Independence and more independence… That, above all. And, incidentally, the beginning of the new course that the Royal Spanish Academy opened this Thursday with a brilliant speech by Álvaro Pombo under the title Has reading and writing stopped being exciting? or the presentation of a milestone that has taken centuries: the ten volumes of the Historical dictionary of the Spanish language (DHLE), published by Espasa and financed by Inditex.
There were many things. All important. To start, Pombo’s health. If the writer was not able to read his speech on the day he received the 2024 Cervantes Prize last April in Alcalá de Henares before the kings, this Thursday he did feel strong enough to deliver the 12 pages he had written: “Let it be known that I have improved considerably in health,” he said as soon as he began to speak to continue with a testimony of radical commitment to his work: “As I get older, many inventions come in and I don’t get the accounts,” he stated. He then meditated on unleashed writing or the vocation that, like Kafka or Henry James, leads him to be aware that everything he does leads him to feel good enough to write.
He spoke at ease, pouring out Pombian humor in abundance but at a slow pace, perhaps to relax the solemnity that Santiago Muñoz Machado, director of the institution, wanted to give his words before. He did it to start a new season and also present the house’s new work, which has centuries of failed attempts, interrupted work, frustrations and falls behind it. He Historical Dictionary It has been the Sisyphus stone of the RAE. That is why they wanted to celebrate it in a collective arrival at the summit for which various academics have pushed for decades.
A great example of efforts to highlight what Muñoz Machado never tires of repeating: that the RAE is, according to him, “the most important cultural institution in Spain.” And that, in large part, it has achieved this thanks to its independence. It is the word that he repeated the most. In a harsh way, as a virtue, no doubt, but, above all, this Thursday, as a warning. Exaggeratedly?
After the controversy that occurred around the last Language Congress in Arequipa due to the bitter personal confrontation between the director of Cervantes, Luis García Montero, and Santiago Muñoz Machado, tempers are running high. Some academics wanted to see in some of García Montero’s words a warning of an attack by the Government on the autonomy of the RAE. But nothing makes you think about it. More so, if we take into account that it was the Government of Pedro Sánchez who contributed five million euros in 2018 to save them from ruin.
Muñoz Machado, as soon as he was elected in 2019, assured that the RAE was a matter of State and the executive alleviated a debt that had weighed since the previous cuts. Later, controversies arose about inclusive language encouraged by some sectors of the Government, such as Vice President Carmen Calvo. From those echoes, a phrase from Muñoz Machado yesterday can be derived as a response: “No one thinks of subjecting the dictionary to government whim.”
The director emphasized a long history of tensions with power. Not only in Spain, but also, above all, America, where, according to Machado, “the Academies have not always had the support of their governments.” The opening of the academic year took on its symbolism. It has been celebrated since its creation in 1713, “except for some interruptions.” Among them, the Civil War. The conflict that gave rise to Francoism and the expulsion into exile of several of its members also had its scuffles when the colleagues who remained inside the country refused to take away their seats and replace them with new additions, as the regime would have liked.
Another sign of independence. We are not there, it does not even remotely weigh on the fact that some want to get it out of hand. Nor in times when, according to Muñoz Machado, “others have thought that the Academies are populated by dangerous conspirators against the autocratic regime and have adopted measures to hinder their functioning or extinguish them.” The solidarity of the rest of the academies has prevented the worst effects of these measures, he assured. Above all, also, because, according to its director, it continues to remain, he said, “at a sidereal distance from other areas, such as politics.”
That bond with the rest of the Academies – “a confederated operation,” said Muñoz Machado – is what works today between the RAE and the association that governs the others in the rest of the world. This is how they have made the Historical dictionary of the Spanish language. The ten volumes that appeared in green on the auditorium stage. A work that responds largely to what Julio Casares designed in 1946. They came from several obstacles and until then they only had a volume that had been published in 1934 and responded to a plan drawn up twenty years earlier. Casares assured that to complete the work they would need 36 more and it would take up 12 volumes.
That period of almost four necessary decades that the academic proposed took place between 1960 and 1996. But they were not enough and the RAE had to wait for another accolade starting in 2006 under the direction of the linguist José Antonio Pascual, who occupies the letter k in the plenary session. Then the alphabetical order was renounced, a complete revolution in the approach. It was not necessary for that chronological and etymological tracing of the Spanish words that the DHLE supposes. If we add to that that it is a convention imposed by printing on paper, the arrival of the digital world has been essential to structure the work with other parameters. Because he Historical dictionary It is a work that continues constantly online, despite having a printed version now. Everything began to culminate, however, in 2019, when it was already put together with the rest of the academies, plus a total of 18 teams, 27 editors and a common method to finish what in the words of Muñoz Machado is: “A great pan-Hispanic work that we present today with institutional pride.”