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Royal Spanish Academy
Real Academia Española
Arms of the Royal Spanish Academy
Arms of the Royal Spanish Academy
Abbreviation RAE
Formation 1713; 311 years ago (1713)
Founder The Duke of Escalona
Purpose Linguistic prescription and research
Headquarters Madrid, Spain
Region served
Hispanophone regions and populations
Official language
Spanish
Director
Santiago Muñoz Machado
Main organ
Junta de Gobierno
Affiliations Association of Spanish Language Academies


The Royal Spanish Academy (Spanish: Real Academia Española, generally abbreviated as RAE) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with national language academies in 22 other Hispanophone nations through the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language.

The RAE dedicates itself to language planning by applying linguistic prescription aimed at promoting linguistic unity within and between various territories, to ensure a common standard. The proposed language guidelines are shown in a number of works.

Motto

In the awareness, according to the vision of the time that the Spanish language had reached a moment of utmost perfection, the purpose of the Royal Academy was "to establish the voices and words of the Castilian language in their greatest propriety, elegance and purity." . This purpose was represented with an emblem formed by a fiery crucible placed on the fire, with the legend Limpia, fija y da esplendor ("It purifies, it fixes, and it dignifies"). Therefore, the institution was born as an effective work center, as the founders said, "at the service of the honor of the nation."

This vocation for collective utility became the main hallmark of the Spanish Academy, differentiating itself from other academies that had proliferated in the golden centuries and that were conceived as mere occasional literary gatherings.

History

Limpia, Fija y Da Esplendor Detalle Grabado Lema Real Academia Española de la Lengua - AHG
RAE motto from the title page of one of its publications.
Madrid, inauguración del nuevo edificio de la Real Academia Española. Alrededores del edificio a la llegada de SS. MM.
Inauguration of the RAE building in Madrid by Alfonso XIII, 1894
Estatutos rae 1715big
Title page of Fundación y estatútos de la Real Académia Españóla (Foundation and statutes of the Royal Spanish Academy) (1715)

The Royal Spanish Academy was founded in 1713, modeled after the Accademia della Crusca (1582), of Italy, and the Académie Française (1635), of France, with the purpose "to fix the voices and vocabularies of the Spanish language with propriety, elegance, and purity". King Philip V approved its constitution on 3 October 1714, placing it under the Crown's protection.

Its aristocratic founder, Juan Manuel Fernández Pacheco, Duke of Escalona and Marquess of Villena, described its aims as "to assure that Spanish speakers will always be able to read Cervantes" – by exercising a progressive up-to-date maintenance of the formal language.

The RAE began establishing rules for the orthography of Spanish beginning in 1741 with the first edition of the Ortographía (spelled Ortografía from the second edition onwards). The proposals of the Academy became the official norm in Spain by royal decree in 1844, and they were also gradually adopted by the Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas. Several reforms were introduced in the Nuevas Normas de Prosodia y Ortografía (1959, New Norms of Prosody and Orthography). Since the establishment of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language in 1951, the Spanish academy works in close consultation with the other Spanish language academies in its various works and projects. The 1999 Orthography was the first to be edited by the twenty two academies together. The current rules and practical recommendations on spelling are presented in the latest edition of the Ortografía (2010).

The headquarters, opened in 1894, is located at Calle Felipe IV, 4, in the ward of Jerónimos, next to the Museo del Prado. The Center for the Studies of the Royal Spanish Academy, opened in 2007, is located at Calle Serrano 187–189.

Fundamentals

According to Salvador Gutiérrez, an academic numerary of the institution, the Academy does not dictate the rules but studies the language, collects information and presents it. The rules of the language are simply the continued use of expressions, some of which are collected by the Academy. Although he also says that it is important to read and write correctly. Article 1 of the statutes of the Royal Spanish Academy, translated from Spanish, says the following:

The Academy is an institution with legal personality whose main mission is to ensure that the changes experienced by the Spanish language in its constant adaptation to the needs of its speakers do not break the essential unity it maintains throughout the Hispanic world. It must equally ensure that this evolution preserves the characteristic nature of the language, as gradually consolidated over the centuries, as well as establishing and disseminating the criteria for its proper and correct use, and contributing to its splendor.

To achieve these ends, it shall study and promote the study of the history and present of Spanish, it shall disseminate the writings, literary—especially classics—and non-literary, that it deems important for the knowledge of such matters, and will seek to keep alive the memory of those who, in Spain or in the Americas, have cultivated our language with glory.

As a member of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, it shall maintain a special relation with the corresponding and associated academies.

Composition

Biblioteca de la RAE
Partial view of the library at the RAE

Members of the Academy are known as Académicos de número (English: Academic Numerary), chosen from among prestigious people within the arts and sciences, including several Spanish-language authors, known as The Immortals (Spanish: Los Inmortales), similarly to their French Academy counterparts. The numeraries (Spanish: Números) are elected for life by the other academicians. Each academician holds a seat labeled with a letter from the Spanish alphabet, with upper and lower case letters denoting separate seats.

Países con Academia de la Lengua Española
Countries with a Spanish language academy

The Academy has included Latin American members from the time of Rafael María Baralt, although some Spanish-speaking countries have their own academies of the language.

Current members

Seat Member Year
O Pere Gimferrer Torrens 1985
c Víctor García de la Concha 1992
l Emilio Lledó Íñigo 1994
C Luis Goytisolo Gay 1995
L Mario Vargas Llosa 1996
u Antonio Muñoz Molina 1996
V Juan Luis Cebrián Echarri 1997
t Ignacio Bosque Muñoz 1997
ñ Luis María Anson Oliart [es] 1998
I Luis Mateo Díez Rodríguez 2001
N Guillermo Rojo Sánchez [es] 2001
k José Antonio Pascual Rodríguez 2002
E Carmen Iglesias Cano 2002
T Arturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez 2003
G José Manuel Sánchez Ron [es] 2003
j Álvaro Pombo García de los Ríos 2004
o Antonio Fernández Alba [es] 2006
h José Manuel Blecua Perdices [es] 2006
a Pedro García Barreno [es] 2006
S Salvador Gutiérrez Ordóñez [es] 2008
D Darío Villanueva Prieto 2008
m José María Merino Sánchez 2009
g Soledad Puértolas Villanueva 2010
P Inés Fernández-Ordóñez Hernández [es] 2011
Q Pedro Álvarez de Miranda de la Gándara [es] 2011
e Juan Gil Fernández 2011
f José B. Terceiro Lomba [es] 2012
r Santiago Muñoz Machado 2013
b Miguel Sáenz Sagaseta de Ilúrdoz 2013
n Carme Riera Guilera 2013
Z José Luis Gómez García 2014
B Aurora Egido Martínez [es] 2014
F Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón 2016
H Félix de Azúa Comella 2016
U Clara Janés Nadal 2016
s María Paz Battaner Arias 2017
J Carlos García Gual [es] 2019
M Juan Antonio Mayorga Ruano 2019
K José María Bermúdez de Castro Risueño 2022
i Paloma Díaz-Mas 2022
d Dolores Corbella Díaz [es] 2023
q Asunción Gómez Pérez 2023
X Clara Sánchez 2023
A Pedro Cátedra García [es] TBA
Real Academia Española (25214072243)
View of the front facade of the RAE building

Notable past academicians

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Real Academia Española para niños

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