Noticias
Inauguration of the XV Spanish Language Academies Association Congress
November 27, 2015For Mexico´s cultural memory is always an honor to be the country that called to the formation of the Spanish Language Academies Association in 1951, celebrating the vitality of the language shared for more than 500 million people on four continents.
Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, president of the National Council for Culture and Arts (CONACULTA) said so, representing President Enrique Peña Nieto, at the opening of the XV Spanish Language Academies Association Congress (ASALE) held on Monday November 23 at the Palace of Fine Arts.
At the event, where the II International Pedro Henriquez Ureña Essay Prize was given to Chilean writer Pedro Lastra, also attended: Dario Villanueva, head of the Spanish Language Academies Association; Jaime Labastida, director of the Mexican Academy of Language; Rebeca Grynspan, head of the Ibero-American General Secretariat, and Humberto López Morales, general secretary of ASALE.
Rafael Tovar y de Teresa welcomed the presence of 22 representatives from the academies worldwide, whose growth, he said, is a sign of the strength of the language Cervantes wrote Don Quixote 400 years ago and today lets millions of people communicate, meet, discuss and imagine.
He stated that academies have the task of maintaining the unity of language, humanistic work in the most literal sense of the word, which makes the language a fertile territory where flourishs understanding of our cultures, and at the same time mirror where to look ourselves, instrument of dialogue leading to agreement, to understanding differences and to a responsible analysis of our reality.
Darío Villanueva, president of the Spanish Language Academies Association, said that this congress coincides with the 140 anniversary of the Mexican Academy of Language foundation, fact that initiated the great unity of the language on this continent, by involving the generations in the richness of the language and its foundations, same that become more prodigious, based on everyday reality and the exercise of the word, with each generation.
He recalled that ASALE, came up from the dialogue between academics from Spain and Mexico, who created a code to deal with the customs of cultures and that is why the anniversary of the Mexican Academy of Language is an example of the effort to make the Spanish one of the most important ecumenical languages in the world.
Meanwhile, Jaime Labastida, head of the Mexican Academy of Language, said that Spanish, language in which the people sing, talk and express themselves, is part of an identity heritage that strengthens the language as a universal fact without center or as a multiplicity of centers that give and add all its complexity every day.
Rebeca Grynspan celebrated the opening of this conference and explained that Spanish was the main link of understanding between the Hispanic peoples, showing that language is a collective construction with horizontal nature, where the views of all coexist as different shades of human unity.
The II International Pedro Henriquez Urena Essay Prize was given to writer Pedro Lastra, full member of the Chilean Academy of Language, after the inauguration.
The award-winning thanked the recognition and said that Pedro Henriquez Ureña was the author of the great redemption of culture, as Alfonso Reyes said so in the mid-twentieth century.
"Su sombra tutelar nos sigue acompañando y por ello recibir este premio en México es un gran honor, sobre todo en el marco de este congreso que vela por nuestra lengua y a través de ella por nuestra identidad como pueblos hermanos".
"His protector shadow continues to accompany us and it is a great honor to receive this award in Mexico, especially in the framework of this congress, which safeguards our language and our identity through it as fraternal peoples."
Mexico,Distrito Federal
