His candidacy was the only one submitted and was supported by Mario Vargas Llosa, Clara Sánchez and Pedro Álvarez de Miranda, but the election of Javier Cercas (Ibahernando, Cáceres, 62 years old) as a member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), she would be voted in on Thursday and win an absolute majority. This is what ended up happening, according to the author of Soldiers of Salamis He will occupy the institution's R chair, which became vacant in 2022 following the death of writer Javier Marías. From today, Javier Cercas joins the group that, as the old motto of the academy said: “cleans, repairs and gives splendor” to the Spanish language.

After the vote in favor of Javier Cercas, the seat he held is still vacant Francisco Rico, died last April because, according to the tradition of the institution, the procedures for occupying him do not begin until six months after the death of an academic. In case of Javier Marías, almost two years have passed and Cercas has two others to deliver his entrance speech at the RAE.

The work of the RAE will not be foreign to the new member. A philologist by training, Cercas combined his work as a writer and columnist for many years with teaching as a professor of Spanish literature at the University of Girona. He made his debut with the novel in the late 1980s The cellphone (1987), but success came in the newly released New Century, in 2001, with Soldiers of Salamis, a book of which he sold almost a million copies, which was translated into dozens of languages and with which he delved into a real episode of the Spanish Civil War: the failed execution of the Phalangist poet Rafael Sánchez-Mazas. That book, which promoted both autofiction and the recovery of historical memory in Spain, gave definitive impetus to his nascent career and has been included in numerous lists of the best books of this century.

Cercas continued to explore these literary games with nonfiction, resulting in some of his most celebrated books, such as Anatomy of a moment (2010), The impostor (2014) or The Shadow Monarch (2017). But that boundary between reality and fiction is not the only one that this author, a devoted reader of Cervantes, has explored: he has also published essays such as The blind spota series of three detective novels with the background of processes starring one moso d'esquadra and various collections of articles such as Don't be silent. Chronicles, essays and articles 2000-2022, published last year and where his columns are collected published on Sunday in The weekly country.

He has also received several awards throughout his career. From the National Story of Anatomy of a moment (which x-rayed the failed coup in Spain in 1981) to the Llibreter, the Terenci Moix or the Planeta (for example Terra Alta 2019). Other prizes for his journalistic work (such as the Lara, the Francisco Cerecedo or the Mariano de Cavia) guarantee his involvement in current affairs and his ability to reflect on the present. He has also received international recognition, such as the Prix Ulysse, in France, or the Premio Internazionale del Salone del Libro di Torino, the Friuladria or the Sicilia, in Italy.

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