Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish cultural center, will inaugurate on May 8 Instituto Cervantes Intramuros, located at Casa Azul, Plaza San Luis Complex, next to San Agustin Church.
The Intramuros center is the second branch of the Spanish cultural center, whose main office is at Ayala Triangle in Makati City.
The new cultural center is a partnership with Intramuros Administration. It will provide a quality cultural program on a regular basis, with the aim of fostering cultural dialogue and contributing to the reinforcement of the historical heart of Metro Manila as a first-class cultural hub.
Located at Casa Azul, a two-floor replica of a 19th-century Philippine house, Instituto Cervantes Intramuros will have an auditorium, exhibition room, classrooms and a library containing over 30,000 items.
Exhibition room is a 60-square-meter hall which will provide a versatile space for the exhibition of prime materials, artworks and items of general information.
For talks, concerts
The 90-square-meter auditorium has 90 seats. Conferences, talks, concerts, as well as foreign and local films will be programmed on a regular basis. This free platform for culture will be accessible to local audiences, international events, symposia, etc.
The upper floor of the building will host the library of Instituto Cervantes de Manila. Named after a famous Spanish poet of the civil war, Miguel Hernández Library has over 30,000 titles. It ranks number one in the Philippines in number of Spanish and Latin-American materials. It also includes a valuable Filipiniana collection, and a number of new publications in Spanish related to Philippine studies, literature and nonfiction.
Although focused on the cultural offer, Instituto Cervantes Intramuros will also attend to the growing demand of Spanish language classes. The center will make the language classes accessible to Manila students.
As the fastest growing language in the world, Spanish has become a source of professional improvement for Filipinos. Call centers, nurses, doctors, scholars, lawyers, among others, are in need of mastering Spanish, which is very familiar to Filipino speakers.
Instituto Cervantes is a worldwide nonprofit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. It is the largest organization in the world dedicated to promoting the knowledge of Spanish and Latin-American cultures, and the teaching of the Spanish language.
It has centers in 44 countries across five continents.
Top intellectuals and artists like Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, renowned economist Ramón Tamames and movie star Maribel Verdú, have graced Instituto Cervantes de Manila with their presence. —CONTRIBUTED