From the 18th to the 21st of July, the University of Valencia will host the 37th International Conference for Catalan Teachers, the principal training space for teachers belonging to the University Network of Catalan Studies Abroad (XarxaLlull). More than eighty teachers from twenty-four universities in Europe, the Americas and Asia will participate.

Organised by the Institut Ramon Llull, the conferences are a place for meeting, debate, reflection and sharing projects and teaching experiences, with the end goal of innovating and improving the quality of teaching and consolidating the presence of Catalan abroad.

The opening event will be a dialogue between Maria Josep Escrivà and Núria Cadenes entitled "Look at our hand if you haven’t seen it!" (Writing that makes us visible).

The conferences will include a significant academic and cultural programme. Some notable participants, among others, are Josep Piera, poet, novelist, critic and translator and winner of the Catalan Literary Lifetime Achievement Award 2023; and Josep Maria Ganyet, professor and Communications expert. There will also be a walking tour through Valencia that will go into detail about women, their history and their artistic, scientific and cultural production. The tour, Passeig València, Ciutat de dones (A Walk through Valencia, City of Women) will be given by professor Ana López Navajas, writer Rosa Roig Celda and visual artist Nela (Manola Roig Celda). The conferences will also include music in Valencian by the group Niuss.

The Xarxa Llull is a fundamental tool for reinforcing the stability of Catalan’s presence in international culture and academia. The network includes universities, professors and students from all over the world and provides them with knowledge of Catalan language and culture, creating connections that will create further connections in turn.

Here are some statistics that help understand the scale of XarxaLlull’s work:

• 130 universities around the world offer Catalan Studies, of which 90 receive economic support from the Instititut Ramon Llull.
• 3981 students from 31 countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia have been matriculated in a subject related to Catalan.
• Since 2002, there have been 38 open calls for the selection of Catalan teachers, with more than 414 teaching positions granted.
• From 2003 until today, more than 1,600 students have participated in cultural and linguistic stays that have been carried out in Valencia, Mallorca, Andorra and Catalonia.
• Since 2003, accreditation tests allowing students to show their knowledge of Catalan have been held 38 times in 140 localities in 40 countries around the world. From 2003 to 2023, a total of 22,649 students signed up and 19,597 took the Catalan language evaluation test, of which 80% passed.

The inauguration of the 37th International Conference for Catalan Teachers will be attended by Pere Almeda, director of the Institut Ramon Llull and Carles Padilla Carmona, vice-rector of Internationalisation and Multilingualism at the University of Valencia.