TRAINING FOR LEADERSHIP

Rafael del Pino chairs

In 2002 the Foundation decided to set up the Rafael del Pino Chairs for Spanish or foreign professors of high standing who have international experience and, as a general rule, are taking a sabbatical. The Chairs are not specifically linked to any one academic establishment, it being the professors who choose where they wish to carry out their activities.

The purpose of the Chairs is to give support, as a supplement to the remuneration provided by the academic establishments of the professors holding Chairs, to a top level piece of research that must, without exception, be published in English by a commercial publisher, or must give rise to publications in the world’s best specialised journals.

On 5 December 2007, the Foundation awarded a new Rafael del Pino Chair to Professor Amando de Miguel, Professor of Sociology at Madrid Complutense University, for him to teach and perform research in 2008 as a visiting professor, mainly at the University of Texas at San Antonio (United States). Under the arrangement with Professor de Miguel, the purpose of the Chair was to conduct research entitled El Español de hoy y de mañana [Spanish today and tomorrow], focused on analysing the Spanish language at the present time.

The result of the research will be a book entitled Se habla español [Spanish Spoken], produced in collaboration with Professor Francisco A. Marcos-Marín, Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Texas, which will be published by Biblioteca Nueva in 2009.