Ernest Urtasun praises Luis García Montero's magnificent work in Arequipa.

Ernest Urtasun , the Minister of Culture of the Government of Spain, has avoided three consecutive times commenting on the attacks of Luis García Montero against Santiago Muñoz Machado , the directors of the host organizations of the 10th International Congress of the Spanish Language being held in Arequipa.

First evasive: "I'm not going to get into that kind of controversy. We're at the 10th Congress, and I think what everyone who wants us to defend Spanish is hoping for is for this congress to produce ideas and proposals for public policies and cooperation to strengthen Spanish. So, I'm going to stick with this."

Second evasive: "I know that this is the controversy of the day and that you want to see if I speak out or say something... Look, the Congress is very important and I have come here as Minister of Culture, above all, to give it all the possible importance. I am perfectly aware of the controversy that arose before the Congress, but I, today, here, as Minister of Culture, want to show my support for this Congress and the work being done."

Third evasion: "We must make a call to continue defending Spanish in the world . Therefore, when it comes to defending Spanish, you won't find me in controversy, you'll find me working."

Urtasun arrived in Arequipa on Tuesday and on Wednesday gave a speech at the plenary session dedicated to the memory of Mario Vargas Llosa. And this Thursday morning, he met with the Spanish journalists covering Congress, bidding them farewell with a comrade-in-arms remark: "I'm sorry I didn't give you any meat."

Earlier, someone asked Urtasun if, like other ministerial predecessors, he believes the Instituto Cervantes should be administratively dependent on the Ministry of Culture and not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He didn't go into too much detail there, but did say something a little more substantial: "[The Cervantes Institute] is organically dependent on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This has been the case for many years. But we [the Ministry of Culture] are fully involved. You know we participate in the governing bodies of the Instituto Cervantes. The Ministry of Culture is fully involved in all the magnificent work Luis García Montero is doing; we are very satisfied with how it works. In that sense, we are very involved in its operation, and proof of that is everything we do with the Instituto Cervantes."

Urtasun was referring to the cultural embassy that the Spanish government will send to the New York Book Fair through the Ministry and the Institute. The minister linked this initiative to the Trump administration's policy toward the Spanish language: " We are closely monitoring the growth of Spanish in the United States . I want to tell you that those 60 million Spanish speakers in the United States are a movement that, whether the Trump administration likes it or not, is unstoppable. Of course, we have not been pleased at all with the decisions that have been made in recent months, such as removing Spanish, for example, from official government communications. Beyond what the Trump administration decides, the growth of the Spanish language in the United States is unstoppable, and we, through the cultural policy instruments we have at our disposal—the Cervantes Institute and the Ministry of Culture—will continue to support it."

Urtasun declared himself "very satisfied with this edition of the Language Congress" and cited the challenges that remain in defense of the language: "We need, at the international level, Spanish to gain more weight in all academic and scientific publications. We need to increase the presence of Spanish in the use of Artificial Intelligence. We also need to improve everything related to training and the possibilities for learning Spanish through the excellent work carried out by the Cervantes Institute."