Luis García Montero

Invitado de Honor

(Granada, 1958) has been the director of the Instituto Cervantes since 2018. He is a professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Granada.

The awards he has received include: Premio Adonáis (1982), Premio Nacional de Literatura (1994), Premio Nacional de la Crítica (2003), Premio del Gremio de Libreros de Madrid (2009), Premio Poetas del Mundo Latino (2010, México), Premio Paralelo 0 (2018, Ecuador), Golden Antelope International Poetry Prize (2021, China) and Premio Montale Fuori di Casa (2023, Italy).

His poetry books include Y ahora ya eres dueño del Puente de Brooklyn (1980), El jardín extranjero (1983), Habitaciones separadas (1980), Completamente viernes (1998), La intimidad de la serpiente (2003), Vista cansada (2008), A puerta cerrada (2017), No puedes ser así. Breve historia del mundo (2021), Un año y tres meses (2022) and Almudena (2024).

In non-fiction, he has published ¿Por qué no es útil la literatura? (1993, in collaboration with Antonio Muñoz Molina), Un lector llamado Federico García Lorca (2016), Las palabras rotas (2019) and La realidad de una esperanza. Galdós, la memoria y la poesía (2020), and critical editions of García Lorca (1992 y 2017), Alberti (1988), Carlos Barral (1997) and Luis Rosales (2005).

He is the author of the novels Impares, fila 13 (written with Felipe Benítez Reyes); Mañana no será lo que Dios quiera (2009), a novelized biography of Ángel González; No me cuentes tu vida (2012) and Someone speaks your name (2014).

He has studied the work of authors such as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Rosalía de Castro, Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, Luis Rosales, Rubén Bonifaz Nuño, Francisco Ayala and José Emilio Pacheco. He also has honorary degrees from the universities of San Agustín and Ricardo Palma (Peru), Pontificia Católica Universidad de Valparaíso (Chile) and Córdoba (Argentina), and is an honorary professor at the University of Mar del Plata (Argentina).

He recently received the Premio Internacional Carlos Fuentes a la Creación Literaria (2024) in the Spanish Language, awarded by the Secretariat of Culture and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Other activities involving the participant:

Writing goodbye
"Cry to Rome", a poem by Federico García Lorca. Published in native languages
Journeys. Mexico: memory of hospitality

Francisco Moreno

Invitado de Honor

Moreno is the Director of the Global Observatory of Spanish (Instituto Cervantes), an Alexander von Humboldt Professor at Heidelberg University, and an honorary professor at the Universidad de Alcalá. He has served as Academic Director of the Instituto Cervantes and directed the Instituto Cervantes centers in São Paulo and Chicago, as well as the Instituto Cervantes at Harvard University and as Executive Director of the Observatory of the Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures in the United States.

He is a full member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language and a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy and the Cuban, Chilean, and Mexican language academies.

In 2003, he received the award for best series of articles in major newspapers from the National Association of Hispanic Publications in the United States, and in 2019, he was awarded the 15th Premio Don Quijote de Periodismo (Premios Internacionales Rey de España).

Raquel Caleya

Invitado de Honor

(Zaragoza, 1978) Raquel has been the Director of Culture at the Instituto Cervantes since 2020, responsible for cultural activities, libraries, and digital culture within the institution.

Linked to the Instituto Cervantes since 2002 as head of Cultural Activities and cultural manager in Paris, she was the deputy director of Culture between 2017 and 2020.

She holds a degree in Hispanic Philology and a Master's in Global Communication, specializing in cultural management and communication, and has worked in public and private projects in different areas: new technologies applied to cultural management, programming, editing, consulting and sponsorship.

As a teacher of Spanish as a Foreign Language, she has spent her career in higher education, such as at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, École Normal Supérieur and SciencesPo.

Carmen Pastor

Invitado de Honor

Holds a PhD in Communication and Multilingual Mediation from Universidad Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, an advanced diploma in Applied Linguistics of Spanish as a Foreign Language from Universidad Antonio de Nebrija in Madrid, and a degree in Hispanic Philology from the Universidad de Valencia. She is also an honorary professor at Universidad Ricardo Palma in Lima, Peru.

She has worked at the Instituto Cervantes since 1994, where she currently serves as Academic Director, having previously held roles as Deputy Academic Director, Head of Studies, and teacher at various centers within the Instituto Cervantes network. Additionally, she is the General Secretary of the International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE), Executive Secretary of the SICELE association (International Certification System of Spanish as a Foreign Language), and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Fifth Centenary of Antonio de Nebrija and the Scientific Council of the Nebrija Observatory of Spanish. She has participated as a speaker in hundreds of teacher training and Spanish dissemination activities in courses and conferences.

She is the director of the annual publication of the Instituto Cervantes, El español en el mundo.Yearbook of the Instituto Cervantes, as well as the editorial coordinator of other works such as Lo uno y lo diverso.La riqueza del idioma español, Demolingüística del español en Alemania, Demolingüística del español en Suiza, Demolingüística del español en Portugal and Demolingüística del español en Rumanía, Bulgaria y Moldavia. She has written several books and articles, including Estudio transcultural del discurso argumentativo, Estudiando en una universidad española, Sicher in mündlicher Kommunikation (coauthor), “La gran extensión de un idioma diverso y homogéneo”, “La Cenicienta de las destrezas: la comprensión oral”, “Sobre el diseño de pruebas orales”, “La evaluación de la comprensión oral en el aula”, “Argumentar entre culturas”, “Sobre leer y ser leído en otras culturas”, and others.