Spain to spend EUR 30m celebrating Don Quixote

21 December 2004

MADRID- Spain will spend some USD 40 million to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, the emblematic work of Iberian literature.

Culture Minister Carmen Calvo made the announcement following the first meeting of the commission charged with promoting the anniversary.

She and the executive chairman of the panel, Jose Manuel Blecua, detailed a series of cultural events scheduled for the next few months.

“We want this celebration to have lasting elements and leave no room for the ephemeral,” Blecua said.

Among the planned activities, Calvo highlighted four big exhibitions relating to the work of Miguel de Cervantes, one of them a show in Dallas of tapestries illustrating the novel’s best-known locales.

Others include an exhibition featuring Don Quixote as an image in contemporary art at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the touring exposition “400 años de Don Quijote por el mundo” (400 Years of Don Quixote Throughout the World) and “El Quijote, bigrafia de un libro” (The Quixote, Biography of a Book), which will be on display at Madrid’s Biblioteca Nacional.

Calvo also announced events and commemorations in Latin America, the United States, the Maghreb, Asia and several Arab countries and the international presentation of a special edition of the Quixote by the Academies of the Language created to mark the work’s 400th anniversary.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news