1906, THE ROYAL GALICIAN ACADEMY STARTS WORKING

Today, The Grandma has visited The Royal Galician Academy in A Coruña to commemorate the anniversary of an institution that was born on a day like today in 1906.

The Royal Galician Academy, in Galician Real Academia Galega, RAG, is an institution dedicated to the study of Galician culture and especially the Galician language; it promulgates norms of grammar, spelling, and vocabulary and works to promote the language. The Academy is based in A Coruña, Galicia.

In 1905, the Sociedade Protectora da Academia Gallega was founded in La Habana, Cuba. Then on September 30, 1906, thanks to the efforts of writers Manuel Curros Enríquez and Xosé Fontenla Leal, it was reestablished as the Real Academia Galega. Manuel Murguía was its first president.

In 1972, the Academy standardized the design of the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Galicia. 

Some years later, the Academy persuaded the Galician government to commemorate the old coat of arms by superimposing it on the existing civil flag; the resulting flag is used today. Its terminological branch is Termigal.

More information: Real Academia Galega (Galician Verion)

Galician, also known as Galego, is a Western Ibero-Romance language. 

Around 2.4 million people have at least some degree of competence in the language, mainly in Galicia. 

The language is also spoken in some border zones of the neighbouring regions of Asturias and Castile and León, as well as by Galician migrant communities.

Modern Galician is part of the West Iberian languages group, a family of Romance languages that includes the Portuguese language.  

Galician evolved locally from Vulgar Latin and developed, by the 13th century, into what modern scholars have called Galician-Portuguese. 

The earliest document written integrally in the local Galician variety dates back to 1230, although the subjacent Romance permeates most written Latin local charters since the High Middle Ages, being specially noteworthy in personal and place names recorded in those documents, as well as in terms originated in languages other than Latin. 

More information: O Portal da Lingua Galega

The earliest reference to Galician-Portuguese as an international language of culture dates to 1290, in the Regles de Trobar by Catalan author Jofre de Foixà, where it is simply called Galician (galego).

Dialectal divergences are observable between the northern and southern forms of Galician-Portuguese in 13th-century texts but the two dialects were similar enough to maintain a high level of cultural unity until the middle of the 14th century, producing the medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric. The divergence has continued to this day, most frequently due to innovations in Portuguese, producing the modern languages of Galician and Portuguese.

The lexicon of Galician is predominantly of Latin extraction, although it also contains a moderate number of words of Germanic and Celtic origin, among other substrates and adstrates, having also received, mainly via Spanish, a number of nouns from Andalusian Arabic.

The language is officially regulated in Galicia by the Royal Galician Academy. 

Other organizations without institutional support, such as the Galician Association of Language and the Galician Academy of the Portuguese Language, include Galician as part of the Portuguese language.

More information: Google Arts & Culture

Porque a verdadeira tradición non emana do pasado,
nin está no presente, nin no porvenir;
non é servinte do tempo.
A tradición non é a historia.
A tradición é a eternidade.

Because true tradition does not emanate from the past,
nor is it in the present, nor in the future;
You are not a servant of time.
Tradition is not history.
Tradition is eternity.

Alfonso Rodríguez Castelao