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On Thursday, May 21, 2026, members of the Royal Spanish Academy elected Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez as the first Central American to join the RAE. He will occupy seat “L,” left vacant after the death in 2025 of Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa.
Ramírez received the news in Panama during the Centroamérica Cuenta Literary Festival, which he founded in Nicaragua in 2013 and which, since 2019, has been organized in exile, moving between Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Spain.
“I strongly believe in Central American identity, and I’m deeply honored to enter the Academy as a Central American,” said the writer, journalist, and public intellectual in an interview on the program Esta Semana, broadcast on CONFIDENCIAL’s YouTube channel due to television censorship in Nicaragua.
For Sergio Ramírez, it is paradoxical that the violence of the exile and banishment he has endured since 2021 made it possible for him to be elected to the RAE, after receiving Spanish citizenship following the stripping of his Nicaraguan nationality in 2023. He announced that he will formally join the Academy between October and November 2026 with a lecture “on Mario Vargas Llosa, his importance to the language, how he modernized Latin American Spanish, and the role the Boom played in the modernization of the language in the Americas.”
What does this recognition of your literary career mean to you—your election to the Royal Spanish Academy as an exiled Nicaraguan writer?
Different things. The first reflection I’ve had is that life is full of great paradoxes. If it weren’t for the violence of my exile, having been banished and stripped of my citizenship, I would never have ended up living in Spain, nor would I have been granted Spanish citizenship. And therefore, joining the Royal Spanish Academy would have been impossible.
Is being Spanish a requirement?
Yes. The academies in Latin American countries are grouped together in the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, ASALE, alongside the Royal Academy, which is the Spanish Academy. So Spanish citizenship is required. But a precedent was created allowing a Latin American resident in Spain who had acquired Spanish nationality to serve as a direct link within the Academy’s plenary body. That role was played for nearly two decades by Mario Vargas Llosa, who spent most of the final period of his life in Spain.
When that seat became vacant, I was nominated to fill it, and the Academy’s traditional procedure was followed: three academicians had to nominate me. The Academy’s director himself, which is quite unusual, led the nomination: Santiago Muñoz Machado, together with two other academicians. Then came what is called the reading of credentials, and afterward the vacancy had to be officially announced in La Gaceta—that is, the BOE, the Official State Gazette. There were no other candidates, so I became the sole nominee.
The next step took place during a plenary session the previous week, when the Academy met in León, Castile. The credentials were read, and then yesterday (Thursday, May 21), the election took place.
You are the first Central American to hold this seat in the Academy after Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. Does that carry a particular significance for you?
Very much so, because I have always promoted, both inwardly and publicly. my Central American identity. I deeply believe in Central American identity. I am also the only Central American to have won the Cervantes Prize, and now joining the Academy as a Central American is an immense honor for me.
You mentioned what Rubén Darío used to say about academies. Have you now reconciled with Rubén?
In Letanías de Nuestro Señor Don Quijote, which is one of the most beautiful poems in the Spanish language, Rubén spoke about all the formalities imposed on Don Quixote—the ceremony surrounding it—when Don Quixote himself represents freedom and life, yet has become an object of worship. In that list, he included academies, when he wrote: “from academies, from so much blasphemy, deliver us Lord,” referring to Our Lord Don Quixote.
I believe this can be reconciled through the creative work the Academy has undertaken. The Royal Spanish Academy is not a dead institution; it is one that has achieved great vitality, especially from a perspective that is important to me: the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, ASALE, which includes all the Latin American academies, as well as the academies of the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea, where Spanish is spoken. There is even a North American Academy of the Spanish Language. All of these are organized within ASALE, whose secretary general operates from within the Academy’s headquarters in Madrid.
There is a fluid exchange among them, particularly because, in terms of language, there used to be a very large gap between Latin American Spanish and Peninsular Spanish.
In the past, in Darío’s time, everything that came from the Americas in the dictionaries was labeled as barbarisms, as if they were incorrect ways of speaking Spanish, and “true” Spanish was spoken only on the Iberian Peninsula. That is now history. Today, the dictionary is constantly being enriched by Latin American terms, known as Americanisms, which stand on equal footing with the Spanish spoken in Spain.
The RAE is a cultural platform for the renewal of the language. Can it also be a cultural platform for an exiled and banished writer?
Yes, it is a platform in the sense that being a member of the Academy carries great significance, of course, but it is by no means a political platform. My own political platform is built on whatever relevance I may have in the Spanish-speaking world, on the stature from which I am able to speak, and on whatever megaphones are available to me. I will continue doing that all my life: speaking in favor of democracy and freedom, and against dictatorship. And obviously, the fact of speaking, not because of the Academy’s decision itself, but as a member of the Academy, contributes to that relevance.
When will you formally take your seat at the RAE? Have you decided on the speech you will deliver for your induction?
When Santiago Muñoz Machado, the director of the Academy, called me here in Panama to inform me of the decision after the vote, we agreed that we would speak further and that I would visit him so we could coordinate everything. I imagine the ceremony will take place sometime in the fall, between October and November of this year (2026), because I have to devote myself to preparing the induction speech, which is a very serious matter. It is not a question of getting up and saying a few words, but rather offering a reflection on the topic one chooses. It is a lecture, a formal address delivered during a very solemn ceremony held in the Academy’s main assembly hall.
I have to prepare the speech, and I have already told the Academy’s director that it will focus on the work and life of Mario Vargas Llosa. Of the many aspects one could address about Vargas Llosa, I want to speak about his importance to the language, how he modernized Latin American Spanish, and the role the Boom played in modernizing the language of the Americas and in legitimizing what I was saying earlier about Latin American expressions.
When The Time of the Hero was published in Barcelona, it was the first time a Latin American book appeared without a glossary of terms. Previously, books published in Spain came with glossaries explaining expressions that Spaniards did not understand. That practice was set aside, and the language was presented as it was. That was how the novel was published, and it marked a profound change.
