A new English-language portal on Spanish-language essay is launched

30% of what is published annually in Spain consists of translations. In the U.S. this figure barely reaches 3%. Thus, the chances that an author who writes in Spanish of reaching an English-language reader are minimal. What's more, if the author is not a novelist but rather a scientist or a philosopher, the chances are even lower. In an effort to break through this seemingly impermeable barrier, the Essay & Science portal has been launched, the brainchild of the Cervantes Virtual Library (founded 12 years ago by the University of Alicante) and the Fundacion Santillana 

Essay & Science was launched this morning at the Casa de America in Madrid in the presence of many of the essayists whose work is now translated on the new portal. Historians such as Santos Julia and Jose Alvarez Junco, philologists such as Carlos García Gual and philosophers such as Eugenio Trias, Felix de Azua, Jesus Mosterín, Víctor Gómez Pin, Reyes Mate and Jose Luis Pardo all attended the unveiling of a tool which, as Basilio Baltasar, director the Fundacion Santillana pointed out, highlights that the importance of a language is due not to the mere numbers of those speaking or using it, but also to "its prestige as a language of knowledge."

Baltasar defined Essay & Science as a mix of library, bookstore and advanced seminar that includes a biography of each author, an updated anthology of his work and a sample of his articles from newspapers and magazines. The goal, said Ignacio Polanco, president of PRISA, was to boost the influence in "the English-speaking world" of "our essayists," those who have a clear and lucid view of "our current society and times."

An astonishing catalog

Although already the number of Spanish authors on the new portal is astonishing, those behind the site aim to gradually complete the catalog with more Latin American authors, thus making the portal "a cultural bridge between Europe and the Americas," explained Ignacio Jiménez Raneda, rector of the University of Alicante. Not surprisingly, most users - who download an average 80,000 pages a day from the Cervantes Virtual Library - are from the other side of Atlantic.

This statistic was given by Darío Villanueva, director of the Scientific Council of the library. Villanueva also stressed the need for the site to be true to its name, Essay & Science, by covering both the contributions of social sciences and the so-called hard sciences. And Juan Luis Cebrian, chairman of the Executive Committee of PRISA, seconded the idea. The separation of science and arts, he said, is "the scourge of our culture and our knowledge." Cebrián also said that the pathway followed by a Spanish-language essay will now be completed: it will go from book to the online world and then return as a book, but this time translated into English. There's still a future for paper.