Friday, December 19, 2014

A Private Individual Takes Down Web Managed by EFE and Instituto Cervantes

12/19/2014

MADRID – Practica español, the web page owned by Agencia Efe and operated under the supervision of the Cervantes Institute, was taken down from the World Wide Web last Monday by a private individual acting on his own initiative.

The incident took place at a time when Agencia Efe was preparing to physically take possession of the 50% ownership share that it acquired at auction by arrangement with creditors of the Fundación de la Lengua Española, a partner in the project.

Agencia EFE reserves the right to undertake all appropriate legal action against the party involved, a business executive from the city of Valladolid who has disregarded the terms agreed on with EFE’s senior management, and utterly wrecked a project into which EFE put ten years of hard work.

The Practica Español web page received visits from over 16,000 cities around the world and could boast of 400,000 single users and more than 1,000,000 page views per month.

Since the web site was withdrawn on Monday, Agencia EFE and the Instituto Cervantes have received a constant stream of complaints from users in different parts of the world, and in particular, from English- and Portuguese-speaking countries where the page has become an invaluable tool for mastering the Spanish language.

Private and official language learning centers, students and teachers of Spanish from all over the world, most of them in the 15-54 age group, were among those who, for professional and personal reasons alike, paid a daily visit to the web site.

Practica Español had also managed to establish a foothold in China as well as central Africa and other corners of the globe where the Spanish language has not had a traditionally strong presence.


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