas, Gioconda Belli, Horacio Castellanos Moya , Guillermo Rojo, José Antonio Pascual, Rolando Kattan, Luis Mateo Díaz, Lola Pons, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón or Cristina Gallach.
