Darío Villanueva


Francisco Darío Villanueva Prieto is a Spanish literary theorist and critic, and is the director of the Royal Spanish Academy as of 11 December 2014. He has been a member of the academy since 2007, and he occupies the chair corresponding to the letter D.
Villanueva is also a professor of philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, where he specializes in literary theory and comparative literature.

Biography

The son of an Asturian father and a Galician mother, Darío Villanueva grew up in Luarca, Asturias, where his father served as a judge. He later moved to Lugo, Galicia, where he completed his secondary schooling. In 1970, he relocated to A Coruña.
In 1972, he obtained a degree in Romance philology from the University of Santiago de Compostela with high honours, and in 1976, he received his doctorate cum laude in Hispanic philology from the Autonomous University of Madrid. Villanueva was the secretary and later the dean of the Faculty of Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela from 1978 to 1990. In June 1994, he became rector and in May 1998 he was re-elected for another four-year term.
Villanueva was also a visiting professor at Middlebury College in 1987, the University of Colorado in 1988 and 1993, and the University of Burgundy from 1989 to 1991.
He has received various awards, such as the Gold Medal from the Compostela Group of Universities, the National Order of Merit of Ecuador in 2001, and the Castelao Medal from the Xunta de Galicia in 2005. He is a member of the Xaime Quesada Blanco Foundation, created in 2007 by Jaime Quesada Porto.
Elected to the D seat of the Real Academia Española on 5 July 2007, Villanueva began his post on 8 June 2008. He was secretary of the Real Academia Española from December 2009 on. After José Manuel Blecua stepped down as director, Villanueva was elected on 11 December 2014. He began his directorship on 8 January 2015.
His works have continued to be published for more than forty years. Villanueva stands out for his work as a literary critic, and he writes regularly for the magazine El Cultural.
He is married to María Ermitas Penas Varela, who is also a professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Santiago de Compostela. In 1978, their daughter Beatriz was born. She is a licentiate of law and has a master's degree in which she focused on international solidarity in the European Union. Their son José Francisco was born in 1984. He is a student of business management and administration.

Published work