Juan Luis Cebrián is intensifying its campaign to lead the RAE, but does not extend support

The lack of support among academics, precipitated the resignation of Dario Villanueva re-election of the HKSAR

The Royal Spanish Academy you must have done eternal the two months that have passed since its director, Darío Villanueva, announced that he would not want to repeat in the post (4 October) until this afternoon.

finally today, at the meeting of the seven in the evening, the academicians vote for their new leader. “The pressure from outside has surprised us all”, explains an academic, sworn in with his colleagues not to filter details about the campaign informally, which was opened in the same full of renunciation. That is to take it with patience: the statutes of SAR require a qualified majority that it hardly will be reached this afternoon. What is more likely is that the next week will have new appointment.

What we knew until now of the election of the RAE? A quick overview: the same afternoon in which Villanueva announced that it was leaving, the journalist Juan Luis Cebriánse presented to his colleagues as a candidate informal (in the SAR any academic can be chosen without requesting it in writing before). Its name received the support of Villanueva and some academics linked to the Prisa Group (Goytisolo, Vargas Llosa…), but also awakened many antipathies, some of which are expressed with surprising vehemence.

So they began to receive other nominations, also informal, almost attempts: Gregorio Salvador, was the natural choice for many, but has never come to take the step of calling for the vote. Inés Fernández-Ordoñez and Santiago Muñoz Machado sounded after.

Muñoz Machado, in particular, became the perfect boyfriend: his recent reputation as an essayist (we Speak the same language. Political history of Spanish in America, National award this year) and the success of their intellectual/manager within the Academy as the coordinator of the Dictionary panhispánico of the Spanish legal bind to their craft. The academic is a lawyer, has a professional career of remarkable, and is presumed to possess the capacity to connect the Academy with the money of the companies, very late in this moment of weakness financial.

That connection, incidentally, it is also one of the reasons to vote for Juan Luis Cebrian, also a journalist has been one of the great entrepreneurs of the communication in modern Spain. In his against, however, is the weight of his written work, less and less relevant in fiction, essay and newspapers, and some personal grievances that left from your direction of The Country and in a Hurry. In a face-to-face between Cebrián and Muñoz Machado, the latter was the clear favorite.

What we know of new? The script has taken a little turn from the point in time at which consolidated the option of Inés Fernández-Ordóñez. For those who do not know their career: Fernández Ordóñez is a philologist, professor of Spanish Language at the Complutense University of Madrid and researcher. Dialectology and rural history of the Spanish language have been their fields of work. His research has been directed to demonstrate that the Spanish was, rather than the evolution of the Spanish language, a language formed by the fusion of various languages on the iberian peninsula.

This profile is relevant. According to one of the academics consulted by THE WORLD, various academic philologists encouraged to Fernández-Ordóñez to take the step on behalf of your profession. Linguists are still the hard core of the RAE; the journalists as Cebrián and jurists as Muñoz Machado remain, in the background, immigrants. “Agnes was remisa at the beginning and then, little by little, has been accepting such trust and confidence”, explains an academic.

There is another theory that may be compatible with the first: those who asked Fernández Ordóñez to take the step were the women of the RAE, who are eight, between 44 members. During the last few years, the pressure against RAE for breach of the criteria of parity between men and women has become very intense. The choice of a woman, relatively young and of academic prestige, would be received with jubilation.

A curiosity: the idea that the women of the RAE encouraged Fernández-Ordóñez campaigning, the spear a man. That were the philologists, the offers a woman.

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