The Instituto Camões and the spread of the language

The Instituto Camões is the Portuguese state body charged with promoting the Portuguese language and culture outside Portugal. It is, in practice, the country’s arm of cultural diplomacy — the Portuguese counterpart of the British British Council, the German Goethe-Institut, the Alliance Française or Spain’s Instituto Cervantes. It takes its name from Luís de Camões, author of Os Lusíadas, whose date of death, 10 June, is Portugal’s national day.

From one institute to another

The idea of a public network for spreading the language is old, but its present shape was reached in stages. In 1976, in the aftermath of the 25 April revolution, the Instituto de Cultura Portuguesa was created, reorganised in 1980 as the Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa (ICALP). The Instituto Camões proper was founded in 1992, under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, inheriting and broadening that mission.

The deepest change came in 2012: the Instituto Camões merged with the Portuguese Institute for Development Support (IPAD) to become Camões — Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua, I.P. (commonly Camões, I.P.). The merger brought two strands of Portugal’s external action under one roof: the promotion of the language and development cooperation, above all with the Portuguese-speaking countries of Africa and Timor-Leste.

A network in the world

The work of Camões rests on a presence in dozens of countries, dovetailed with the diplomatic network. Its main instruments are:

• Lectureships (leitorados) — Portuguese teachers placed in foreign universities for teaching and research;
• Portuguese Language Centres and Portuguese Cultural Centres — bases for teaching, teacher training and cultural programming;
• Chairs (cátedras) — agreements with universities to anchor, over the long term, the study of Portuguese language, culture and history;
• Portuguese Teaching Abroad (EPE) — courses for the children of emigrant communities, so that the home language is not lost between generations.

Certifying the language: the CAPLE exams

Promoting a language also means assessing it and giving formal value to its command. This is the role of the CAPLE exam system (Centre for the Evaluation of Portuguese as a Foreign Language), run by the University of Lisbon, recognised by Camões and aligned with the levels of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR).

Exam	Meaning	CEFR level
CIPLE	Initial Certificate of Portuguese FL	A2
DEPLE	Elementary Diploma	B1
DIPLE	Intermediate Diploma	B2
DAPLE	Advanced Diploma	C1
DUPLE	University Diploma	C2

These diplomas certify Portuguese as a foreign language for academic, professional and, in some cases, citizenship purposes.

The diplomacy of language

Spreading a language is now understood as a form of soft power: a country’s capacity to exert influence through the appeal of its culture rather than by force. A language with international standing in schools, science and the media generates economic value, opens markets and forges lasting affinities. Studies of the economic potential of Portuguese estimate that the language accounts for a significant share of the output of the countries where it is official — a recurring argument for public investment in its promotion.

On this front, Camões coordinates with other initiatives that raise the language’s profile, such as World Portuguese Language Day, marked on 5 May and proclaimed by UNESCO in 2019.

Camões and the CPLP: two levels

Camões should not be confused with the multilateral structures of the Portuguese-speaking world. Camões is a body of the Portuguese state and serves, first and foremost, Portugal’s foreign policy. The joint promotion of the language by the various Portuguese-speaking countries falls to other bodies.

Tensions and debates

The work of Camões is not beyond criticism. Debate turns on whether funding matches the size of the network, on the relative weight given to cooperation against cultural promotion, and on the risk of an overly Lisbon-centred view of the Portuguese-speaking world — one that does not always reflect the demographic weight of Brazil, home to the overwhelming majority of speakers, nor the growth of Portuguese in Africa.

Despite these tensions, Camões remains the chief institutional instrument through which Portugal projects its language in the world — a language that, across all its varieties, ranks among the most widely spoken on the planet.