Barcelona-born Inmaculada González Puy, 50, is director of Instituto Cervantes in Beijing. One of the foremost Spanish experts on Chinese art and culture, she moved to the country in 1979 to study the Chinese language before working for the Spanish embassy, where she stayed for two decades. In 2006 she became chief of the Spanish cultural centre. She lives with her husband outside the Chinese capital.
My interest in China began in Spain a long time ago. I read stories about China by Pearl S Buck, books on Buddhism as well as those by the Beat generation, such as Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, which were influenced by the east. All of them shaped my childhood.
I then started learning Chinese in Barcelona, where I was born. At that time Chinese was hardly taught in Spain because it seemed so far away but I had Chinese friends and once a week I'd go to their houses and learn from them. Later they taught it at the university and I took it there.
In 1977 I went to Taiwan to study. Two years later I moved to Beijing. My family felt bad about it because I am the only child but my friends thought it was fascinating that I'd be going to China alone and so young. It was not difficult at all in the beginning. I thought it was an adventure – even a privilege – to live here. I was one of the first foreign students who came to study Chinese back then.
I came over here because the People's Republic was just opening up. People were hungry for information. They wanted to know what was happening outside. They wanted get to know foreigners. There was a lot of curiosity. It is not like right now when there's the internet and everybody gets to travel. China had been closed for many years and the dragon was just beginning to wake up. During this time I worked at the Spanish embassy, first as a press attaché and then later for culture. I was there for 20 years.
It was an exciting time because there was so much emergent literature, poetry, applied arts and film. Everything was starting to shake up. It was a privilege to be a witness to that dramatic time.
In 2003 I had to go back to Spain because my father became ill. By chance there was an opening at the Casa Asia cultural centre in Barcelona, which had just opened, and they were looking for people who spoke Asian languages. So I asked for a secondment from the embassy. My post as director of the Instituto Cervantes came about after the Asia-Pacific region, especially China, became a priority for the institute and Spain. The foreign ministry wanted to open the centre right away and I wanted to go back because my father had already died and my Chinese husband and I were ready to return. I took part in the negotiations with the authorities to establish the centre. We had the talks, found a building and opened it in 2006.
It was difficult at the start because in Beijing a lot was already happening. It was a challenge to get noticed. Other cultural institutes had been here for a longer time and were more rooted. It was also a challenge because we had to make Spanish sufficiently popular. Back then there were only a handful of universities that taught the language. It was a long way for us to catch up but in the past years demand for Spanish has experienced vertiginous growth. It is good we found the place where we are right now because a lot of people pass by, see us and get to know us. The number of students has doubled every year. In the relationships among nations, culture has a role to play. It cannot just be trade or economic ties. One cannot separate these from each other. They are of equal importance.
