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We spoke with the project’s lead partner and coordinator, Ilinca Ilian from Romania, and with Antonio Domingo Lilón from the Dominican Republic, head of the Department of Spanish and Ibero-American Studies at the University of Pécs.

We also discussed why literature is important in Silicon Valley, why we should follow John Keats’ advice on negative capability, how Hispanism is able to bring together the former Yugoslav countries, and finally whether the two Hispanists prefer chimney cake or churros.

You are considered a highly respected authority in your field, and there’s a saying that any serious Hispanist must know you personally.

Ilinca: This surprises me; I never thought I was that famous! I’ve never really cared about status. I’m happy when I can work with excellent colleagues in a team for the cause of Hispanism. For now, however, it does not play a central role among the disciplines. Why is that? Perhaps it is due to Spanish isolationism in the early 20th century, or maybe because it was perceived as an exotic space. But we believe that knowledge of the Hispanic world is very important here in the region too, and we constantly strive to raise people’s - and our students’ - awareness of this. We can learn a lot from their experiences, whether by understanding political changes or by discovering the cultural avant-garde.

You said you want to awaken, to convince people of how important this field is. Looking back, what convinced you yourself? As a Central-Eastern European, why did you start learning Spanish?

Ilinca: That’s a very good question! I was a child and teenager during the communist era. Already then, I discovered Latin American literature translated into Romanian. After the anti-communist revolution of the 1990s, Romania became open to new types of influences. I’m from Iași, and when I heard that a new department was opening at the university (Universitatea "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" - ed.) , there was no question that I would apply. I was among the first students. Later I moved to Timișoara, where I studied Central European Studies. That’s how it all began.

You earned your doctorate on Julio Cortázar. Why did you choose him?

Ilinca: Clearly for his humor. He doesn’t want to be the best; he doesn’t claim that his novels are the greatest in the world. I love that kind of ease.

Domingo, you are from the Dominican Republic, you studied international law in Kyiv, and for more than three decades now you have been teaching Spanish at the University of Pécs. How did you end up in Eastern Europe from the Dominican Republic?

Domingo: I came to Hungary in 1988, but I had already known the country since 1982. That was when I met my wife, who was studying Russian and English in Kyiv. Around the time of the regime change, as a young, energetic, freshly graduated international lawyer, I was very interested in the political situation, I was curious. Since my wife is from Somogy County and was teaching at what was then Janus Pannonius University, I came here as well. As Ilinca also mentioned, the situation turned out to be fortunate: after the fall of socialism, Russian was no longer compulsory, and other languages, like Spanish, gained ground. At ELTE in Budapest, the Spanish department had existed since 1967, but at the time it was thought that one would be enough. After the political changes, the opportunity arose for new departments to be founded, and so the Spanish department was established in Pécs in 1991 and in Szeged in 1992.

How did the two of you meet? Did you work on a joint project before CEEPUS?

Ilinca: We met in Timișoara. I had an idea and invited some colleagues from the region to meet and create an association. The meeting took place in 2009, if I recall correctly with only twelve teachers from six universities. We held a small conference, discussed our research, and the next day the idea of founding a network came up. It was there that we first heard about the CEEPUS program from the dean of the Faculty of Letter of Belgrade. We didn’t hesitate; in the following cycle we submitted our application and founded our network together with the University of Pécs, the University of Kragujevac, the University of Szeged, and the University of Belgrade. Since then, there has been no stopping - we set out on the path of conquest (laughs).

 

And indeed, the Red de Hispanistas de Europa Central project started with three countries, but today it involves 25 departments across 11 countries. 

This year the project is celebrating its 15th anniversary. How can such a large network be managed effectively?

Ilinca: We have excellent research projects, and I believe this is the foundation of everything. Student and teacher mobility is just as important, but a research project brings together the best experts in the field—the linguists, the Spanish literature scholars, the Latin Americanists, and so on. Another essential element is contributing to each other’s journals. By this I don’t only mean our Colindancias publication, but also the other journals in the region. In short, we cooperate in everything: we review each other’s writings, we exchange advice. For example, if a Romanian student wants to write their thesis on Mariana Enriquez, I can redirect them to Brno, because I know who the greatest expert on Enriquez is.

Domingo: Besides the many academic projects we work on, the best thing about this network is that we are true friends! We always look out for one another, if we take on a task, we complete it one hundred percent, we help each other, and we would never let anyone down. The network functions in a spirit of friendship, and I believe we are in an exceptional situation.

Ilinca: Coming back to the question of management, let’s not forget how many academic events, conferences, and gatherings the members of the network attend. There have been occasions where a specific book idea emerged during an event like this. Specifically, at a meeting in Szeged, we came up with the idea of writing a book about the reception of Pablo Neruda in the region. Thanks to the cooperation of the network’s members, the book was completed. Tony (Domingo) among others, was a reviewer of an article, and the book was published in Brussels by an important publishing house, Peter Lang (Pablo Neruda en el espejo del socialismo, szerkesztők: Ilinca Ilian és Maja Šabec, 2024, Peter Lang - ed.)

Domingo: Among the events, there are recurring ones, such as the CEEPUS Spring School here in Pécs. This year we celebrated our 15th anniversary, and by now CEEPUS has financed not only the mobility of teachers but also of students. Also, within the framework of CEEPUS, every spring term at the Spanish Department of Masaryk University, an extracurricular course called Central European Hispanism takes place. Over the course of a semester, four sessions per month are held, with lecturers rotating, each presenting their own topic—linguistics, literature, and so on. We are considering cooperating with another university’s department to adapt the same model for the fall term as well. In this way, we would mobilize twice as many teachers per year, that is, eight at a time. We are looking for integrated solutions suitable for activating the network, since fortunately, we really are a lot. Twenty-five departments from eleven countries - that’s a significant number!

Ilinca: The CEEPUS Spring School in Pécs, as well as the Ibero-America Week series of events (Jornadas Iberoamericanas - ed.), which has a 25-year history in Pécs, plays a huge role in keeping our community together and strengthening the ties between students and teachers. The individual departments take part in the projects with varying depth, but a great example of the network’s development is Ibero-America Week: in the beginning, at most five universities participated, but over the years more and more joined - not only teachers, but also students. I believe the charm of the city of Pécs also has something to do with it, because those who experience its atmosphere once want to return. I would also highlight that such an event is always a cross-generational experience: teachers and students of different study levels - BA, MA, PhD - are together, and it is uplifting when we see one of our former students presenting in the role of a lecturer or researcher! At such moments, we feel young again ourselves!

I can imagine how rewarding it must feel to see the results of your work.

Ilinca: The truth is, we learn a great deal from our younger colleagues. 

Domingo: We are fortunate with CEEPUS and Tempus. This year, for example, we applied for 36 students and 9 teachers, and we received it, which is an enormous number in terms of quota. In Pécs, thanks to the Ibero-America Week series and the Spring School, the first week of May is traditionally packed. From every corner of the region - seven universities, from Brno, Ljubljana, Bratislava, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, and Timișoara - 33 students and many teachers arrive in the city at the same time. Fortunately, thanks to Pécs’ conditions, the logistics are easy to manage: we try to provide accommodation for the participants in the dormitory, which is only a few minutes’ walk from the university. We usually have lunch around campus, so in fact the university, the dormitory, and the restaurant can all be reached within ten minutes. Imagine the same thing in Budapest - it would surely be more complicated in such a metropolis.

You mentioned the numbers - so many students are committing to Hispanism. 

Has the number of those wishing to study Spanish increased as a result of the Red de Hispanistas de Europa Central project?

Domingo: Absolutely! The university entry requirements in Hungary are different from those in neighbouring countries. Here, anyone who wants to enter Spanish studies must at least pass an intermediate-level high school graduation exam in Spanish. This is not a requirement in Romania, Croatia, or Serbia. But back to the numbers: I recently asked my colleague in Bucharest how many applied to study Spanish at the University of Bucharest. The answer was staggering: no fewer than 200 students! An incredible figure.

Ilinca: Of course, this is also helped by the fact that Romanian belongs to the Latin language family. But for comparison, in Zagreb, which is a capital of a country, barely twenty-five students choose this major, while at the university in my hometown, Iași, there are more than a hundred. And the University of Debrecen will launch its Spanish department next year, which is also fantastic.

Domingo: In Hungary, the atmosphere is more familial, the student numbers are not outstanding compared to Poland or Romania. It is possible that the requirement of prior language knowledge as a prerequisite explains this.

In this fast-changing, technology-focused world, we may feel that the humanities are being pushed into the background. What can we do with the humanities?

Domingo: The humanities need no defending - humanities graduates adapt almost anywhere. Let me give you some personal examples. One of my students became a successful businessman; now he is spending a sabbatical year in Bali with his wife and children, and he has grown so fond of the island that he may extend the stay. Then there is András Beck, Hungarian ambassador to Lima, our former student, or Loránd Endreffy, Hungarian ambassador to Nigeria - also our former student. Then there is Edit Ditz, a successful entrepreneur and producer, who happens to be Péter Geszti’s wife. She, too, studied at the Spanish department in Pécs, just like all the high school Spanish teachers in the city. More than once, it has happened that I taught the mother or father of one of my current students, so by now I’m their “grandfather” (laughs)!

Ilinca: In Silicon Valley they like to hire people who studied literature. Through literature we become more attentive to nuances, we don’t rush our answers. The English poet John Keats formulated the concept of negative capability, which is reached, he said (and I quote) “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. So, it is the ability to exist among assumptions and ideas without immediately striving for absolute knowledge. And this is something we need again today, because students of literature are increasingly drawn to pragmatism, making quick decisions. We must teach them to be patient, to examine reality from multiple perspectives, and to discover that the world is far more than what consumer society allows us to see.

Domingo: Here I have my Bible, a thin little book I read from every day. It’s the volume The Usefulness of the Useless by the Italian writer Nuccio Ordine, which firmly states that in today’s economically and business-focused world, we must indeed deal with the humanities. It’s truly a fantastic book - I’ve read it countless times already - and it should belong on every politician’s bookshelf!

The Red de Hispanistas de Europa Central researches the cultural, linguistic, literary, and other connections between Central and Eastern Europe and the Hispanic world, meaning Spain and Latin America. What are the biggest similarities and differences?

Ilinca: The greatest similarity is that both worlds are on the periphery. In earlier centuries this fact caused many cultural complexes. But in today’s globalized world, we’ve realized that there are advantages to not belonging to the declared centers: we can create alternatives in our own way. Latin America and Spain have multicultural roots going back a long time, while Western European countries are only now becoming familiar with this phenomenon.

Domingo: From the perspective of the so-called “centers,” however, it is extremely interesting what we are doing here on the periphery. In England, France, and the USA, numerous Hispanic departments operate with enormous libraries. The largest Latin American library in Europe is not in Spain, but in Germany, in Berlin. In the 1970s, historians in the Eastern Bloc developed the view that those on the periphery understand each other better. We are also on the periphery, as is Latin America, so for Hungarians, Poles, or Czechs, it is easier to relate to the political processes and changes that also characterize Latin America. A French or an English person sees these from a shelf higher up and finds it harder to connect.

Ilinca: The cultural bridges built between the two peripheries contradict all the usual rules. Normally such connections are built through the centres, but during the Cold War, the former socialist bloc and Latin America established direct connections. Not only with Cuba, but also with Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. From Chile, for example, after Augusto Pinochet’s military coup in 1973, many came to Eastern Europe. The huge number of translation of Latin America literary works into Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian or Polish in the seventies and eighties is further proof of the cultural ties between the two worlds.

And what are the biggest differences?

Ilinca: Predictability, democracy, and a stable society. In many Latin American countries, violence continues to rage.

Domingo: One more point on the periphery: there are 138 Latin American students studying at the University of Pécs through the Stipendium Hungaricum scholarship, the Diaspora Higher Education Scholarship Program, or self-financed. For them, Hungary is no longer a periphery. For them, Hungary means the European Union.

 

The journal Colindancias was created as a result of the Red de Hispanistas de Europa Central project, and browsing through the list of authors, alongside Central and Eastern European names I also discovered genuine Spanish names. 

What is the significance of the fact that now Spanish native researchers and authors are publishing in a Central European journal on Hispanism?

Ilinca: The actual goal of the journal was to make our researchers and authors known in the Spanish-speaking world and to invite them to this platform to contribute to our research. We have succeeded: today, more Spanish native authors publish in the journal than Central Europeans.

Domingo: And the Spaniards discovered us - how excellent the Hispanists of Central and Eastern Europe are! We knew about them, but they did not know about us.

What does the CEEPUS Award mean to you? 

Ilinca: A huge surprise, a great honor! Hispanic studies cannot compete with trendy topics such as sustainability, nanotechnology, or climate change, so we were really surprised and moved that with this gesture they recognized the importance of our work.

What are your future plans?

Ilinca: We would like to continue our work!

Domingo: But we also have a big dream. A joint degree program! This is our dream, though it’s very hard to bring under one roof.

Ilinca: But we also have a big dream. A joint degree program! This is our dream, though it’s very hard to bring under one roof.

What are you most proud of from the 15 years of the project?

Ilinca: The friendships.. 

Domingo: The friendship and loyalty to each other. As I mentioned earlier, we don’t let each other down. If we do something together, everyone gives 100%, because we are friends. Ordine writes about this in his book—friendship is not like a glass you can hold in your hand. Our May event series was opened by the highest-ranking leader of the University of Pécs, the Rector himself, and the Vice-Rector also honored us with his presence. I told everyone how important it was to be there at 11 o’clock, and everyone came. Without exception.

Ilinca: This also reminds me of when, during a seminar, one of our colleagues noticed that our community is different from others: we don’t have envy, we don’t have that brutal, almost unhealthy competitiveness, we don’t want to outdo one another.

Domingo: Exactly. We don’t crave positions, and this way we can support each other both personally and professionally, and only this way can we raise a new generation in the same spirit. In the early 2000s, when we met with Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian colleagues in Pécs, we became friends and said that here we managed to seat the whole of Yugoslavia at one table (laughs). The keyword is friendship. In our network we don’t only deal with science. We pay attention to human relationships, because without them science wouldn’t be worth as much either.

Why would you recommend CEEPUS to your students?

Ilinca: Thanks to CEEPUS, people learn solidarity, and through joint projects they mature into cooperation as adults.

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Which would you choose from the following pairs?

Churros or chimney cake (kürtőskalács)?

Ilinca: Chimney cake
Domingo: Naturally chimney cake - it’s not even comparable.

Madrid vagy Barcelona?

Ilinca: Madrid and Barcelona. Two completely different cities, like two entirely different worlds.

Let me ask differently: Ronaldo or Messi?

Ilinca: Oh, you’d have to ask my daughter Albertina about that - she would say Ronaldo.
Domingo: Really? My daughter would choose Messi.

Football or basketball?

Ilinca: Football
Domingo: Football

Tequila or pálinka?

Ilinca: I’d rather say sangría.
Domingo:  I like both!

Javier Bardem or Benicio del Toro?

Ilinca: Javier Bardem
Domingo: Both. Benicio is Puerto Rican, I’m Dominican - we’re both from the Caribbean!

Penélope Cruz or Salma Hayek?

Ilinca: Penélope Cruz - she’s very special!

Enrique Iglesias or Ricky Martin?

Ilinca: I’ll bow out here (laughs).

Flamenco vagy tangó?

Ilinca: Tango.
Domingo: Tango. 

Last modified: 30-09-2025