The Cervantes Institute Introducing Spanish To The World

The Cervantes Institute, which is named after Miguel de Cervantes the author of Don Quixote, is a worldwide non-profit organization founded by the Spanish government in 1991. The Cervantes Institute, a government agency, has the model of the British Council and the German Goethe Institute, and is the largest organization in the world responsible for promoting  Spanish language.

The organization has spread out in 44 countries with 77 centres devoted to Spanish and Hispanic American culture and Spanish Language. The Institute's primary goals are to promote the education, the usage of Spanish language globally as a second language, to create and encourage the methods and activities that would help to increase Spanish language education, and to contribute to improvement of the Spanish and Hispanic American cultures in non-Spanish-speaking countries.

It designs Spanish by offering such courses: general and special including business and conversation classes or online courses. Spanish classes for children also take place in their programme. It offers the Diplomas of Spanish as Foreign Language (DELE) examinations on behalf of the Spanish Ministry of Education. The University of Salamanca and Cervantes Institute are in a cooperation in the development of the examinations and delivering the diplomas.

The Cervantes Institute launched The Virtual Center (Centro Virtual)  in December 1997. It is an online service to distribute Spanish language and Hispanic cultures. It offers resources and services to teachers, students, translators, journalists and other professionals who are interested in Spanish language and culture. The announcements of cultural events (Actos Culturales), discussion forums, each of which focuses on a specific topic, and the language classroom, Aula de Lengua, designed for both teachers and learners of Spanish. And also the institute creates a flexible Spanish learning platform on-line AVE (Aula Virtual de Español)

On December 13, 2004 with the foundation of Teacher Training Center (Centro de Formación de Profesores), the institute helps to improve Spanish teaching as a second language and provides various sources to its members. The Center supports the future teachers of Spanish through its 'Master of Education in Spanish as a Foreign Language', in collaboration with the International University Menéndez Pelayo.

It supports several cultural activities such as sponsors lectures, book presentations, concerts, art exhibitions, The Spain Film Festival and Festival of Flamenco.  A wide range of books, music CDs  and other materials are available in the libraries for its members.

The Institute uses technology for the advancement of its services. The Automatic Translator Service (Portal de las Tecnologías Lingüisticas en España), which is a free service of machine translation sponsored by Telefónica, was launched in 2005. This service has translation of texts and text files, as well as web pages, from Spanish to Catalan, French, Galician, English or Portuguese and vice versa.

Cervantes Institute makes it available to learn Spanish for everyone and works harder for a growing Spanish throughout the world.