The University of Panama and the Panamanian Academy of Language have been invited to sign the Granada Declaration on the Development, Communication, and Dissemination of Science in Spanish.
As part of its Spanish Strategy (2025–2031), the University of Granada (UGR) is collaborating with Hispano-American institutions to create standardized scientific corpora, consolidate language policies to boost the global reach of Spanish, and develop technological resources to foster the use of Spanish in academia and specialized digital environments.
While in Panama, UGR’s president Pedro Mercado discussed the role of Spanish as an academic and scientific language in the new ecosystem shaped by artificial intelligence, warning that AI-related advances are built on the existing online content that is predominantly in English, which “limits the potential of Spanish to generate specialized knowledge,” adding that more than 90% of the texts used to train AI models are written in English.
“If we want AI to be able to reason and generate science in Spanish, then it needs sufficient high-quality raw material,” he added. He emphasized the importance of fostering projects that focus on data collection, terminology standardization, and the development of technological infrastructures that do not depend exclusively on major international corporations.
Mercado also pointed out that the predominance of English in high-impact journals limits the visibility of Spanish as a language of academic prestige and hinders the creation of new words to describe scientific advances. “A language that fails to name its scientific advances is vulnerable,” he added.
To help overcome such limitations, there are several new initiatives in the Ibero-American sphere, such as the development of language models specifically trained for Spanish, as well as projects aimed at creating interoperable, pan-Hispanic terminology repositories. Mercado also emphasized the role that universities must play in promoting AI capable of generating original content in Spanish, rather than just translating from English.
Spanish Evolves with Technology
Even Spain’s venerable Real Academia Española(RAE) now recognizes that Spanish must adapt to thrive in today’s technology-oriented world. The latest digital version of its Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE) includes 330 new words, many of which are adopted or borrowed from Silicon Valley.
The English words gif, hashtag, mailing, and streaming have been incorporated as extranjerismos crudos (raw foreign words), while other terms have been adjusted into Spanish, for example loguearse (to log in).
The dictionary has expanded definitions for existing words to accommodate new digital meanings—the word etiqueta (tag) now includes its social media sense (hashtag), and directo (live) has been updated to reflect live streaming on platforms. From the world of video games, comecocos (Pac-Man) finally gets recognition. The term milenial (millennial) also joins the dictionary, acknowledging the generation that has shaped so much of our contemporary language.
Santiago Muñoz Machado, director of the RAE and president of the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE), emphasized that these additions are not arbitrary decisions. “None of these novelties is a whim of some academic,” he explained, adding that proposals come from institutions, individuals, and academics. The Instituto de Lexicografía evaluates each request, considering input from Spanish academies across the Americas before making final decisions.