This collaboration started in 2000 and aims to support projects which promote Spanish culture and the learning of Spanish around the world.
Telefónica is supporting the Spanish Royal Academy in developing its Academic Spanish Portal, which represents a one-stop access point for the Royal Academy's dictionaries. Telefónica is working with the Spanish Royal Academy to develop its Spanish language services effectively in a world which today is dominated by new technologies and immediate communications.
Since 2008, Telefónica has been involved in a massive project to digitalise the resources of Spain's National Library in a cooperation agreement which which will continue until 2012.
The purpose of the project is to make these resources available using the internet and to increase the volume of content in Spanish available online by adding over 25 million pages of various types of works such as: books, prints, maps, manuscripts, newspapers and photographs, which can be accessed free on the National Library's website, www.bne.es, in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica section.
Through this project, the National Library is meeting its commitment to the European Union and contributing to the European Digital Library Project, Europeana, www.europeana.eu, which provides a single internet source for the resources of European cultural institutions.
As part of their cooperation, Telefónica and the National Library have developed the interactive book Don Quixote by converting the 1282 pages of the two volumes of the book into high-quality digital format, including interactive maps, illustrations, books on knights and other content from 50 different editions of Don Quixote and 34 other books from the National Library's collection.