Королевская испанская академия: хранитель языка и культуры

Official regulator for the Spanish language
the fine arts academy

The Royal Spanish Academy (lang es, 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.

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.

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, italic=no, 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.

Members of the Academy are known as Académicos de número , 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. 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.

SeatMemberYearOPere Gimferrer Torrens1985cVíctor García de la Concha1992lEmilio Lledó Íñigo1994CLuis Goytisolo Gay1995LMario Vargas Llosa1996uAntonio Muñoz Molina1996VJuan Luis Cebrián Echarri1997tIgnacio Bosque Muñoz1997ñlt=Luis María Anson Oliart1998ILuis Mateo Díez Rodríguez2001Nlt=Guillermo Rojo Sánchez2001kJosé Antonio Pascual Rodríguez2002ECarmen Iglesias Cano2002TArturo Pérez Reverte Gutiérrez2003Ges2003jÁlvaro Pombo García de los Ríos2004oes2006hes2006aes2006Ses2008DDarío Villanueva Prieto2008mJosé María Merino Sánchez2009gSoledad Puértolas Villanueva2010Plt=Inés Fernández Ordóñez Hernández2011Qlt=Pedro Álvarez de Miranda de la Gándara2011eJuan Gil Fernández2011flt=José B. Terceiro Lomba2012rSantiago Muñoz Machado2013bMiguel Sáenz Sagaseta de Ilúrdoz2013nCarme Riera Guilera2013ZJosé Luis Gómez García2014Blt=Aurora Egido Martínez2014FManuel Gutiérrez Aragón2016HFélix de Azúa Comella2016UClara Janés Nadal2016sMaría Paz Battaner Arias2017Jes2019MJuan Antonio Mayorga Ruano2019KJosé María Bermúdez de Castro Risueño2022iPaloma Díaz Mas2022des2023qAsunción Gómez Pérez2023XClara Sánchez2023Alt=Pedro Cátedra GarcíaTBA