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Why was the Royal Spanish Academy founded in 1713?
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Spanish literature
St. Luke, illuminated page from the Beatus Apocalypse, Mozarabic, 975; in the Gerona Cathedral, Spain.
The Royal Spanish Academy was founded in 1713 under the reign of Philip V, the first Bourbon king of Spain. Modeled after the French Academy in Paris, its primary purpose was to cultivate and establish standards for the purity and elegance of the Castilian language.1
To fulfill this mission, the academy undertook the creation of a comprehensive dictionary intended to serve as the definitive reference for the language. Today, the institution continues this work in collaboration with scholarly organizations across Latin America to promote the global lexicographical corpus of the Spanish language.1