Guillermo Gómez Rivera

Who is Guillermo Gómez Rivera?

Guillermo Gómez Rivera, is a Filipino multilingual author, historian, educator and linguistic scholar whose lifelong work has been devoted to the often controversial movement to preserve Spanish culture as an important element of the Filipino identity.

Currently sitting as the most senior academic director of the Academia Filipina de la Lengua under the Real Academia Española, he was awarded in 1975 the Premio Zóbel, the Philippines' highest literary honor bestowed on the best works in Spanish. His expertise in the Spanish language as well as his knowledge of various Philippine languages like Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Tagalog and Chabacano earned him the position as secretary of the Commission on the Filipino Language Committee of the Philippine Constitutional Convention.

As an educator, he served as a professor of Spanish at Adamson University and wrote textbooks on Spanish grammar, speech and composition while working for San Miguel Corporation, a food conglomerate. He used his academic position to try to influence national debates on the question of whether or not Spanish should be retained as a compulsory subject in Philippine high schools and universities, a battle that many pro-Spanish advocates believe they had lost with the passage of the 1987 Constitution but which some Hispanists say started with the 1973 Constitution. He also formed a dance school specializing in flamenco and Sevillanas. He has done a thorough research on these Spanish dances, travelling to Seville and learning from some of the most well-known international Spanish performers of these dance forms. He is considered the undisputed maestro of flamenco in the Philippines.