In the solemn courtyard of Hispanic letters, the dispute between the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and the Cervantes Institute has reached farce levels.
If one listens to the defenders of the RAE, The Academy is the last barricade against linguistic barbarism.
If we look at the version of the Cervantes Institute, it turns out that modernity passes through its corridors and through the luminous figure of its director, Luis García Montero.
Everything would be a classic hors d’oeuvre if it weren’t for the fact that the prestige (and budget) of our cultural institutions is at stake.
The recent dispute between the director of the Cervantes Institute and the director of the Royal Spanish Academy is not a simple difference of opinions, but rather brings to the table fundamental issues such as institutional independence and the political commitments of those who hold positions of cultural relevance.
Luis García Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute, filled the street lamps with his own photographs when he was a United Left candidate for the Madrid Assembly. That political formation then had thirteen deputies and he managed to reduce them to zero.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo with the director of the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Machado, during a visit to the Academy.
That failure did not serve his political interests, but it did serve to make him better known for his militancy than for a brilliant career in public or cultural management or for his monotone poetry.
The Royal Spanish Academy, with its centuries of history, represents (and this is not a mere cliché) the strongest bulwark in the defense, study and dissemination of Spanish. Its independence, its rigor and its political neutrality have made it a reference institution, capable of guiding the evolution of the language regardless of governmental fluctuations, passing fads or attempts to translate the Constitution into inclusive language.
Faced with this management model, García Montero has preferred to be the Government delegate at the Cervantes Institute.
The dispute is, therefore, not a simple question of egos or institutional powers: it is the struggle between intellectual freedom and submission to political power.
If Spanish is to remain a universal, free and plural language, Its promotion cannot be left in the hands of those who put political loyalty before intellectual rigor..
In short, the dispute between the Cervantes management and the RAE is not a minor anecdote. It is a worrying symptom of the partisan drift of some cultural institutions. The Academy, with all its defects, continues to be the best guarantee against managers/politicians/poets that are not completely relevant because they are mediocre in those three activities.
It is impossible not to wonder why a poet so politically inclined (and so politically inclined) ended up at the head of the Cervantes Institute. The answer is so obvious that it makes you blush: García Montero has made partisan commitment his best guarantee.
Let no one be fooled. The card weighs more than the verses. Of course, in reality, the verses weigh very little.
Montero’s judicial conviction for insulting a fellow university professor whom he insulted because he held opinions different from his own weighed somewhat more. An example of how Montero assumes that culture is a battlefield.
And it is very possible that this is how it is and has always been. But it is a battlefield against power or, otherwise, we are not talking about culture, but about comfortable obedience.
“Perhaps the real problem is that, deep down, Spanish culture has decided to dispense with merit and embrace mediocrity with enthusiasm”
But, in this case, it is about philology and syntax and spelling and meanings and dictionary and language, and politics here has no accommodation whatsoever no matter how much Montero cultivates it, with the limited success already proven, in every corner of his biography.
That’s how things are. The cultural institutions turned into a crony preserve, the director of Cervantes passing condemnation and electoral failures with the same ease with which he recites clichés in his books, and the RAE trying to keep afloat a dignity that is increasingly rarer.
Perhaps the real problem is that, deep down, Spanish culture has decided to do without merit and embrace mediocrity with enthusiasm.
But let’s not despair. We will always have irony (with which this article is intended to be written) to comment on inadequate institutional statements and, above all, we will have the RAE, as long as they leave it as it is, to remember that excellence still exists, even if it is a species in danger of extinction.
Meanwhile, the RAE, with all its defects, resists as best it can the assault of the marketing and frivolity. It is true that academics do not always shine for their audacity. But, at least, its legitimacy rests above all on merit and not on political camaraderie.
The Academy, the target of all modernizing anger, continues to be (unfortunately to some) the reference of linguistic authority, a reference that García Montero’s Cervantes has lost, who confuses promotion with propaganda and politics with culture.
Between the poet who cuts his figure on the image of power and the Academy, which does its work, Today the RAE seems to be the only serious defense against institutional trivialization.
*** Juan Carlos Arce is a former lawyer of the Supreme Court and the CGPJ and an academic at the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation.