For the Spanish version of this article, click here.
Javier Galván trained and practised as an architect before joining the Instituto Cervantes – the Spanish government agency charged with promoting Spanish language and culture around the world. He has worked for the Institute for more than 20 years, and is currently head of its Stockholm office. In conversation with BAS editor Clara Riveros, Javier reflects on the liberating, transgressive and subversive role of culture, and the various ways in which art can be expressed.
Clara Riveros: Javier, your work for the Instituto Cervantes has taken you to such diverse places as the Philippines, Algeria, Morocco and now Stockholm. How did you first get involved with it?
JG: In the year 2000 I was in the Philippines writing my doctoral thesis on Hispanic-Filipino architecture. At the same time I was working on a heritage project there for the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture under the direction of Rafael Rodríguez Ponga, at that time head of Cultural Cooperation and Communication. It so happened that he was serving on the Administrative Council of the Instituto Cervantes, and put my name forward for the job of director at the Cervantes Centre in Manila.
CR: You’ve described your stay in the Philippines as a creative time for you, both professionally as an architect, but also developing your new-found skills as a painter and photographer. How then would you describe your subsequent postings to Oran in Algeria, Rabat in Morocco and now Stockholm, and what has it been like living in these different cities?
JG: Yes, in Manila I discovered a side of myself that I did not know existed. I seemed to respond to the chaos and buzz of the city. I was on its wavelength, both physically and emotionally.
Oran meant reconnecting with aspects of myself that had become latent. There was an element of adventure and risk, a touch of latter-day Lawrence of Arabia, helping young people to discover their potential and to see how they were able to attain freedom in both a physical and mental sense. It brought home how culture is an oasis of freedom: it can have a liberating and even subversive role in challenging authority. In Oran people would come up to me and shake hands every time I went out on the streets: it was like being politician campaigning for votes. I felt that the people loved me in a way that I had never seen in any other city. Leaving Madrid and going to around was a delightfully madcap experience.
When I told a friend that I was moving from Algeria to Rabat, he said that it would be like a rest cure by comparison. He wasn’t far off. I had five very comfortable years there, during which I discovered a country that was too close to Spain for me to have properly noticed it before. I was surprised by many aspects of its modernity – a bit like Japan, with its fusion of ancestral tradition and high-speed trains. A city of contrasts.
At the professional level, Rabat’s Cervantes Centre was remarkably energised. Our partnerships with Moroccan institutions and Latin American embassies were very productive. Living in the Maghreb for nine years gave me new insights into our kaleidoscopic Hispanic identity.
I have only been in Stockholm for one year, but for me the overriding impression is of beauty and harmony. It’s all very natural and drama free. Classically Nordic – on a different planet from the other cities I’ve lived in.
CR: These places have all presented different opportunities and challenges: what’s it been like directing cultural programmes there?
JG: I like to say that Stockholm is the Miami of Northern Europe, given its appeal to Ibero (ie Latin) American communities over several decades. When you walk down the street in Stockholm, you always hear Spanish being spoken, with different national accents. We cooperate closely with the embassies of other Spanish-speaking countries, and also Portuguese-speaking. The pan-Hispanic aspect is very clear in Stockholm, and the Cervantes centre is the home of Spanish and all things Hispanic.
Nevertheless, we find it difficult to engage with the Swedish population. The French and the Germans have the same experience. The Swedes have their own ways of learning our languages and accessing our cultures. It would arguably be more useful to have a Cervantes Institute in Abidjan or Johannesburg than in Stockholm. The French and the Germans have changed their modus operandi in Stockholm, and so should we. Different countries need different models of engagement.
In the Philippines and North Africa the Cervantes model works well. The three centres to which I was posted, i.e. Manila, Oran and Rabat, are some of our busiest in the world for language classes, and they play an important role in the cultural and social life of those cities. The staff who work there are well paid by local standards (unlike in Stockholm) and they are proud to work for the Institute.
CR: The Instituto Cervantes aims to encompass the whole range of Spanish and Latin American culture. What kind of contact have you had with Latin American culture and people?
JG: The Instituto Cervantes has a statutory role in promoting the Spanish language and the culture of Spanish-speaking countries. In other words, ‘culture in Spanish’. Promoting Latin American culture is therefore part of our day-to-day work. For example, every year in Stockholm we organise the Festival of Ibero American cultures. In 2015 in Rabat, I organised the first Festival of Latin Cinema, which in 2025 is still going strong, now called the Festival of Cinema in Spanish.
We haven’t quite sorted out our terminology yet for the Americas. I like to use the term Ibero America, but most people who live in those countries prefer to say Latin America. My interest in the names of things is one that I share with the book of Genesis, Bob Dylan and Nietzsche. Shortly after arriving in Stockholm, I enlisted a professor at Stockholm University, Andrés Rivarola, to run a conference on “The Names of America”. You can see it on our YouTube channel.
CR: I’d like to finish by asking who are your favourite Spanish-language authors and artists?
JG: Borges is my favourite 20th century writer in any language. He has it all: a masterly ability to make his writing – both prose and poetry – connect so naturally with his readers; his depth and use of metaphor, drawing on his immense range of cultural reference points; the way he applies his analysis and intuition to deciphering reality. His 1949 collection El Aleph even anticipated the Internet. Poetic and metaphysical elements permeate his work, without losing the knack of all good literature to hold a mirror up the reader. His writing is both exotic and classical. It’s a delight to hear the interviews that he did with Joaquín Soler Serrano on Spanish television in 1976 and 1980. A lovely insight into his humility, simplicity, humanity and wisdom.
We are blessed with so many wonderful writers in our language: the roll call is never ending. I will give you an existentialist reply: among the first books to impress me as a young pre-teenager, I remember marvelling at El bosque animado by Wenceslao Fernández Flórez, and some of the Episodios Nacionales by Galdós. More recently, I have enjoyed reading the work of Juan Villoro, but if I had to single out just one writer of prose and one of poetry, they would be Miguel Delibes and Antonio Machado respectively.
Translation by Robin Wallis
Bulletin of Advanced Spanish 