During the Second Republic, in the first half of the 1930s, hundreds of libraries were created in Spain, especially in rural areas, which until then had lacked artistic and cultural activities. In 1937 María Moliner wrote Instructions for the service of small libraries, with the aim of guiding and encouraging inexperienced librarians, especially those assigned to small towns, where everyone knew each other. In these instructions, he indicated to them that the success of the library depended to a large extent on their work, that of stimulating reading and knowing how to guide the reader. Giving each person the book that will interest them, capture their interest and make them want to read it again, according to their tastes and interests.

Read the following excerpts written by María Moliner and comment on them.

The librarian, in order to put enthusiasm into his task, needs to believe in these two things: in the capacity for spiritual improvement of the people he is going to serve, and in the efficacy of his own mission to contribute to this improvement.

A librarian will not be a good librarian if he invariably greets the stranger with words that those of us who have visited Spanish villages on a cultural mission have engraved in our brains by dint of hearing them: “Look: in this village they are very closed-minded: you can talk to them about going to the dance, football or the cinema, but… To the library…!

In your town the people are no more closed-minded than in other towns in Spain or in other towns in the world. Try talking to them about culture and you will see how their eyes widen and their heads nod, and how they invariably reply: “That’s what we need: culture! They sense, in fact, that it is culture that they need, that without it there is no possibility of effective liberation, that it alone will give them sufficient impetus to join the fatal march of human progress without the risk of being overturned: they also feel that the culture denied to them is just another privilege conferred on certain people with no intrinsic superiority over them, sometimes with no moral value at all, an effective superiority in the estimation of society, in economic position, and so on. And they revolt against this, which they vaguely understand, by asking for culture, culture, culture…

Reading a book or watching a film can take you to unknown worlds, to meet other people and other ways of life or to live exciting adventures. María Moliner also wrote

Education is the basis of progress; I consider that reading is even a spiritual right and that, therefore, any citizen anywhere should have at hand the book or books he or she would like to read.

Do you think that reading stimulates imagination and creativity? Do you think that having more education helps you get a better job and prosper in life? Argue your answers.

The dictionary written by María Moliner was somewhat different from the one published by the Real Academia Española. The latter indicated how words had to be used correctly, whereas the Moliner’s dictionary also explained, with examples, how they were used in reality, how people used them in the street, even indicating colloquial or vulgar expressions. It did not impose rules but was a dictionary of usage. In this way, both those who spoke Spanish and those who wanted to learn it could better understand the meaning of each word and, moreover, handle it in an appropriate way.

Because of its characteristics, many writers preferred it as an aid when writing their literary works.  Thus, Miguel Delibes said of it: “it is a work that justifies a whole life”. And Fernando Savater: “it was the only dictionary that could be handled in this country”.

On 10 February 1981, just a few days after María Moliner’s death, the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, published a letter in the newspapers in which he pointed out how much he owed María Moliner. He thought it was an extraordinary feat that she had been able to write alone, by hand, at home, without any help, a work that seemed to have been put together by a large group of renowned specialists with abundant resources and a large budget. According to the novelist, it was more than twice as long as that of the Real Academia Española and more than twice as good. He always needed to have at hand the dictionary written by the Aragonese, the “most complete, the most useful, the most thorough and the most entertaining of the Castilian language”, in which he had managed to capture the reality of a living language. This, as if it were sand, slipped through the fingers of the academics, who favoured obscure definitions and were reluctant to accept the use of new words until they were already rigid and worn out by use.

A few years earlier he wanted to meet such an amazing woman. He travelled to Spain believing she would be famous, but, to his great surprise, it turned out that few knew her. He finally managed to find one of her sons, who told him that his mother was very ill and was not receiving visitors. When María Moliner died, García Márquez said he felt as if he had lost a loved one. Someone who, without knowing it, had worked tirelessly for him. A unique person who “tried to grasp all the words of life on the fly” to make them available to all those who speak Spanish.

Do you know who Miguel Delibes, Fernando Savater and Gabriel García Márquez are? Search the internet for a summary of their literary careers. Also look up the title of some of their works. Have you read any of their works? What was their plot?

If there is one thing that differentiates us from the rest of the living beings we know, animals and plants, it is language, the use of words, which allows us to communicate with each other and to elaborate complex thoughts. Things that do not have names do not exist, because without a word to identify them we cannot inform anyone of their existence.

In all languages, words have an origin, an etymology, and María Moliner liked to group them according to that origin. In her book, the thematic order took precedence over alphabetical order. Thus, for example, we could know that balón derives from bala or that cultura and cultivo have the same origin and, therefore, the same root.

Is it correct to say that a field remains uncultivated, and that a person is uncultivated?

Try to find out if the word “assassin” has any relation to hashish. Or if the word “inaugurate” is related to the augurs, soothsayers from Roman times.

Also search the internet for the origin of the words “paper”, “book”, “library” and “parchment”. To give you a hint: two of them are related to plants and the other two to ancient cities. Do you know why?

In each region, even within the same country with the same language, there are particular words used only by the people who live there. In Aragon there are quite a few, which are not understood by the inhabitants of other parts of Spain.

Match the words used in Aragon in the left column with the meanings in the right column.

Chipiar                                                Desaguisado

Esbafar                                                Calambre

Chandrío                                             Chismoso

Encorrer                                               Goloso

Laminero                                             Barrer

Garrampa                                           Perseguir

Escobar                                                Perder el gas

A cordetas                                           Limpio

Escoscado                                           Mojar

Alparcero                                             A caballito

Solutions: 1-i, 2-g, 3-a, 4-f, 5-d, 6-b, 7-e, 8-j, 9-h, 10-c

When María Moliner’s dictionary was published, it caused great admiration. Who was this woman who had written an entire dictionary? Praise followed one after the other, and there were even several academics who argued that the author should be a member of the Real Academia Española. Three of them, as stipulated in the regulations, proposed in 1972 that she should occupy a place that was vacant at the time. In the end, however, it was decided to choose a different candidate. Among the reasons given for rejecting her appointment was that she was not a philologist but a history graduate. Moreover, no woman had ever been a member of the Academy since it was created in 1713.

And the latter was true. The first woman whose name was put forward to join the Academy was the poet and playwright Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. She tried in 1853, but, after intense debate, an agreement was reached that year to ban women from the institution. In later years, other women of real merit were mentioned, such as Rosalía de Castro and Concepción Arenal. But the doors of the Academy remained closed to women.

An exceptional case was that of the writer Emilia Pardo Bazán, whose works were among the most widely read in her time, both in Spain and abroad. She tried to become an academic on several occasions, in 1889, 1891, 1912 and 1914. But she never succeeded because of her status as a woman, despite the widespread support of the press and literary figures of the stature of Benito Pérez Galdós.

Who was the first woman member of the Royal Spanish Academy? When did she join? How many female academicians have there been in the more than three hundred years of the institution’s history? Have they all devoted themselves exclusively to literature?

There are currently several women academicians and two of them have a special relationship with Aragón: Soledad Puértolas and Aurora Egido. What do you know about them? Search the internet for information about their lives and careers.

And not only that. In 2012, a play entitled El diccionario (The Dictionary), starring María Moliner, was premiered. It was written by Manuel Calzada and published in book form a year later. And in 2016, María Moliner… an opera was premiered at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid! Focusing on the moment when she embarked on the elaboration of her dictionary, it revealed her intuitions, her passions, her nostalgia and fantasies, as well as the cruel illness which in her final years made her forget all the words she herself defined.