in memory of Don Rafael Seco Serrano, the great grammar

RAPHAEL SECO SERRANO Rafael Seco died in Madrid at the age of 93. His death reminds me of the happy days when I, an excited young man, took notes in Raphael Lapes's lessons at the Center. The reference text for this course was Rafael Seko's MANUAL DE GRAMÁTICA ESPAÑOLA. There I received my baptism of fire with a verbal wedding of love that lasted a lifetime. Spanish was my travel companion. I remember those elegant girls who later became professors. Someone loves, and someone angrily descends to the bar of the Faculty of Philosophy and asks students who humbly at the end of the lesson put themselves on a pillar at the entrance to the classroom, in accordance with the ancient scholastic custom of Complutense and resolve doubts and questions with humility and solitude that only great humanists have. Language is the trunk on which everything develops and where a person leaves a trace of his obsessions, dreams, fears, failures and statements, duels, weddings, baptisms. According to Unamuno, it is a means of transmitting thoughts, but they are one and the same thought. One day Damaso Alonso came to teach us the main lesson. He was not the son of Wrath or that Madrid was a city with a million corpses. He told us that it was a poetic invention and drank with us two glasses of battle wine from the Segundo de Comunes. I remember that the bodies in his huge library were his obsession. There were over ten thousand books in his apartment. What will I do with all my books when I die? Asturian from Oviedo Maria Martinez Sapico said to the famous poet and philologist for her peace of mind: "Who thinks about it, sir!" Fifty years passed, and he, Maria Martinez Sapico de Sotrondio, got to the Barca de Queronte a long time ago. May God keep you in your Kingdom and forgive us all. I believe that tongues redeem and heal, some say they lengthen life. They are spiritual calixtures and are more effective for health than running and jogging. In my life, which has been going on for a long time, I really loved this sport, and not another. Don Raphael taught us the basic rules of the Castilian language, which is richer in Latinism than any of the other Romance languages ​​(French, English, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese) with intertwined borrowings from Arabic. Celtic and Gothic. Possession of his rules - morphology, syntax, spelling - and he would add a fourth semiology and a fifth paremiology of proverb or folk wisdom that makes us cultured, educated and civilized. On the other hand, the turmoil of Babylon is barbaric, which is not much of what is happening. For me, language has always been a refuge, an instrument of communication and understanding. When I am trampled or prostituted, I go on the attack. Languages ​​are not imposed by authoritarian decrees, and they are not idle talk by official decrees. This is a folk speech. This is why Spanish is so cheerful. It is spoken by five hundred million people. Then let the earth be bright, Don Rafael Seco Serrano. That you were my professor. And a worthy heir to the legacy of Nebridge.