Instituto Cervantes is an institution that was founded by the Spanish government in 1991 to universally promote the Spanish language, its teaching, study and use, as well as develop the quality and visibility of these, and to spread Spanish and Hispanic-American culture. The central head office of the institution is located in Madrid and in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), birthplace of the writer Miguel de Cervantes.
Instituto Cervantes is present on five continents with more than 75 centers spread out across many different countries and is committed to the improvement of the study, the use and teaching of the Spanish language.
The goals of Instituto Cervantes are:
- To universally promote the Spanish language, its teaching, study and use, as well as develop the quality and visibility of these activities.
- To contribute to the dissemination of the Spanish culture abroad in line with the corresponding entities of the Public Administration.
- Instituto Cervantes will foremost attend to the cultural and linguistic patrimony common to the Spanish-speaking countries and communities.
In order to achieve this goals, Instituto Cervantes committs itself to:
- Organize and promote Spanish language courses.
- Coordinate official Spanish language examinations to obtain the official diplomas issued by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Sciences.
- Develop pathways for the dissemination of Spanish, particularly through social media, for teacher training and for the publication of materials to support Spanish teaching.
- Encourage research on the Spanish language and its teaching, as well as facilitate and assist hispanist and other research centers in their investigations.
- Program cultural activities that cover all the arts in line with Instituto Cervantes' aims.
Our institution is also responsible for:
- Organizing the DELE exams - Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera - (Diploma in Spanish as a Foreign Language), as well as issuing official certificates and diplomas for the participants of our courses.
- Organizing Spanish courses.
- Organizing training courses for teachers.
- Supporting Hispanists in their activities.
- Encouraging cultural activities in collaboration with other organizations.
The work of Instituto Cervantes is directed by representatives from the academic, cultural and literary world within the field of Spanish and Hispanic-America. In New york, the Institute collaborates with museums, galleries, theatres, publishing houses and other cultural institutions, as well as Spanish and Latin-American organizations.