CCS San José

Cultural Centre of Spain in San José

The Cultural Centre of Spain in Costa Rica (CCSCR) was inaugurated in 1992. Its stated goal was to strengthen and promote the culture of Costa Rica, Central America and Spain, and to support the contributions of all parties involved in this sector. The CCSCR is a member of the AECID Network of Cultural Centres, which facilitates the circulation of cultural knowledge and practices throughout IberoAmerica. During its 25-year history, the Centre has evolved through different phases, but at all times has firmly advocated human and cultural rights, viewing this concern as the fundamental basis for its strategic lines of action, projects and activities. Today, the CCSCR is committed to the 2030 Agenda and to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One of its main aims is to foster inclusion and solidarity and to create alliances with vulnerable populations, enabling them to benefit from this cultural connection. The CCSCR has three physical spaces: the historic one, known as “El Farolito”, is an inclusive space which, in collaboration with likeminded organisations, supports the cultural sector and attracts large, critical audiences, devising collaborative activities and projects intended to produce a positive impact on development in Costa Rica. The second space, Plaza Skawak, was inaugurated in 2017, and from its inception has encouraged public participation, expressing this aim in its architectural layout and even in its name (Skawak means “owners of our space” in the Bribri-Cabécar language). The name was chosen after consulting with neighbours and indigenous communities through their community organisations. Among other connotations, Skawak means ownership, the idiosyncrasy of an indigenous people and its world view, which has been endangered for centuries. The design of this Plaza and the underlying concept differ from those of the Centre’s other public spaces; this hybrid, mutable space forms a bridge between the public and the private, where different institutions and groups can coexist; a space for spontaneous interaction and collective encounters; a space for the intuitive, pleasurable, direct interpretation of its potential, untrammelled by convention. In this space, we may expect the unexpected. The Centre’s fundamental goal, to be open to all, has led it to re-imagine and re-direct its work, to function in a different way in this new space, to create a structured basis for creation within its commitment to inclusion and equality. In the outdoor area provided by Plaza Skawak, art and culture are incorporated into the daily life of the city, there is a space for the community and for public participation, where everybody can share, exchange, propose and cooperate with everyone else in building up cultural and social connections. The Centre’s third physical place, Casa Caníbal, is one for experimentation, where the emphasis is placed on freedom of thought and creation. Here, the outcome sought is not so much that of obtaining results; instead, it lies in the experience itself. For example, the Artistic Residencies Programme takes place within Casa Caníbal, focusing on coexistence, creation and exchange, in activities open to international, regional and local creators and researchers. Casa Caníbal expands the offer of residencies and workplaces in the city of San José, supplying economic resources, tools and institutional support, and thus forms part of the city’s infrastructure made available to local artists. These three spaces are all intended to foster participation by a critical public, and focus on enhancing community empowerment, on being present in public issues and on opening up new

1. Plaza Skawak, a community space for public participation, was inaugurated in 2017. 2. The group Saturno Devorando in a season of concerts in the Farolito, in 2016.

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possibilities. In short, taking a different institutional approach. In these spaces, the CCSCR promotes experimentation and mediation, favouring creativity, inclusion and a plurality of ideas and critical thinking, seeking to generate opportunities for individuals and groups to become agents of change. The Centre works to utilise the potential offered by the spaces, relating each one to its users. In so doing, it catalyses processes of reinterpretation and thus influences the collective imagination. The Cultural Centre addresses its goals via three areas of priority: culture as an element of external projection, by presenting contemporary Spanish culture in Costa Rica; cultural cooperation between Costa Rica and Spain, as an exchange of experiences and knowledge among creators in both countries, thus contributing to the participation of cultural agents within the Ibero-American Cultural

Space; and culture as a stimulus to development, by supporting cultural ventures, providing training programmes in the cultural sector, generating spaces for debate and public participation, and enhancing the value of the local intangible heritage. The CCSCR management bases its policies on four strategic lines: external projection and cultural cooperation, seeking to create networks and foster exchange, and involving Spanish cultural actors in the local sector; experimentation in creative processes, from the creation of spaces for research and exchange within a collaborative, multidisciplinary environment; education and training for professionals in this field and strengthening the creative industries of the national economy; and the mediation of contemporary cultural practices, to strengthen ties between creators and the public and to promote critical thinking.

3. The group Do Not in a season of concerts, “In El Farolito”, 2017

4. Movida Canibal, an acoustic experimentation project in the Casa Caníbal studios.

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4 Costa Rica is classed as an ‘advanced cooperation’ country, in which the CCSCR carries out a policy of bilateral coordination in accordance with the New Generation Agreement of Spanish Cooperation. For the last three years, following the strategic direction set out in the Centre’s 2016 Action Plan, it has sought to manage cultural processes through horizontal cooperation among equals, to the benefit of all and with on-going feedback; thus, the Cultural Centre has assumed the role of facilitator of peer relations, working to promote and implement sustainable, solid long-term projects. In working with other agencies and institutions, the Centre always takes into account the priorities of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, ensuring they are incorporated into the projects undertaken, and maintains an ongoing dialogue with its counterparts to foster the exchange of knowledge, research and innovation, through the Sustainable Culture and Development programme. In recent years, the CCSCR has implemented plans for three-way cooperation with agencies such as the UNESCO Regional Office, the EU Delegation in Costa Rica and the Central American Integration System (SICA). The Centre also works to reinforce alliances between organised civil society and public institutions, by promoting ties between the public and private sectors. Other aspects of great importance include the Centre’s ongoing cooperation with vulnerable communities and the continuity of its environmental projects, such as programmes based on art and culture to raise awareness about recycling and the necessary reuse of electronic waste. In short, the CCSCR consists of three spaces, three priority areas, four strategic lines of action and two approaches (in human and cultural rights), but one overall mission: that of cultural cooperation.

All Roads Lead to El Farolito

Carlos Cortés

Writer, journalist and university professor. In 2017, France awarded him the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature. He is a member of the Costa Rican Academy of Language.

It is very difficult to speak dispassionately about the Cultural Centre of Spain in Costa Rica. For 27 years, my intellectual life, and that of my close friends and peers, has been influenced by the Centre’s work in the public space. As too has that of most writers, artists, social scientists, humanists and cultural managers in Costa Rica throughout this period. Like many others, I have considered the Cultural Centre my home, one whose doors and windows are always open. This was brilliantly illustrated by the synecdoche coined in 1992, when the CCSCR was dubbed El Farolito (the little light), from the proximity of its site to one of the old street lamps in San José. This symbolic christening, which reflects the Costa Rican tendency to use the diminutive for what we hold dear, made the Centre something familiar, close, tangible and timeless – and at the same time historical – somewhere we all return at some point, to recharge our original, vital energy. A point of reference, a meeting point. El Farolito – let us be perfectly clear – is not just another institution, it is a milestone in our collective memory. Its existence has changed the lives of thousands of people, those who created art and those who witnessed it, and I am one of their number. However, in this brief review it is not my intention to recreate an individual experience, but to reflect the lasting impact that the Centre has had on the dynamics of artistic and cultural production in Costa Rica, in fruitful interaction between Spanish Cooperation, the independent sector and the State, and in formulating public policies to foster creativity. In 1980, Costa Rica had some of the most important cultural infrastructure and institutions in Central America and the Caribbean, after Cuba. However, the economic crisis slowed its development and growth, and the country struggled to complete major projects such as Plaza de la Cultura and the Melico Salazar theatre and to make them financially sustainable. Film production dwindled and finally disappeared in 1987, after which no new films were made for some 15 years. Public publishing firms, which had until then dominated the market, were on the brink of bankruptcy, and artistic collections were only sustained by private investment. Modern dance became unexpectedly popular with support from decentralised institutions, and it was not by chance that quality theatre was abandoned, as promotors opted for light comedy. Dance music, such as the rhythmic tropical mix “chiquichiqui”, dominated the airwaves and outdoor festivals. In those times there was no real “independent cultural sector”, and it is very likely that we would still be in that situation had it not been for El Farolito. While El Farolito was not the first international cultural centre when it appeared in 1992, it was the first to present an innovative management model that combined a regular, contemporary programme of events with an attitude that was receptive to the initiatives of new trends in artistic creation. At that time, there were very few exhibition spaces available, and even these few were subject to the demands of the cultural environment. There were no strategic guidelines or criteria encouraging them to contribute more substantially to the contemporary debate on artistic and cultural practices. The great merit of the CCSCR, and of its first director, Clara Ballesteros, was to listen. To listen and suggest. To exchange ideas, to sense, to take risks, to defend intuitions; but above all, to listen to a country that in those times, even more than now, would whisper, speaking by signal and circumlocution, shouting its silences and silencing its shouts. That is why the first season of Talks in El Farolito in 1993, the oldest such programme by the CCSCR, which I helped organise, was called “The whispers and the voices; Costa Rican writers face to face with the public”. That first gathering brought together the great names that had forged our literary tradition over

50 years, and those who would soon take their place; in some cases, for the first and only time. Past, present and future were all packed into that crowded room. El Farolito was conceived as a space for multicultural, interdisciplinary and plural dialogue, without prejudices or predetermined responses. As a call to get together, to discuss and overcome controversies that for too long had been neglected by society; to address issues in a spirit of freedom that was reaching us from an equally free Spain, open to modernity without borders. This sense of freedom was the key factor; the implicit acceptance that we could learn from each other; that we could leave behind the imperialist image of the mother country and the sacrosanct “Hispanity”, which people still referred to when I was a student in the dusty halls of the former Costa Rican Institute of Hispanic Culture. A significant aspect of this was the Centre’s geographic location, at one corner of the Escalante barrio, between the University, and its academic population, and the historic parts of San José, as a hint of the still incipient urban regeneration. El Farolito represented the first important change in this neighbourhood, a residential suburb in the 1930s neocolonial style which in the 2010s became the city’s main cultural circuit. The management of the Cultural Centre has focused on three strategic pillars: supporting training and artistic-cultural creation, debating the collective imaginary, i.e. the essence of what we are and who we wish to be, and contributing to a consideration of public policies in a national, regional and global context. The CCSCR has helped us understand ourselves as a society that took a quantum leap towards globalisation in the last few decades of the twentieth century, coinciding with a profound crisis of nation states in Latin America. It helped us gain a perspective on our identity as citizens and as Central Americans, in a region that went from one reality, dominated by the Cold War and the post-war period, to another that was much more fluid, in which national identities opened up to other ways of understanding social coexistence and the challenges of the global agenda. In 1997, Jesús Oyamburu, the director of El Farolito, edited the anthology “Changing Times, Changing Cultures in Costa Rica”, which contained the presentations made at a congress with the same title organized by the CCSCR, the Ministry of Culture, the National University of Costa Rica and the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences. This was the first academic publication to highlight the link between the global economy, public policies, international cooperation and creative industries; one of the contributors, then a young film-maker, wrote: “In the book of the film industry of Costa Rica, barely the first words of the first line have been written”. This verdict seemed unarguable, but if it became renowned, it is because it was later refuted in a 400-page study, The impossible mirror. A century of cinema in Costa Rica, by María Lourdes Cortés (2002), a project that was initiated at the invitation of the CCSCR, and proved that the first motion pictures had been made in Costa Rica in 1914, that the country’s film history was long, discontinuous, fragmentary and random – but real. Since the connection with the past had been lost, the historical perspective that then emerged became an indispensable platform on which to build the future possibility of film making. By 1997, the CCSCR had already made an essential contribution to audio visual production, highlighting its importance as an emerging sector. Five years earlier, a group of filmmakers had attended a workshop with the Catalan screenwriter and producer Lola Salvador; the enthusiasm generated, the generational cohesion and the zeitgeist led to the creation of a permanent workshop and to the

first Costa Rican Film and Video Exhibition, held in November of the same year. In conjunction with the Ministry of Culture, the Centre organised this Exhibition for 18 years. In 2012, it became known as the Costa Rica International Film Festival. La Muestra (The Show), whose original name reveals its unpretentious origins, set out to show what there was, what was being done. It brought together promise and expectations, generations of film-makers who had not made commercial cinema for decades, together with young talents, just beginning their careers; it was the beginning of what was to come. The CCSCR made further essential contributions in the late twentieth century, during the emergence of new sectors such as multicultural musical trends, independent publishing, contemporary visual arts and new technologies. On 7 May 2019, the entire country celebrated the centenary of Walter “Mr. Gavitt ” Ferguson, a living legend of calypso, an Afro-Caribbean music that still retains all its vitality. The international launch of the tribute album Walter Ferguson: 100 Years of Calypso reminded me that the first time I heard his name was in El Farolito. In 2002, the Centre released Babylon, one of Ferguson’s first studio albums, almost 75 years after he started his career as a performer and composer. Recovering this musical heritage, which was under-appreciated until recently, was one of the main goals of the En Clave AfroCaribe project, promoted by Spanish Cooperation in Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. In addition to calypso culture, the CCSCR sought to incorporate into our musical heritage traditions that had until then been marginalised and excluded from the official folklore catalogue, such as the indigenous music of the Guanacaste people. It also worked to promote areas of popular culture, for instance, the bolero rhythms of Ray Tico, the only non-Cuban musician to form part of the filin movement, and Creole swing, along with contemporary forms such as rock and electro acoustic. Since 2000, the Centre has sponsored around twenty volumes of poetry published under the legendary Perro Azul imprint. This was the first publisher to market literature in sectors other than the institutions and the universities; the poetic sensitivity of the 21 st century surfaced with these books, which introduced names that we now consider essential, like Osvaldo Sauma, Luis Chaves, Mauricio Molina and María Montero. In the same decade, and under the initiative of Lidia Blanco, the director of El Farolito from 2001 to 2003, Perro Azul and the CCSCR launched an ambitious eight-volume series of publications, termed Miradas Subjetivas (The Subjective Gaze) on the visual arts, literature, theatre, cinema, music and dance. In 2017, to celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Cultural Centre opened Plaza Skawak, “Owners of our space”, in the Bribri language. This new facility was physically and symbolically integrated into the cultural complex of the Old Customs House. From its inception, El Farolito and the spaces added since then, Casa Caníbal and Plaza Skawak, have fulfilled the ideal of providing a home in which to nurture and create culture, in whatever shape or form, where we can add our own voices to what the Costa Rican writer Eunice Odio called “the great universal ballad”.

HONDURAS Cultural Centre of Spain in Tegucigalpa

Address

Colonia Palmira, 1ª Calle, n° 655, Contiguo al Redondel de los Artesanos, FM 1100, Tegucigalpa

Opened

2007

Web

http://www.ccetegucigalpa.org/