Royal Spanish Academy


The Royal Spanish Academy is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in 22 other hispanophone nations through the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language. The RAE's emblem is a fiery crucible, and its motto is Limpia, fija y da esplendor.
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.

History

The Royal Spanish Academy was founded in 1713, modeled after the Accademia della Crusca, of Italy, and the Académie Française, 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. 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. 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.
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:

Composition

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, similarly to their French Academy counterparts. The numeraries '' are elected for life by the other academicians. Each academician holds a seat labeled with a letter from the Spanish alphabet, although upper and lower case letters denote 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.

Current members

Notable past academicians

;Joint publications of the RAE and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language
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