On April 23, Span­ish-speak­ing em­bassies based in Port-of-Spain, co­or­di­nat­ed by the Span­ish Em­bassy, con­tin­ued their an­nu­al tra­di­tion of cel­e­brat­ing Span­ish Lan­guage Day at NALIS.

The ob­ser­vance com­mem­o­rates the death of Miguel de Cer­vantes, au­thor of Don Quixote de la Man­cha, wide­ly re­gard­ed as the first mod­ern nov­el. Cer­vantes died in 1616, and the date has been adopt­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to ho­n­our his lit­er­ary lega­cy.

Res­i­dent em­bassies in Trinidad and To­ba­go—in­clud­ing Spain, Ar­genti­na, Colom­bia, Chile, Cu­ba, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, Pe­ru, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Venezuela—par­tic­i­pat­ed in the event. The As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States al­so joined, re­flect­ing its mem­ber­ship of sev­er­al Span­ish-speak­ing na­tions.

Span­ish Lan­guage Day is an an­nu­al ob­ser­vance recog­nis­ing one of the six of­fi­cial lan­guages of the Unit­ed Na­tions. It pro­motes mul­ti­lin­gual­ism, cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty and the glob­al sig­nif­i­cance of the Span­ish lan­guage, par­tic­u­lar­ly across the Amer­i­c­as.

Dur­ing the event, em­bassy rep­re­sen­ta­tives pre­sent­ed read­ings from no­table Latin Amer­i­can and Span­ish au­thors, along­side se­lec­tions de­liv­ered by am­bas­sadors. Among the writ­ers fea­tured were Ale­jo Car­pen­tier, Miguel de Cer­vantes and Blan­ca Varela.

The event was at­tend­ed by Com­man­der Don Po­lo of the De­fence Force and Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, Can­dice Ram­saran. Sev­er­al Span­ish-lan­guage en­thu­si­asts were al­so in­vit­ed by am­bas­sadors to read ex­cerpts from Don Quixote.

The cel­e­bra­tion con­clud­ed with a show­case of His­pan­ic cul­ture, fea­tur­ing tra­di­tion­al cui­sine, bev­er­ages and a dis­play of Span­ish-lan­guage lit­er­a­ture.