As it gets closer April 23, International Book Day, literature is permeating the cultural agendas of organizations, institutions and social groups. AND One of the main acts of this celebration is the public and continuous reading of the Quijote of Miguel de Cervantes.

Thus, and as has been the tradition since 1996, on April 21, 22 and 23 it will take place at the Circle of Fine Arts, in Madrid, the continued reading of Quijote, which, due to her state of health, the Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi, winner of the 2021 Cervantes Prize, will not be able to inaugurate.

A quixotic proposal

At 1millionbot we want take advantage of the fact that Don Quixote leaves the shelves of bookstores and libraries throughout this week to propose a curious challenge: reading chapter XX from the first part of the great novel, undoubtedly one of the funniest, where the famous "adventure of the fulling mills" takes place.

Thus, a reading may seem like a little new challenge. The case that we invite your reading with the help of dulcineia. THEhe virtual assistant created with the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture and Sports is capable of explaining the meaning of words, expressions and sayings that you don't know, as well as giving you a summary of the proposed chapter or telling you many things about Cervantes, his work, the translations of Don Quixote, the characters in the novel, etc.

The DulcineIA project

DulcineIA is an assistant based on artificial intelligence Developed with the help of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Government of Spain within the framework of its program for the modernization and innovation of the cultural and creative industries through digital and technological projects.

At this time is capable of answering more than 1000 questions about the first installment of Cervantes' great novel. You can clarify the meaning of words (adarga, galley slave, prez, trabuco...), expressions ("a fumo de pajas", "al cabo al cabo", "whose name I don't want to remember"...) and proverbs.

You can also discover who were the people and characters mentioned in the text like Ariosto, Alonso de Ercilla or Amadís. He is capable of explain who wrote it and what it was about La Galatea, Jardín de flores, Espejo de caballerías, the Lazarillo or other books cited in the story and locate where Puerto Lápice, El Toboso, Quintanar, Micomicón, Peña Pobre, the Empire of Trabisonda or other places named in the novel. DulcineIA can locate the different adventures lived by Don Quixote and Sancho.

In addition, offers summaries of the 52 chapters into which the book is divided and answer other questions external to the text itself (about the author, narrator, characters, themes, subgenre, translations...).

The development of DulcineIA led to the collaboration of 1millionbot with the Instituto Cervantes, public institution for the universal promotion of the teaching, study and use of Spanish, as well as the contribution to the diffusion of Hispanic cultures abroad. After the signing of a general action protocol, DulcineIA was presented at the Cervantes Week events organized by Cervantes around April 23 of last year and was disseminated among the students of its headquarters in Beijing and Shanghai.

The smart solution

We are a company from Alicante specialized in the development of conversational chatbots with Artificial Intelligence technologies. We pay special attention to the areas of education and cultural dissemination.