UC Berkeley professors emeriti Jerry Craddock and Charles Faulhaber, both former chairs of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, have been selected for lifetime appointments as foreign corresponding members in the prestigious Royal Spanish Academy.

The Royal Spanish Academy — founded in the 18th century — is modeled off the Académie française and is responsible for “guarding the purity” of the Spanish language by publishing the official Spanish dictionary and setting the official grammar rules of Spanish, Faulhaber said. There are currently 102 foreign corresponding members in the academy.

The title of foreign corresponding member is mostly honorific, as members do not take part in those duties, Faulhaber said. He added that the Royal Spanish Academy elects foreign corresponding members based on their whole body of work and that an appointment is similar to being elected into a sports hall of fame.

Craddock said it was an unexpected honor and that he believes he was chosen for his textual work with the law books of King Alfonso X of Castile and Léon and his establishment of the Cibola Project, which he has been working on since his retirement in 2002.

Read more here