Santiago Muñoz Machado is Director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and President of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE).

A full member of the RAE and the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, he is also Vice-President of the Foundation for the Royal Spanish Academy, President of the Ricardo Delgado Vizcaíno Foundation and ex officio Advisor to the Council of State and has been President of the Institute of Spain.

He promoted the constitution of the Escuela Libre de Derecho y Economía, as well as the implementation of a collaborative project that gave rise to the current Spanish Association of Foundations. In the academic field, he has been a Visiting Professor at numerous American and European universities. He was Professor of Administrative Law at the Complutense University of Madrid until 2014.

He holds Honorary Doctorates from the universities of Salamanca, Valencia, Córdoba, Extremadura, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso and the Universidad Nacional de San Agustin de Arequipa. He is also an honorary member of the Colombian Academy of Language, the Nicaraguan Academy of Language, the Peruvian Academy of Language and the Royal Academy of Sciences, Fine Arts and Noble Letters of Córdoba, and a corresponding member of the Academies of Language of Cuba, Guatemala, Paraguay, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, as well as an illustrious member of the Chilean Academy of Language.

He has received honorary decorations such as the medal of the Cortes Generales, the Medal of Andalusia and the Gran Cruz de la Orden de San Raimundo de Peñafort. He has won the National Essay Prize (2013) and the National History Prize (2018).

Muñoz holds a PhD in Law from the Complutense University of Madrid. He is a lawyer, writer, editor and Technician in the Civil Administration of the State.