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José Carlos de Santiago

Those who ran out of breath / what’s up ?, said a song by Los Orishas long before Barack Obama wrote the first message on twitter just after the Air Force One landed in Havana. It was a historic three-day visit to Cuba and the first one of a US president in eighty-eight years.
On the other Island of Enchantment was taking place, with success, the VII International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE, acronym). The event had the presence of the king and queen of Spain and the principle of creativity in our language.
Don Felipe, with full wisdom, stressed in his opening speech that it is the first time a pan-Hispanic Congress "is held in a country so closely linked to the whole of the United States, and will devote special attention to the dialogue of the languages.”
Obama had written, in perfect Spanish, on his twitter account: "What’s the ball, Cuba (what’s up, Cuba)?” The BBC devoted an audiovisual to him on the streets of Havana. This expression even appears on an Urban Dictionary on the Internet. And it was maybe the ABC who most clearly clarified what this expression means: How are you, Cuba?
Few explained to the audience that it was -pure miscegenation- of a widespread custom in the popular slang. "Qué Bola" (what’s the ball) is like being asked what you are up to, how you are or what’s new.
Those are causalities that empower our language as the second language in international communication, spoken by more than half a billion people in every continent. And that coincides with the tribute paid to Miguel de Cervantes in the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the second volume of Don Quixote.
It is real proof that, in the words of the King of Spain in San Juan "the Spanish, which coexists harmoniously with a multitude of languages and cultural expressions in its territory, contributes to strengthening and guaranteeing the very same global cultural diversity".