Cervantes University concerned about the situation of Spanish in the US in the face of "hatred of all things Hispanic"

The director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, criticized this Monday the fact that Europe "has humiliated itself and knelt before a millionaire who believes in the law of the mightiest" and said he is "very concerned" about the situation of Spanish in the United States in the face of "hatred toward all things Hispanic." García Montero addressed these issues during a meeting with the media prior to the opening of the annual meeting of directors of the Cervantes Institute at the University of La Laguna (Tenerife), where he considered it "essential" for Spain to "turn its attention" to Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Read also García Montero: “Almudena and I met when our relationship was fading.” Leonor Mayor Ortega In any case, he felt "proud" of the dignity shown by the Spanish government, which "said no to (Donald) Trump" in his demand to buy more weapons, quite the opposite of the feeling he has today, when in Europe "we are a little humiliated after seeing ourselves kneeling before a millionaire on his golf course," he said, referring to yesterday's meeting between Ursula Von der Leyen and the US president regarding the agreement on tariffs. Furthermore, he continued, the Cervantes Institute is concerned about how Trump represents a supremacist idea of identity and has become an enemy of the Spanish language in the United States, spreading "a contemptuous view of Hispanics" that has led to Spanish-speaking girls in school or shoppers in a supermarket being insulted. Read also The Cervantes Institute signs an agreement with the International Association of Hispanists (AIH) for the dissemination of Hispanic studies. Europa Press “A discourse of hate against Hispanics is being generated” in the United States, which García Montero links to the decline in the number of students studying Philology and Spanish, since “the liquidation of humanistic studies” is due to the fact that “culture creates critical awareness.” However, he also noted that, with more than 60 million speakers, Spanish remains strong in the United States and a growing awareness of its strength is emerging, which has been the basis of the agreement between the Cervantes Institute and the Mexican Chamber of Deputies to reaffirm the language's role on the continent. Read also This Friday, the Cervantes Institute laid the "first stone" of its new headquarters in Casablanca. Europa Press But the Cervantes Institute still faces "many challenges," and at its board meeting in La Laguna, awareness will be raised about challenges such as "the lack of budget," which is quite modest compared to that of similar institutions such as the British Council in the United Kingdom and the Goethe Institute in Germany. Fortunately, García Montero continued, more than 40 percent of the Institute's funding is self-funded through tuition, classes, and certificates for Spanish as a foreign language and basic knowledge needed to obtain citizenship. Luis García Montero Ana Jiménez "We're making progress, but we need to ask the government for more investment," because the situation is worsening with the extended general budget, which affects the workforce as there are no country-specific remuneration criteria. With the same salary in Istanbul, Turkey, you can live a wonderful life, but in the United Kingdom, you're "up to your neck in water." And although the accounts "have overwhelmed us," García Montero also expressed pride in Spain's response to the conflict in Gaza, with an "infamous" situation in which, paraphrasing former Foreign Minister Josep Borrell, who was present at the meeting, he stated that "Europe is losing its soul" in the Palestinian Strip.