Speech by President of the Government at inauguration of exhibition at Cervantes Institute to commemorate 30th anniversary of death of Jorge Luis Borges

New York

A very good afternoon to you, ladies and gentlemen.

We are here in New York, an international city par excellence, where the headquarters of the UN is based and which is a melting pot of people, cultures and languages. And, as a Spaniard, I must say that it is source of great pride to observe how Spain has a cultural representation here of the highest level, which is this headquarters of the Cervantes Institute.

The Cervantes Institute, our great foreign cultural brand, has now been operating for 25 years, bedding itself down as a key institution for the international projection of our country. The institute, in addition to language teaching, also offers a wonderful projection of literature, cinema, art and thought centred on our language: Spanish; a language that we share with more than 500 million people in the world and which is now the second most commonly-spoken language in the United States, with 49 million Spanish-speakers.

The importance of Spanish culture in the United States has not come about by chance. There are many and very important ties that unite our two nations: on the one hand, historic ties, due to the incorporation of a great part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain; on the other hand, for demographic reasons, due to the importance of Spanish-speaking immigration, and also, for geographic reasons, due to the United States' proximity to Mexico, Cuba and Central America.

Hence, the United States brings together the diversity of the tongues of the polycentric universe of Spanish and Spain decisively contributes to this unstoppable linguistic and cultural exchange, with the presence of the Cervantes Institute in six cities around the country.

The goal is clear: for Spanish to continue gaining ground in the United States as a language of the future, of opportunities and of culture. There are currently more than 21 million people learning Spanish around the world, and seeing how this figure rises shows that our community increasingly represents a trading partner, a political partner and a leading cultural destination.

I should state that visiting these headquarters in 2016 also has the symbolic value of celebrating the relationship between two languages: Spanish and English. As you are all aware, this year we commemorate two key dates in the history of universal literature that I don't wish to let go by without mentioning: the fourth centenary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, a symbol of the grandeur and universal nature of our language, and the fourth centenary of the death of William Shakespeare, the benchmark par excellence of Anglo-Saxon literature. This coincidence serves to recall the ties between our two cultures, literatures and languages and shows that the United States is the clearest example of Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon co-existence.

Dear friends,

Within the framework of this meeting between the "language of Cervantes" and the "language of Shakespeare", today I have the honour of inaugurating in New York this exhibition entitled "The visual universe of Jorge Luis Borges"; an artistic approach to the literary works of one of the great names of the 20th Century, whom Mario Vargas Llosa defined as "the only contemporary writer equivalent to the great classical writers, such as Quevedo, Góngora or Cervantes himself".

This exhibition on the author of "one of the great literary landmarks of our time", offers us, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his death, a novel vision of the work of Jorge Luis Borges. A legacy brimming with originality that revolutionised literature in the Spanish language, with creations that continue to be re-edited even today, translated and valued, and which in my opinion should continue to be widely read as well. That is why I wish to express our gratitude to María Kodama, the widow of Jorge Luis Borges, who keeps his literary and personal memory alive, and who is here with us today and shared a few beautiful words with us just a moment ago.

I should say, María knows this well, that as some of his poems read, the work of Jorge Luis Borges is inseparably related to Spain and the people of Spain can claim with honour that we acknowledged his greatness by awarding him the highest literary prize, the Cervantes Prize, back in 1979.

That is why I would like to close off my speech by recalling the singular reading of "Don Quixote" that Jorge Luis Borges made when he received this award: "The hero is not Don Quixote; the hero is that Manchego nobleman who, forced to read the matter of Britain, the matter of France, the matter of Rome, wishes to be a champion". For Jorge Luis Borges, as for many of us, the hero is this nobleman who tasks himself with being something that some people occasionally achieve, that of being Don Quixote.

Thank you all very much.