Barcelona, José Manuel Blecua, the philologist and former director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), has died in Madrid at the age of 86, according to the RAE website. He was a professor at the University of Barcelona and received Catalonia’s Creu de Sant Jordi.

Born in Zaragoza on 21 June 1939, Blecua was elected a full academician of the RAE on 19 June 2003. He took his seat on 25 June 2006, with a speech titled Principles of the Dictionary of Authorities. He was elected director of the academy in December 2010 and held the post from 2011 to 2014. Before that, he served as secretary from 2007 to 2009.

His academic work included a doctorate in Romance Philology and a career as a professor of Spanish Language. He was responsible for the volume Phonetics and Phonology and for the 2011 and 2025 editions of the New Grammar of the Spanish Language. He also taught at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where he served as vice-rector, director of the Publications Service, and founder and director of the first Seminar on Philology and Informatics.

Blecua also taught at Ohio State University in 1971, at the Centre for Linguistic and Literary Studies of El Colegio de México from 1986 to 1987, and in summer courses for foreign students at the University of Zaragoza in Jaca, Huesca. Since 1976, he had been a teaching collaborator at the Menéndez Pelayo International University. He was also a member of the Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona and a corresponding member of the Royal Hispano-American Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters of Cádiz.

His public work included serving as academic director of the Cervantes Institute from 1994 to 1995, co-authoring the first style guide for La Vanguardia in 1986, and taking part in the TVE language programme Hablando claro from 1987 to 1992. He received many awards, including the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise in 2015, the Aragón Research Prize in 2005, the Jaume Vicens Vives distinction in 2005, the Atlántida Prize in 2011, the Gold Medal of Zaragoza in 2011, the Aragonese Letters Prize in 2012, the Heraldo Prize for Human Values and Knowledge in 2014, the Creu de Sant Jordi, and the Medal of the University of Zaragoza.

He was the son of José Manuel Blecua Teijeiro, a professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Barcelona and an honorary academician of the RAE. His brother, Alberto Blecua, also a philologist, died in 2020. For readers following Catalonia’s academic and cultural news, see our news coverage.