New chapter in the dispute between the Cervantes Institute and the RAE over the upcoming Language Congress

Tensions between the Cervantes Institute and the Royal Spanish Academy escalated again this week. The trigger was the choice of Panama as the venue for the next International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE), scheduled for 2028. Luis García Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute, accused his counterpart at the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Machado, of imposing the venue “on his own,” without following the usual coordination procedures between the institutions. According to García Montero, historically it is the Cervantes Institute that proposes the country where the Congress will be held, which is then discussed with the Spanish Language Academies. “It has been this way for 37 years,” he stressed. He also pointed out that the Institute found out because “other academies commented that the director of the RAE had decided on his own that it would be Panama.” Although he stressed that he does not intend to “offend Panama,” he remarked that he is not willing to “allow offenses against a state institution such as the Cervantes Institute, to which the director of the Royal Spanish Academy has accustomed us.” "This unease is part of a series of previous disagreements. In October, a few days before the CILE conference held in Arequipa, Peru, García Montero had harshly questioned the RAE's leadership, stating that the Academy “is in the hands of an expert in running multimillion-dollar businesses from his office.” Those statements prompted a statement from the institution in which it described them as “unfortunate” and “inappropriate.” The relationship between the two organizations has not been repaired since then, and in Arequipa, the announcement of the next venue—which is usually made at the close of the Congress—has been put on hold. The RAE, for its part, rejected the idea that Panama's designation was a unilateral move. Sources at the institution maintain that the venue was agreed “unanimously” by the directors of the 23 academies of the Association of Spanish Language Academies (ASALE), meeting in Arequipa, and that it was not publicly announced at the time because “it was not the best context,” given the climate of tension. The Panamanian Academy intervened to clarify the situation. Its director, Jorge Eduardo Ritter, pointed out that the choice was not Muñoz Machado's but a collective one: “It cannot be seen as a personal decision because it was taken unanimously by the Language Academies during the Congress held this year in Arequipa.” He also expressed his desire for the congress to be organized “in harmony with the Cervantes Institute.” Panama seeks to avoid getting caught up in the conflict: “The objection would be unfair if it is based on the perception of an imposition.” At the same time, the Cervantes Institute issued a statement recalling the Basic Guidelines for the Organization of Language Congresses, signed in 2014, which establish that interested countries must submit an official application to the governments and organizing institutions, which make the decision “according to the circumstances of the moment.” For the organization, learning of the choice without having been consulted violates this framework and breaks with a tradition of collaboration between both parties: "The unilateral choice of Panama without the prior knowledge of the Cervantes Institute violates the good relationship between institutions that has been the general norm for these conferences, founded by the Cervantes Institute in 1997, and joined in 2001 by the RAE and ASALE (Association of Spanish Language Academies). The Cervantes Institute regrets that the RAE, taking advantage of ASALE's presidency, is using the Latin American academies to damage institutional and cultural relations with Panama.“ It also urges the RAE to ”rectify its actions and return to the responsible path of mutual collaboration."