new media
Caffarel presented this week in Mexico the "Encyclopedia of Spanish in the United States," a work that is meant to become the essential reference work for understanding the multiple realities of the Hispanic mosaic in that country
22.11.08 - 10:15 -
Carmen Caffarel in Mexico this week.
The director of Spain's Cervantes Institute, Carmen Caffarel, said on Friday that the media globalization enabled by the new technologies is particularly damaging to the spreading of culture.
"In this whirlwind world, where the news is instantly accessible and is therefore more fragmentary and volatile, culture is the big loser," Caffarel said at one of the events marking the 80th birthday of Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes.
The former head of Radio Television Española said that the eagerness of the media to win high audience ratings for its news programmes leads these companies to displace cultural information in favour of other kinds of content.
"If public channels didn't exist we'd have to invent them," she added in defence of this kind of media outlets that in her opinion "preserve and spread our cultural legacy," being the only ones that can allow themselves the luxury of offering prime-time programmes of that nature.
Caffarel gave as examples of how to spread culture via the new technologies two projects that she launched when she took over as head of the Cervantes Institute: the creation of a web page and a cultural channel on the Internet.
"The Web generates synergies among the 78 centres of the institute" created by Madrid to promote the Spanish language and culture, she said.
Even so, she regretted that the globalization of the news is dominated by the English-speaking world, which means that the Spanish language has less importance on the Internet than it should have according to the extent of its use worldwide.
Caffarel presented this week in Mexico the "Encyclopedia of Spanish in the United States," a work that is meant to become the essential reference work for understanding the multiple realities of the Hispanic mosaic in that country.
The book, prepared by the Cervantes Institute and published by Santillana with a first edition of 10,000 copies, was presented recently at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. as well as in New York and Miami.
