This quiet dramaturgy marks a significant moment as the Royal Language Academy opened its doors this Sunday, inviting readers to enter with the honor they deserve. Canary philologist Dolores Corbella brings with her a treasure she has cultivated in a unique way with the help of devoted friends. As she began to read aloud, she placed the treasure of the Canary Islands’ Spanish on the academic table, polishing secrets and talismans, happy to describe the nature she has worked on for years. In the sea of words, there were also lines from a poem woven into her discourse.
Calm and smiling, she handled the bureaucratic details of her presidency at the House of Scholars, then drew from several scrolls her acceptance speech. She spoke before an audience of Canaries who filled the hall with almost religious anticipation, alongside officials, academics, classmates, students, and graduates. The academy became a space charged by atmosphere before and after the main act, a celebration of friendship and alphabetical order. In this warm setting, it seemed the language itself—Spanish as spoken in the Canary Islands—was being entered into the record, enriched not only by Corbella’s contribution but also by a bright sense of authority and a future to be built.
Don Emilio Lledó, a Tenerife-based academic who helped many understand that language is the most serious matter of life, joined in celebrating Corbella, who is also a teacher. The philosopher-professor offered greetings and congratulations in a speech that reflected a short list of scholars who now become collaborators in conversations about the past and future of the linguistic treasure Corbella has gathered and will share with her philologist descendants.
When the room quieted, a gentle excitement rose, especially for the woman at the podium. Don Emilio resembled a former student stepping forward, feeling as if he too belonged with Corbella and the venerable language scholars. It was as if a newcomer had entered the scene, longing for a way of speaking Spanish that travels like a treasure through the sea of her research and writings.
During the address titled “A Sea of Words,” the hall welcomed the newcomer with a hush, and the sound of a child’s cry broke the stillness shortly after the speaker began. The cry, whether a grandson or son, carried the baptism of a new word that the speaker, who turns dictionaries into wisdom, has not yet had time to rethink. In her remarks, she expressed gratitude to Lledó, José Antonio Pascual, Carme Riera, and her friends Inmaculada and the close-knit family that supports her, including Cristóbal Corrales. The presence of Francisco Rodríguez Adrados echoed the loyalty to the past as a living figure in the room. The scene connected philology and poetry, as if a shared fidelity ran through the conversation.
Manuel Alvar and Pedro Álvarez de Miranda stood out as early champions of the island’s ethnographic curiosity and its future lexicographic path. Alvar opened a door to the island’s ethnographic passion, while Álvarez de Miranda, tasked by the academy to greet the letter D and the future, presented the lexicographic treasure Corbella had cultivated as the pinnacle of her scholarly inheritance. Through the imagined “palaces” of language, the Canaries’ journey toward greater empathy for the tongue we speak unfolded, settling like a quiet inland sea. Dedicated to the lines of Pedro García Cabrera, the address echoed a lyric from the poetry collection Hope Keeps Me, reminding listeners of the sea’s voice as a guide for her work. The poem captures the islander’s longing: a sea that invites exploration without surrender, a sea that allows the language to roam freely.
What followed was more than a recital; it was a hymn, an invitation that linked music to poetry. Álvarez de Miranda joined the dialogue as the conversation shifted to the future of philology, and the academy’s treasures found a home in a space where personal names—Viera y Clavijo, María Rosa Alonso, Rafael Arozarena, María Dolores de la Fe, Carmen Laforet, Pérez Galdós, Álvarez Rixo, Iriarte—and others resonated like stones cast from the sea. A special mention went to Gregorio Salvador, a memorable professor from La Laguna, whose presence epitomized a bridge between generations. The celebration became a lasting memory of language’s power and its custodians.
This gathering proved to be more than a ceremony. It was an unforgettable homage to language, filled with honored figures and seasoned voices, with Dolores Corbella guiding a quiet, historical moment for the Canary Islands. The event closed with a sense of happiness and a passion for the journey through the rooms of the palace, a space that felt as expansive as the sea where the wisdom of words held sway. The moment stood as a testament to the enduring vitality of language in the Canaries and beyond, a living sea of words that continues to shape and nurture the region’s linguistic heritage.