Real Academia Española, Madrid, Spain

The Royal Spanish Academy is the official official institution responsible for the supervision of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one Spanish-speaking countries through the Association of Spanish Language Academies.

The RAE is dedicated to linguistic planning by applying the language requirement to promote linguistic unity within and between different territories, to ensure a common standard according to Article 1 of its charter: “… to ensure the changes that the Spanish language Sufre does not break the essential unity enjoyed in the Spanish-speaking world. ”

The proposed language guidelines are shown in a series of papers. The priorities are the Dictionary of the Spanish language of the Royal Spanish Academy, published periodically twenty-three times since 1780, and its grammar, last edited in October 2014. The Academy A formal procedure to admit words in their publications.

The headquarters, inaugurated in 1894, is located in the street Felipe IV, 4, in the room of the Jerónimos, next to the Museum of the Prado. The Center of Studies of the Real Academia Española, inaugurated in 2007, is located at Serrano street 187-189.

The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) was founded in Madrid in 1713, under the reign of Philip V, inspired by the French Academy model and with the purpose, reflected in its first statutes, to work at the service of the Spanish language. The coat of arms of the RAE summarizes in a motto of the time its aims and obligations: “Clean, fix and gives splendor” to the Spanish language.
Since then, the institution has been dedicated to preserving – through its activities, works and publications – the good use and unity of a language in constant evolution and expansion that is common heritage of almost 500 million Spanish speakers, an aspiration also collected in its Statutes in force, 1993.

THE ACADEMICS
The RAE currently has 46 seats of number members, who occupy chairs designated in uppercase and lowercase letters with part of the letters of the Spanish alphabet.

Academics are elected, by secret ballot and by majority vote, by the institution’s own members, after nominations have been submitted by a group of three of them. The electoral rules are set out in the Statutes of the SAR and in the Regulation that regulates the internal operation of the corporation.

Academics meet in plenary session, chaired by the director, every Thursday of the year, except during vacation periods. During the week, they also participate in different work commissions that study amendments and additions to the Dictionary, as well as the progress of the different projects.

PANHISPANIC POLICY
In 1951 the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE) was created in Mexico, which groups together the twenty-three corporations of America, Spain, the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea. Through a permanent exchange work, the language academies work to establish, through dialogue and consensus, the common standard – on lexicon, grammar and spelling – for all Spanish speakers. The final aspiration is to promote the unity of the language within the diversity of the Hispanic domain.

In recent years, language academies have published, among other works, the “Panhispánico Dictionary of Doubts”, “Student Dictionary”, “Student’s Practical Dictionary”, “Dictionary of Americanisms”, “New Grammar of the Spanish language ‘, the new’ Orthography of the Spanish language ‘,’ The good use of Spanish ‘and the 23rd edition of’ Dictionary of the Spanish language ‘.

In order to develop their linguistic work, the academies undertook the project of elaborating the Corpus of Spanish of the XXI Century, made up of texts of all types and countries of the Hispanic world, which will bring together in 2018 a set of 400 million forms and words.

In addition, several literary collections are in progress – among them, the commemorative editions and the Classical Library of the RAE.

Since 2007, the academies of the language have the Center of Studies of the RAE and of the ASALE, a building ceded by the Government of Spain, located in the street Serrano of Madrid. The Institute of Lexicography, the Department of “Spanish al día” (which services the linguistic consultation service, via e-mail and Twitter), the Department of Technology, the School of Hispanic Lexicography and the «New Historical Dictionary of Spanish».

ARCHIVE AND LIBRARY
Throughout its history, the Academy has gathered bibliographic resources of great importance. Its file gathers the documentation generated by the corporation from the year of its foundation, 1713, to the present day. The library has about 250 000 volumes of books and some 800 headers of periodicals. Among its funds, especially dedicated to linguistics and Spanish and Hispanic American literature, include manuscripts, incunabula and first editions of works of the main Spanish writers.

In addition to the general fund, the academic library has those formed with the legacies of academics Dámaso Alonso and Antonio Rodríguez Moñino, both of great historical value. In 2013 he also received the legacy of the academic José Luis Borau.