Royal Spanish Academy

Overview

The Royal Spanish Academy (Real Academia Española, RAE) is the body that writes the dictionary, the grammar and the spelling rules for Spanish, and it does that from a classicist palace built for it between 1891 and 1894 next to the Museo del Prado. It is an office, not an attraction. There is no ticket desk, no permanent display and no queue outside, and the only access the Academy advertises is to its library and archive, for accredited researchers with an appointment.

The work done inside reaches well beyond Spain. The dictionary, the spelling manual and the grammar are joint projects with the other academies of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, twenty-four in total, from Latin America to the United States and the Philippines. Nothing becomes official until that group agrees, which is why revisions take years rather than months.

The Academy’s emblem is a crucible over a fire with the motto “Limpia, fija y da esplendor” (it cleans, fixes and gives splendour), chosen at the foundation and still stamped on everything it prints. For most people the contact point is not the building but the free online dictionary at dle.rae.es, which took a billion queries in 2020 alone. Walk past the façade, look at the Doric portico, then go and use the dictionary.

Collection

The Academy’s output is a shelf of reference books rather than a display of objects, and almost all of it is free to consult online.

Dictionaries

The Diccionario de la lengua española is the flagship. The first edition appeared in 1780; the twenty-third came out on 16 October 2014, a single volume of 2,376 pages carrying 93,111 entries against 84,431 in the edition before it. The abbreviation changed with that edition too, from DRAE to DLE, because all the associated academies now share the authorship.

Around the main dictionary sits a family of smaller ones. The Diccionario esencial (2006) condenses the twenty-second edition; the Diccionario del estudiante (2005) and its Latin American adaptation, the Diccionario práctico del estudiante (2007), are aimed at secondary school; the Diccionario de americanismos (2010) collects usage from across the Americas; the Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (first edition 2005, second in 2025) exists to settle arguments about correct use; and the Diccionario panhispánico del español jurídico (2017) does the same for legal language.

Spelling and grammar

The Ortografía de la lengua española is the other pillar. Its first edition dates to 1741, the 1999 version was the first written jointly by the twenty-two academies of the day, and the 2010 edition remains the current one. A second edition of the grammar followed in 2025. These are the books that decide, for a publisher in Bogotá as much as for one in Madrid, how a word gets written.

The library and the archive

The building holds a documentary and bibliographic collection of close to 280,000 volumes, split between the library and the archive. Among the archive’s holdings is the book of minutes opened on 3 August 1713, the document that records the corporation’s own beginning.

Journals

The Boletín de la Real Academia Española has appeared since 1914 and remains the corporation’s own journal, carrying the technical debates behind the entries and rules that later reach the public books. Not all of the Academy’s work happens here: the Instituto de Lexicografía, the historical dictionary team and the Escuela de Lexicografía Hispánica sit in a separate Centro de Estudios on Calle Serrano, in a building the Spanish state handed over for the purpose.

Visiting

Plan on seeing the outside. The Academy does not publish visiting hours or an admission price for the general public, and the only access it lists is professional: the library and the archive, both for accredited researchers, both by appointment. Nobody is going to let you in off the street to look at the dictionary.

From the pavement

The façade is worth the two minutes. It is a classicist block by the architect Miguel Aguado de la Sierra, put up between 1891 and 1894, with an attached portico of four Doric columns under a triangular pediment. The main entrance faces west onto Calle Ruiz de Alarcón and is ringed by a small garden, which is the only piece of the site you can see properly without an invitation.

Library and archive access

The reading rooms are entered from Calle Academia, 1, not from the Felipe IV address. The library opens to accredited researchers from 9:00 to 14:00, Monday to Friday, outside holiday periods; ask for an appointment on +34 91 420 14 78 or at biblioteca@rae.es. The archive keeps shorter weeks, 9:30 to 14:00 Monday to Thursday, again outside holiday periods, and its appointments go through archivo@rae.es.

The open days

Once or twice a year the Academy joins one of Madrid’s citywide heritage programmes and runs guided visits. It has taken part in Madrid Otra Mirada and in the Semana de la Arquitectura, and the route starts in the garden before going through the plenary room where members sit around an oval table, the assembly hall used for the induction of new academicians, and the libraries. The assembly hall is where the four allegorical stained-glass windows are, made in 1893 by the Bordeaux workshop of C. P. Dragant.

Getting there

Three metro stations sit within a short walk: Banco de España on line 2, and Estación del Arte and Atocha on line 1. Cercanías trains from across the metropolitan area stop at Madrid-Atocha.

History

Eight men who called themselves novatores began meeting in 1711 in the library of Juan Manuel Fernández Pacheco, Marquess of Villena, whose palace stood on Plaza de las Descalzas Reales. Spain, unlike France and Italy, had no comprehensive dictionary compiled by a standing body, and the two obvious models were the Accademia della Crusca, founded in Florence in 1582, and the Académie Française of 1635. The first formal session was held at Pacheco’s house on 6 July 1713, and the book of minutes was opened on 3 August of that year, the date the institution counts as its birthday.

Philip V approved the corporation by royal decree on 3 October 1714, with twenty-four elected members and the right to call itself royal, which brought its academicians the privileges of servants of the royal household. What set it apart from the literary gatherings of the previous century was the stated aim of collective utility rather than conversation.

Four addresses in two centuries

The Academy spent 180 years as a lodger. After the death in 1751 of the last Marquess of Villena to lead it, sessions moved to the house of its dean, Juan Curiel, on the street then called Sartén and now Navas de Tolosa. In 1754 Fernando VI granted it space in the Real Casa del Tesoro, an annexe of the Royal Palace on what is now Plaza de Oriente, and it stayed there forty years.

The current house was the first ever designed and built for the institution. The Crown ceded the plot, Miguel Aguado de la Sierra (1842 to 1896) drew the plans, construction ran from 1891 to 1894, and the opening was held on 1 April 1894 under the regent María Cristina, accompanied by her son Alfonso XIII, still a child. The director of the day, Juan de la Pezuela y Ceballos, Count of Cheste, read the inaugural address; the architect’s portrait hangs in the board room of the building he designed.

Setting the rules

The first great task was the Diccionario de autoridades, six folio volumes published between 1726 and 1739, which backed every definition with quotations from named writers. Spelling followed in 1741 with the first Ortographía. For a century the Academy’s rulings were advice rather than law, until a royal decree of 1844 made them the official norm in Spain, after which the Spanish-speaking republics of the Americas adopted them gradually and on their own terms.

That association changed how the books are made. From the twenty-second edition of the dictionary in 2001, and from the 1999 spelling manual onwards, the academies write together rather than the Madrid house writing alone. The joint effort won the RAE and the association the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord in 2000. The most recent structural change is physical as much as editorial: since 2007 much of the research work has been done at a separate Centre for Studies on Calle Serrano, leaving the Felipe IV house to the plenary sessions, the governing offices and the books.

Tips

• Treat this as a five-minute stop on a walk, not a visit. The Academy publishes no public opening hours and no admission price, and the doors are closed to callers without an appointment.

• If you want to get inside, the realistic route is an autumn heritage weekend. The Academy has opened for Madrid Otra Mirada and for the Semana de la Arquitectura, in small guided groups, in Spanish, booked through the programme rather than through the Academy. Slots have sold out before the day.

• Researchers: write first, in Spanish, and say exactly which item you need. The library answers only on its own bibliographic holdings, and the archive will often send a digital reproduction instead of giving you a seat, which is quicker for everyone.

• Both reading rooms shut in holiday periods, and both close at 14:00, the archive from 9:30 and the library from 9:00. An afternoon appointment does not exist.

• Photograph the front from Calle Ruiz de Alarcón rather than from Felipe IV. That is the side with the portico, the pediment and the garden.

• Do not come looking for a bookshop. The Academy sells nothing on site, and its dictionaries, grammar and spelling manual are stocked by ordinary bookshops across the city.

• Use the free online dictionary instead of buying the 2014 printed edition. The web text has been revised eight times since 2017 and a new edition is due, so the book on the shelf is already out of date.

• Pair it with the art you came for. The Prado is immediately next door and the Reina Sofía is a short walk south past Atocha, so the Academy fits into a gap between the two rather than needing an afternoon of its own.