More than 300 people ask the RAE to “reconsider” the candidacy of Sergio Ramírez due to his Sandinista political past

A total of 353 personas have signed a manifesto on change.org to ask to the RAE to “reconsider” the candidacy of Sergio Ramírez to occupy the L chair left vacant by the Spanish-Peruvian writer and Nobel Prize winner in Literature Mario Vargas Llosa.

The petition on change.org, under the title ‘That the L chair of the RAE does not erase the memory of the victims of Sandinismo’has been created by the citizen platform Víctimas del Sandinismo that considers that Ramírez’s designation is “incompatible with the dignity that this distinction demands.”.

The platform maintains that Ramírez’s appointment “it would be an insult to the victims and a moral loss for the Academy itself,” and they reproach the Nicaraguan author for not having carried out “sufficient public self-criticism” about his time as a revolutionary leader. “On May 4, 2026, upon receiving the Ortega y Gasset Prize for Journalism, Ramírez bravely denounced the censorship of the current regime, without mentioning once what happened during the eight years in which he held positions of maximum responsibility in the State,” laments the organization.

In the petition, the entity recalls that Sergio Ramirez He was a member of the Government Board of National Reconstruction of Nicaragua between 1979 and 1985, vice president of the Republic between 1985 and 1990, and candidate for reelection on the FSLN ticket in February 1990.

“He did not abandon that project: he sought to extend it until the last day that was possible. During that period, the IACHR, Americas Watch, Amnesty International and the Permanent Commission on Human Rights of Nicaragua documented serious events that include: massive forced transfers, extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances and destruction of indigenous communities Miskitas on the Atlantic Coast,” criticizes Victims of Sandinism.

The document asks the RAE to consider whether this candidacy “honors the memory of the academic whom it replaces and the dignity of the language it preserves“.

The RAE will vote this afternoon the candidacy of Sergio Ramírez, who has the support from the director of the Royal Spanish Academy, Santiago Muñoz Machado; of the former director of the RAE and the Cervantes Institute, Víctor García de la Concha, and Luis Mateo Díez, Cervantes Prize 2023. The RAE’s entry regulations establish that members who wish to enter must have the endorsement of three academics.

The call for this full academic position was published in the Official State Gazette of April 6, 2026 and the reading of the praise and merits took place in the extraordinary plenary session on May 14, which was held at the San Marcelo City Hall (León).