Rabat Celebrates Spanish Language, Culture This Week

Rabat – Rabat is celebrating the sixth edition of the Spanish language week from April 19 to 23, to introduce the public to Spanish culture and literature.

Embassies of Hispanic countries in Morocco and the Cervantes Institute are jointly organizing a series of conferences during the one-week event, according to the shared schedule shared on Facebook on Monday.

The end of the one-week event coincides with the UN Spanish language day which highlights the organization’s cultural diversity and multilingualism.

The celebrations are organized by the embassies of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Spain, Guatemala, Equatorial Guinea, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Venezuela.

The events seek to promote Spanish culture and language, said Peru’s ambassador to Morocco and coordinator of Spanish language week, Arturo Chipoco.

In an interview with Morocco’s Press Agency on Monday, Chipoco invited Moroccan students and researchers sharing an interest in Spanish-speaking countries to attend the Spanish language week.

The Director of Cervantes Institute in Rabat, Jose Maria Martinez said that the events will be held online to facilitate interaction between participants from Morocco and Latin America.

Martinez further noted that the event provides an opportunity to introduce the latest Spanish-written literary works by Moroccan and Latin novelists and authors.

In 2018, Cervantes Institute reported that 1.7 million Moroccans speak Spanish. The statistics come as no surprise given the long colonial and historical relations between Rabat and Madrid.

Moroccans living in Northern provinces continue to be familiar with Spanish due to geographic proximity to Spain and its enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta.

In 2021, Spanish ranked as the fourth most spoken language in the world with a total of 534 million speakers, according to language center Berlitz.

English topped the list as the most spoken language with more than 1.13 billion speakers followed by Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi. Arabic ranked 6th with 274 million speakers.