Spanish Ambassador to the Philippines Miguel Utray Delgado on Wednesday, Jan. 25, shared with Vice President Sara Duterte his country’s plan for better coordination in teaching Spanish culture and language in Philippine schools.

The Spanish language used to be a compulsory school subject in the Philippines, a former colony of Spain, but is now only being taught as one of the foreign languages under the Department of Education’s (DepEd) Special Program in Foreign Language (SPFL) in public secondary schools nationwide.

During the envoy’s visit to Duterte, who is also Education chief, he proposed ways on how to strengthen the partnership between the two countries.

“Inimungkahi ni Ambassador Utray ang koordinasyon sa pagitan ng Espanya at Pilipinas sa larangan ng edukasyon, partikular sa pagtuturo ng kultura at wikang Kastila sa mga paaralan sa Pilipinas (Ambassador Utray proposed the coordination between Spain and the Philippines in the field of education, particularly in teaching Spanish culture and language in schools in the Philippines),” the official said in a Facebook post.

She shared photos of her meeting with the Spanish ambassador, who became the fifth envoy to visit her this afternoon after ambassadors from Denmark, Norway, Hungary, and Russia.

Duterte said that she also discussed the Basic Education Plan for 2030, which aims, among others, to strengthen the education sector in the country and improve the K to 12 curriculum to ensure that students who finished the program could find jobs easily.

Meanwhile, the Vice President also posted about the visit of Russian Ambassador Marat Ignatyevich Pavlov, with whom she discussed possible cooperation in energy, education, and agriculture.

The Russian envoy also tackled programs that could improve the Filipino youth’s participation in sports.

“Tayo din ay bukas sa pakikipagtulungan sa (We are also open to work with the) Russian government sa kanilang plano na dalhin ang kanilang (in their plan to bring their) Chess Grandmaster na si Anatoly Karpov upang turuan ang mga interesadong kabataan sa larong (to teach interested youth in the game of) chess,” Duterte wrote in a separate post.

The official also took the opportunity to thank Pavlov for the Russian government’s donation of Sputnik vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic.