The Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language was established in Manila on July 25, 1924. The eleventh Spanish language academy in the world to be founded, its establishment reflected the preeminent position of Spanish as a language in the Philippines at the time despite already-existing cultural influences coming from the United States. Despite the diminishing position of Spanish in the Philippines relative to English, the Academy continued to exist despite intermittent criticism. In 1986, Spanish poet Dámaso Alonso unsuccessfully called for its dissolution, citing Enrique Fernández Lumba, a member who had dismissed the organization as a "relic". In 2008, El País reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission revoked the Academy's corporate registration in 2003 due to its non-filing of annual returns. Despite this, the Academy nonetheless is recognized as possibly playing a key role again in revitalizing the Spanish language and promoting Spanish culture in the Philippines, a role that it also played in previous years. Darío Villanueva, director of the Real Academia Española, visited the Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language in July 2017 as part of his official visit to the Philippines. During his visit, where he also presided over a meeting of the Academy's board of directors, he remarked that the Academy served as "the perennial lighthouse of the Spanish language" in the country.
Status of Spanish in the Philippines
Section 7, Article XIV of the present 1987 Philippine Constitution specifies Spanish as a language to "be promoted on a voluntary and optional basis". Spanish was the language of government, education and trade throughout the three centuries of the Philippines being part of the Spanish Empire and continued to serve as a lingua franca until the first half of the 20th century. In December 2007, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed a directive in Spain requiring the teaching and learning of the Spanish language in the Philippine school system starting in 2008. The Under-Secretary of the Department of Education, Vilma L. Labrador, circulated a Memorandum, on the "Restoration of the Spanish language in Philippine Education". In it, the Department mandates secondary schools to offer basic and advanced Spanish.
Administration
Directors
The Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language is led by a Board of Directors, which includes a director, two honorary directors, a vice-director, a secretary, a treasurer, a coordinator and the organization's librarian. Since August 22, 2016, the Academy has been led by the Recollect priest Emmanuel Luis Romanillos. Romanillos, a historian who became an academic of the Academy in 2005 and who previously served as its coordinator prior to becoming director, is associate professor of Spanish, Italian and Latin at the University of the Philippines Diliman, where he has taught for 30 years.
