Chief of Defence attends presentation of the book The Geopolitics of Spanish

•  Admiral General López Calderón highlighted the importance of the Spanish language, noting that “the power of a country is also reflected in its language, as has been the case with our language for centuries.”

The Chief of Defence (CHOD), Admiral General Teodoro Esteban López Calderón, today attended the presentation of the book Geopolitics of Spanish at the headquarters of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE).

The event was attended by Santiago Muñoz Machado, Director of the RAE and President of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE); Juan Luis Cebrián, member of the RAE and coordinator of the publication; RAE member Asunción Gómez-Pérez; Sergio Ramírez, member of the Nicaraguan Academy of the Spanish Language, corresponding member of the RAE and Cervantes Prize laureate; the Director of the Higher Centre for National Defence Studies (CESEDEN), Lieutenant General Miguel Ballenilla y García de Gamarra; and the Director of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies(IEEE), Brigadier General Víctor Bados Nieto.

In his address, the Chief of Defence stressed that “culture and language have geopolitical dimensions. Political pre-eminence is also cultural and linguistic pre-eminence. The power of a country is also reflected in its language, and this has been the case with Spanish for centuries.” Admiral General López Calderón also congratulated the RAE and CESEDEN on the publication of the book, the result of joint work between the two institutions.

The Geopolitics of Spanish includes a foreword by His Majesty King Felipe VI, who underlines that Spanish is “not an exclusionary identity, nor incompatible with others, nor at odds with particularism or diversity, because nothing that allows us to express ourselves, communicate, develop thought and artistic expression, and create culture can ever be so.”