French Institute of Madrid
The French Institute of Madrid (French: Institut français de Madrid) is a French institute, dependent on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The institute is part of a national and international network of French cultural centers abroad to promote French culture and language.
Headquarters
The Institute is located at 12, Marquis de la Ensenada Street, near Columbus Square in Madrid. It is located next to the French Consulate.
The building was constructed in 1910. The French Institute of Madrid is part of the network of European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC).
Faculty
Its professors include, among others, Ernest Mérimée and his son Henri, and Marseille writer and literary critic Jean-Pierre Richard, who taught there for nine years in the 1960s.
Mission
Its purpose is to teach the French language, to disseminate French culture and civilization, to train teachers of French and to participate in linguistic and cultural cooperation between France and Spain.
The French Institute of Madrid has classrooms in which courses are given, organizes cultural events and provides the public with a media library containing more than 40,000 French or French-speaking documents. The media library provides free access to the major French daily (and same day) and weekly newspapers as well as the main French political and cultural magazines. Lecture-debates with cultural or political guests are held in the main room of the library.
If this institute allows the members of the very numerous French-speaking community of Madrid to be able to obtain cultural support in their mother tongue, it also makes it possible to promote the diffusion, in particular near the youngest) of the French language and the French culture whatever the support (writings, cinema, theater, etc).
