A decade later, she helped organize a special exhibition of exquisite bronze artifacts from the Shanghai Museum in Barcelona — the first of its kind in Spain. "I hoped to create opportunities for more foreigners to experience the charm of Chinese culture firsthand," she says. "I felt honored to curate such a meaningful exhibition."
Beyond introducing Chinese culture to Spain, Gonzalez Puy is also adept at spotting Spanish cultural elements in Chinese society.
Perhaps her most unique endeavor began in 2013 when she unearthed a forgotten gem: the first Chinese translation of Don Quixote by Chinese scholar Lin Shu from a century ago.
What made Lin's translation unique was that he neither spoke nor read Spanish. He learned of Don Quixote's adventures through his assistant. Fascinated by the idealistic knight, Lin produced a wildly creative adaptation, reshaping the plot, transforming Spanish expressions into Chinese idioms, and infusing the text with local flavor.
Gonzalez Puy was determined to rescue this forgotten translation and take it to Spanish readers. She found Alicia Relinque, a renowned Sinologist and professor of classical Chinese literature at the University of Granada, to undertake the meticulous task of translating Lin's Chinese rendering back into Spanish.
The translation was published in 2021. "It's been a double homecoming," Gonzalez Puy said, noting not only the return of Don Quixote to his roots but also the first republication of Lin's text in China since 1934, by the same original publisher.
This project, embodying a dialogue between Chinese and Spanish cultures, captures precisely what Gonzalez Puy believes the Cervantes Institute exists to do.
"The true value of culture lies precisely in this dialogue," she says. "The Cervantes Institute is not a window through which one culture observes another — it is a table at which both sides sit down to talk."
Gonzalez Puy was, in fact, responsible for preparing the establishment of the Cervantes Institute in China.
"I had the honor of directing the initial development of the Cervantes Institute in Beijing from the day it opened on July 14, 2006. Now, returning to the position of director on the occasion of the Beijing Cervantes Institute's 20th anniversary feels like reuniting with a project into which I poured a significant part of my career."
