Iberdrola : Fundación pro-RAE and Iberdrola enter into agreement to build the digital base for the next edition of the Dictionary of the Spanish Language

The Chairman of Iberdrola, Ignacio Galán, and the Director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and Vice-President of Fundación pro-RAE, Darío Villanueva, entered into a collaboration agreement today in Madrid to build the new digital base of the next edition - the 24th - of the Dictionary of the Spanish Language.

The company is going to fund the compilation of the base for the upcoming twenty-fourth edition of the Dictionary, which will be the first one to be conceived in digital format. For Ignacio Galán, this 'clearly shows that the institution is constantly adapting to modern times and making an unequivocal commitment to the use of the new technologies'.

Emphasising the same idea, the Director of the RAE, Darío Villanueva, pointed out that 'thanks to hypertext and browsability, it is possible to jump from one term to another, to search for the meaning of a word that we do not understand and which was used to define another, pull up a list of all the complex expressions containing a particular word, retrieve all the entries containing a transitive verb, etc. In short: it is possible to use a dictionary in the same way as we use a database without needing to know the query language'.

He also added that the digital base allows to 'include various types of information, for example an audio recording showing the way(s) a word is pronounced, a link to the text corpora to provide examples of how a word is used or how often it appears in a particular country or type of text, a link to other related dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc'.

The Director of the RAE believes that the ideal scenario for the next edition of the Dictionaryis 'for each person that looks something up to find the version that best suits their needs, the one that provides all the information they need and only that which is necessary'.

Collaboration with institutions

The Chairman of Iberdrola explained that this agreement with the Fundación pro-RAE is part of the company's commitment to cultural heritage and collaboration with institutions, particularly this year, in which the 4thCentenary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes is being commemorated.

Mr. Galán went on to say that the agreement also reflects the company's strong foothold in various countries on the American continent. 'For example, Mexico, the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world, where Iberdrola is the leading private producer of electricity; the United States, where a total of 41 million people are native speakers of Spanish and where our operations span 25 states; and Brazil, where Spanish will be the second language in just a decade and where Iberdrola supplies electricity to 40 million people'.

'In all of these territories, where we supply energy to millions of people and provide employment to tens of thousands, we bear witness to and are also actively involved in the strength of the Spanish language and its rising use in every sphere: business, finance, technology and culture', he added.

Iberdrola's commitment to society

Iberdrola has been committed to cultural heritage as one of the mainstays of its policy on CSR for several years now. The company supports the restoration programme at the Prado Museum and also backs a project to change the lighting in the various rooms at the gallery. It also runs projects such as the Atlantic Romanesque Plan (www.romanicoatlantico.orgExternal link, opens in new window.) and the Lighting Programme for unique buildings, with almost a hundred different initiatives in recent years.

In the area of training,the company awards annual scholarships and research grants, with a view to boosting training for the up and coming generations, mainly in the field of energy.

Iberdrola also supports about thirty social projects each year via the calls for applications it has been running since 2010 to combat poverty and social exclusion and provide assistance to people that are ill or dependent. This scheme benefited over 25,000 people on a direct and indirect basis in 2015 alone and generated around 150 jobs.

Lastly, in the area of biodiversity, the flagship scheme is the Bird Migration Programme (www.migraciondeaves.orgExternal link, opens in new window.), which is run by SEO/BirdLife in Spain with backing from Iberdrola.

About the Royal Spanish Academy

The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) was founded in Madrid in 1713. It was modelled on the French Academy and was set up with the mission of working for the benefit of the Spanish language, as stated in its first articles of association.

From the moment it was created, the Academy set itself the fundamental goal of compiling a dictionary of Castilian Spanish that would be 'as extensive as possible'. This goal was achieved when it published the Dictionary of authorities in six volumes between 1726 and 1739. A new version of the institution's first dictionary - in a single volume to make it easier to consult and without the quotes from authors - was launched in 1780. That edition was to be the first in the series of dictionaries published on a regular basis down to the present day.

Since then, a total of 23 editions of the work have been published. Over time, it has become the benchmark dictionary for queries about the Spanish language. The most recent edition, i.e. the 23rdedition, was published in October 2014.

The Fundación pro Real Academia Española was set up in 1993, under the honorary presidency of the King of Spain, with the core mission of 'backing, insofar as possible, all activities that legally constitute the purpose or goals of the Royal Spanish Academy'.

The benefactor members of the Foundation, both corporations and private individuals, have enabled various academic projects to be carried out. Iberdrola has been collaborating with the Foundation on successive editions of the Dictionary since the year 2004.

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