{"id":189458,"date":"2026-05-25T10:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T16:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/confidencial.digital\/sin-categoria\/sergio-ramirez-im-honored-to-join-the-royal-spanish-academy-as-a-central-american\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T02:34:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T08:34:18","slug":"sergio-ramirez-im-honored-to-join-the-royal-spanish-academy-as-a-central-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/confidencial.digital\/en\/english\/sergio-ramirez-im-honored-to-join-the-royal-spanish-academy-as-a-central-american\/","title":{"rendered":"Sergio Ram\u00edrez: \u201cI\u2019m Honored to Join the Royal Spanish Academy as a Central American\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Thursday, May 21, 2026, members of the Royal Spanish Academy elected Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ram\u00edrez as the first Central American to join the RAE.<\/a> He will occupy seat \u201cL,\u201d left vacant after the death in 2025 of Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa.<\/p>\n\n

Ram\u00edrez received the news in Panama during the Centroam\u00e9rica Cuenta Literary Festival,<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cI strongly believe in Central American identity, and I\u2019m deeply honored to enter the Academy as a Central American,\u201d said the writer, journalist, and public intellectual in an interview on the program Esta Semana<\/em>, broadcast on CONFIDENCIAL\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a> due to television censorship in Nicaragua.<\/p>\n\n

For Sergio Ram\u00edrez, 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 \u201con Mario Vargas Llosa, his importance to the language, how he modernized Latin American Spanish, and the role the Boom<\/em> played in the modernization of the language in the Americas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

What does this recognition of your literary career mean to you\u2014your election to the Royal Spanish Academy as an exiled Nicaraguan writer?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Different things. The first reflection I\u2019ve had is that life is full of great paradoxes. If it weren\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n\n

Is being Spanish a requirement?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

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\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n\n

When that seat became vacant, I was nominated to fill it, and the Academy\u2019s traditional procedure was followed:<\/a> three academicians had to nominate me. The Academy\u2019s director himself, which is quite unusual, led the nomination: Santiago Mu\u00f1oz 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\u2014that is, the BOE, the Official State Gazette. There were no other candidates, so I became the sole nominee. <\/p>\n\n

The next step took place during a plenary session the previous week, when the Academy met in Le\u00f3n, Castile. The credentials were read, and then yesterday (Thursday, May 21), the election took place.<\/p>\n\n

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