varieties of Spanish can be located in both geographical and social space, with the speech of the most powerful being most similar to the standard roof, while the speech of the least powerful differs the most from the standard. Today, forms from standard Spanish are increasingly penetrating into rural speech and competing with nonstandard forms. Concern over fragmentation During the 1880s, a new political situation and the intellectual independence of the former colonies drove the Real Academia Española to propose the formation of branch academies in the Spanish-speaking republics. The project encountered some opposition among local intellectuals. In Argentina, for example, Juan Antonio Argerich, suspecting an attempt by Spain at cultural restoration, argued in favor of an independent academy, one that would not be merely "a branch office, a servant to Spanish imperialism", and Juan María Gutiérrez rejected the naming of a correspondent. However, the proposal was finally accepted, eventually resulting in the founding of the Association of Spanish Language Academies. The academies insisted on the preservation of a "common language", based on the upper-class speech of Spain and without regard for the influence that indigenous languages of the Americas and other European languages such as Italian, Portuguese, and English were having on the lexicon and even the grammar of American Spanish. That orientation persisted through the 20th century. A 1918 letter from Ramón Menéndez Pidal of the Real Academia Española to the American Association of Teachers of Spanish on the appearance of the first issue of its journal Hispania suggested: The priority of written language over spoken language, and of Peninsular Spanish over American varieties, was the central thesis of Menéndez Pidal's letter. The "barbaric character of the American indigenous languages", in his opinion, should prevent them from having any influence over American Spanish. The tutorship of the Academy would take care of the rest. With that he was trying to counteract the prediction made by Andrés Bello in the prologue (p. xi) to his Grammar of 1847, which warned of the profusion of regional varieties that would "flood and cloud much of what is written in America, and, altering the structure of the language, tend to make it into a multitude of irregular, licencious, barbarian dialects". According to this interlocking linguistic and political viewpoint, only the unity of the "educated" language would guarantee the unity of the Hispanic world. On the other hand, the Colombian philologist Rufino José