The Royal Spanish Academy, often abbreviated as RAE, was founded in 1713 in Madrid, Spain, with the aim of standardizing and promoting the Spanish language. The initiative for its creation came from Juan Manuel Fernández Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, who proposed to King Philip V of Spain the creation of a body dedicated to the regulation of the Spanish language.
King Philip V supported the proposal, and the Royal Spanish Academy was officially established on October 24, 1713, with the publication of its founding statutes. The academy’s first director was the scholar Juan Manuel Fernández Pacheco, and its first members were a group of Spanish intellectuals and writers, including Francisco de Quevedo, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and Baltasar Gracián, among others.
Since then, the Real Academia Española has played a crucial role in the development and promotion of the Spanish language, working to maintain its unity, standardize its usage, and adapt it to new linguistic and cultural contexts. It has also played a key role in the creation of the Dictionary of the Spanish Language, a comprehensive reference work that has been updated and expanded over the centuries to reflect the evolving usage of Spanish.
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