The RAE and the army present ‘Geopolítica del español’, a book about the importance of language in a weak power

The relationship between weapons and letters is clear. In the three siglos de vida de la Real Academia Española, It has 39 military academicians and 8 senior directors institution. I received this information from Teodoro Esteban López Calderón, Chief of the State Mayor of Defense (JEMAD), during an act celebrated in the RAE.

If he showed up book Geopolitics of Spainthe fruit of the collaboration between the Academy and the Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicosdependent on the Centro Superior de Estudios de la Defense Nacional (CESEDEN).

There is no doubt, says López Calderón, that “culture and language have a geopolitical dimension.” The language plays a simple paper and can be called blandIt is said to be “the ability of a country to influence other international actors through attraction, culture and values”, as opposed to the use of coercion and the power of so-called hard power.

JEMAD also affirmed that Spanish “is not just a language, it is an essential part of a living community that connects societies, continents, markets and visions of the world” and called on it to “continue to promote a culture of defense in general, so necessary in the moment we meet”.

The above book analyzes the importance of this question in the case of the Spanish language. Check with prologue of King Philip VI. and a total of 23 articles high military costs, academics and other specialists, as well as former Prime Minister Felipe González and former Bolivian President Jaime Paz Zamora.

In his prologue, El Rey affirms that Spanish is not “an exclusive identity nor incompatible with othersnot limited to particularism or diversity, it can never be the one that allows us to express ourselves, to communicate, to work out ideas and beauty, to create culture”.

The book suggests that “the Spanish language is Spain’s main contribution to universal culture” and that it “does not belong to it alone, but to all who use it. Today it is the mother tongue of 500 million people” and has a total word count exceeding 600 million.

“At a moment of profound transformation, in the trance of building a new world order, the Spanish community in the use of the Castilian language represented a formidable advantage for stimulating entendimiento between its countries and consolidating its political, economic and cultural development,” its section reads.

From the side of the RAE, the director Santiago Muñoz Machado and the academics Carme Riera (deputy director), Juan Luis Cebrián (book coordinator), Miguel Sáenz, Paloma Díaz-Mas and Asunción Gómez-Pérez and ASALE Secretary General Francisco Javier Pérez, writer and Cervantes Award Cervantes Award, are participating.

These contributions were made by Miguel Ballenilla and García de Gamarra, Lieutenant General of the Army and Director of CESEDEN; Víctor Bados Nieto, Brigadier General and Director of the Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos; Federico Aznar Fernández-Montesinos, Senior Analyst at the Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos; Alejandro García Padilla, former governor of Puerto Rico; Antonio Navalón, journalist and writer; Rafael Fraguas, journalist, sociologist and writer; Beatriz Sanz Alonso, professor of the Spanish language at the University of Valladolid; José Luis García Delgado, member of the Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas; Núria Vilanova, President of Consejo Empresarial Alianza por Iberoamérica (CEAPI); and Colombian songwriter and singer Carlos Vives.

General of the Army and director of CESEDEN Miguel Ballenilla and García de Gamarra said during the presentation: “There are no obviously appropriate times to write about bland power. We live in an age where hard, military, technological and financial power is once again occupying the center of the world. The erosion of the United States’ international appeal, Europe’s difficulty in developing an external strategy, or the proliferation of open conflicts might lead us to believe that the capacity for cultural appeal is secondary to coercion or deterrence. But that conclusion would be a mistake.”

“El hard power —continued the general teniente — take care of legitimacy at its ends if you are not able to create adhesion. Y in the same way, el bland power so only no structural stability or guarantee is the Kantian peace that follows as the normative horizon of the international community. The club doesn’t choose between themselves until that happens understand complementary ad“.

At the beginning of his intervention in the act a Juan Luis Cebriancoordinator of the book, thought it “appropriate to record” a fragment of the famous one a discussion of Don Quixote’s arms and letters In chapter 38 of the first volume of Cervantes’s great work, written more than 400 years ago: “In the letters it is written that without them they cannot keep arms, because war also holds its leyes and is suijeta to it, and that the leyes are because of what the letters are letrados. To this correspond the arms, which the leyes do not keep without them, because the cities are protected, the republic is protected by arms, the roads are secured, the seas of corsairs are destroyed, and finally, if do not escape, republics, kings, sovereigns, cities, sea and land routes will be exposed to the severe confusion that war brings.”

Cebrián defined Geopolitics of Spain as “serious but entertaining book”. “The basis of our commitment was based on the observation that the military, art and literature have experienced a constant bond and complicity throughout history.”

“The English and German scholars of the 19th century taught us something that we were learning exactly in our time and we were not ready to eat it in our bodies as well. I refer to the elementary discussion about it.” geopolitics is actually the main policy, if not the only one, that ultimately decides the fate of people”.

“On the side of guns and money,” continued Cebrián, “it is precisely these people, people, people who invent and share words, create, spread and build the world we have with them.”

“My final conclusion – from reading the book – is this. Spanish speakers we are able to build and develop cultural internationalism, which is the greatest treasure of our nations and the most effective weapon their citizens holdfrom all countries to influence socially, culturally and economically the emerging world order”.

Geopolitics of Spain it is emphasized in the cooperation agreements signed between the Academy and CESEDEN on cooperation on projects of common interest. It is clear as well as this book that CESEDEN has collaborated on in the Red Panhispanic of clear and accessible language (driven by RAE) to which it is supported, as well as in the updating of the military voices that are in it A dictionary of the Spanish language. According to Muñoz Machado, at least a number of new terms will be incorporated into the next edition of the work.