Philologist and academic Francisco Rico, member of the RAE, dies

Barcelona. The philologist and member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language (RAE) Francisco Rico, specialist in Miguel de Cervantes and The Quijotehas died in Barcelona on the verge of turning 82, they reported this Saturday to Europa Press fuentes of the RAE.

It has also been announced via ‘X’ by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), where Rico was emeritus professor of Medieval Literatures.

“The UAB extends its condolences to all the people who knew and appreciated him and shares the feeling for his loss,” he added in the message.

On Tuesday, the journalist and academic Luis María Anson had a memory for Rico during a conference at the RAE’s Cervantina Week, where he said that he was in Barcelona, ​​sick.

The philologist born in Barcelona had roots in the Valladolid municipality of Aldeamayor de San Martín on his mother’s side. In fact, the Municipal Library is named after him.

Biography

Francisco Rico Manrique (Barcelona, ​​April 28, 1942), who would have turned 82 this Sunday, was a philologist and historian of literature from the Middle Ages to the Golden Age, and was a specialist in The Quijotein Petrarch and in the beginning of humanism in Italy and in Lazarillo.

He took possession of the ‘p’ chair of the RAE on June 4, 1987, with a speech Lázaro de Tormes and the place of the novel.

He directed the Classical Library collection of the Royal Spanish Academy (BCRAE), which includes the complete works of Cervantes, presented in November 2019.

In 2016 he was part of the academic delegation that delivered to Pope Francis in the Vatican the most complete edition of The Quijote (2015) was presented on June 23, 2015 in the RAE.

Recognitions

According to the RAE, in 2013 he received the 2013 Alfonso Reyes Prize at the College of Mexico (Colmex) and in 2015 the Spanish Government agreed to grant him the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts.

In 2016 he was awarded an Honoris Causa doctorate by the University of Bologna (Italy) and also received the De Sanctis Prize in Rome for the essay ‘I venerdì del Petrarca’ (Petrarch’s Fridays).

Publications and activities

In 2014 he participated in the ‘Comicians of the language’ sessions with a comment about The Quijote (a performance that was repeated in other places and years) and in 2015 he participated in a radio version of RNE’s Don Quixote.

In 2017 meeting in Cervantine annals your articles in The country and recent unpublished texts; In 2018 he published Paradoxes of independence y Writers in the self-employed. The literary gatheringand in 2022 Lesson and inheritance of Elio Antonio de Nebrija.