The Granada-born philologist Pedro Cátedra García (Las Gabias, 1954) will occupy Chair A of the Royal Spanish Academy, vacant since the death of Manuel Seco Reymundo, on December 16, 2021. The new academic was proposed as a candidate by Francisco Rico, Inés Fernández-Ordóñez and Juan Gil and has been chosen by academics ahead of his colleague Alberto Montaner Frutos.

Cátedra graduated and received a doctorate in Hispanic Philology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ??where he began his career as a researcher and teacher in 1976. In 1987 he became a university professor in Salamanca. For the next 36 years, he has been visiting professor and researcher at Rome-La Sapienza, Parma, Paris-Sorbonne, Paris-Sorbonne Nouvelle, Cologne, Münster, London, Oxford, Berkeley, Columbia, and Pennsylvania, and has directed research centers such as the Institute for the History of Books and Reading, the CiLengua Hispanic Library Institute, the Seminar on Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the University Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Digital Humanities of the University of Salamanca. Since 1992 he has been a member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences and, since 2001, of the British Academy.

The research activity of the new academic has been dedicated to the history of literature from the Middle Ages to the Baroque. Enrique de Villena, the Marquis of Santillana, La Celestina and Cervantes have received part of his attention. In addition, Cátedra has studied the history of the book, reading and written culture and the dissemination and reception of written and oral texts. In his bibliography there are more than 250 monographs.

Cátedra has directed editorial projects and scientific journals and has received national and foreign research awards, including the Menéndez Pelayo Award from the Institut d’Estudis Catalans; the Alexander von Humboldt Prize; the bibliographic research Bartolomé José Gallardo; the Literature and Humanities prize and the María de Maeztu prize from the University of Salamanca for scientific excellence. He has also won the National Publishing Awards (Best Printed Book and Best Technical and Scholarly Book) in 1991.

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