Castilian or Spanish: The RAE Settled It, Politics Didn't

RAE: "Castilian" and "Spanish" are synonyms; the real issue is elsewhere

The Constitution doesn't say "Spanish." It says "castellano." Article 3 literally states that "castellano is the official Spanish language of the State" and that all Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it. The Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy also takes this approach, cross-referencing the terms and declaring them equivalent. Case closed, one might think. Except the issue was never truly linguistic.

Because every time a media outlet, a sign, or a school manual chooses one of the two words, someone on the other side is convinced a boundary is being moved. The discussion resurfaces with the same force it had decades ago when it was supposedly settled, mixing spelling, identity, and—of course—separatism. All in the same breath.

Which word is correct: "castellano" or "español"?

Both. The RAE is explicit: "To designate the common language of Spain and many nations of America, and which is also spoken as its own in other parts of the world, both terms, castellano and español, are valid." It adds that the controversy over which is more appropriate is now overcome. And the academic dictionary defines "castellano," in its linguistic sense, as "Spanish language, especially when distinguishing it from any other native language of Spain."

The nuance is right there: distinguishing. Those who use "castellano" are usually not denying Spain; they are usually pointing out that other languages are spoken within Spain. Something similar happens in Italy, where, as a participant recalls, standard Italian is basically Florentine Tuscan. And the argument that English is called that because of England and not "British" works both ways: it's a name of territorial origin, exactly like castellano.

The antiestéticar that the language will cease to be called "Spanish"

There's a current that interprets the substitution of terms as a deliberate maneuver. If the official language no longer carries the country's name, they reason, it no longer identifies with it. From there to claiming there's an order to erase Spain from the map is a small step, and one taken shamelessly in any barroom conversation. It's a suspicion, not a fact: there's no record of such an order, and the constitutional text—not suspected of separatism—already used "castellano" in 1978.

On the other side, the response is more prosaic. Several languages that are also Spanish coexist in Spain, and calling only one of them "Spanish" is, at the very least, confusing. "Galician is as Spanish as Castilian," summarizes one of the circulating viewpoints. For the international context, however, almost everyone concedes that "Spanish" is more practical: outside the peninsula, castellano requires explaining what is being discussed.

From spelling to the State: the 1812 thesis

At some point, grammar falls by the wayside and history appears. A strong circulating thesis argues that until 1812, Galicians predominantly spoke Galician, Basques spoke Basque, and Catalans spoke Catalan, while Castilians spoke Castilian; the shift from "castellano" to "español" supposedly came later, driven by the State's homogenizing power. It's a reading with centuries of history, and it relies on something verifiable: the name traveled with the empire before the nation.

The counterargument comes from the other side and also has substance. It's argued that Spain never had a central power as strong as in other European countries, so linguistic imposition by decree is more legend than reality. An language expanding because those in power speak it is not the same as prohibiting others. Both versions coexist without either managing to prevail, and therein probably lies the key to why the topic resurfaces every so often.

When language ends up in medieval history class

The final stretch goes where these things usually go: the Middle Ages. The defense emerges that the Early and High Middle Ages in the Peninsula were a stage of freedoms conquered by the people, not granted, with the open council as a counterpower. And the erudite correction appears: the so-called right of the first night never existed as a regulated law, but rather as a propaganda tool of the Crown against the nobility and, later, as a claim of the Enlightenment to portray the era as a dark abyss.

It's quite something that a discussion about a language's name ends up debating whether feudalism concentrated or distributed power. It also says a lot about how any identity debate works today: it starts with a word and ends up questioning the entire State, its legitimacy, and its monopoly on violence. The conversation drifts, heats up, and returns to the starting point without having moved an inch.

Why a language's name generates so much noise

Because it's the last easy frontier. Renaming a language costs no money, requires no parliamentary majority, and cannot be audited. It's a cheap gesture with maximum symbolic weight, and that's why it has become a battlefield for a culture war that needs no tanks. The RAE can repeat a thousand times that they are synonyms; those who want to read a political message will read it anyway.

Meanwhile, the language continues its course: it is spoken, written, and learned regardless of its name. The underlying question is not how to name it, but why, at this point, we still believe that the chosen word says something about the person using it. Or does it say something about us?