Spain launches YouTube reading of 'Don Quixote'

The official guardians of the Spanish language launched Thursday a reading on YouTube of the Spanish masterpiece "Don Quixote de la Mancha" in order to promote the use of the language on the Internet.

Miguel de Cervantes' 17th century novel was divided into 2,149 segments which will each be read out by member of the Royal Spanish Academy and volunteers from around the world on the video-sharing website.

Those who wish to take part in the project can sign up on www.youtube.com/elquijote and one of the segments will be assigned to them to be read in a video which they then post on YouTube.

There is only one condition to participating - that the reading be carried out in Spanish.

"The Spanish language does not occupy the space that it deserves on the Internet," the secretary of the Royal Spanish Academy, Dario Villanueva, said during a presentation of the project.

"We want to denounce that and do something to correct it," he added.

"Don Quixote," the tale of a mad, errant knight and his sidekick, Sancho Panza, is one of the world's most acclaimed literary works and helped to cement Spanish as a world language.

In the original, "Don Quixote" spans 126 chapters and nearly 1,000 pages.

The novel was first published in 1605, with a second part 10 years later.

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