The Royal Academy of the Basque Language (Euskaltzaindia) was to elect the candidate who was to take office after the proclamation on 28 February. Once the deadline for nominations had been opened, Paskual Rekalde and Paula Kasares presented to be number academics. The election took place this Friday at a plenary session of the Basque Language Academy held in Bilbao. By an absolute majority, Paskual Rekalde (Amaiur, 1963) has been elected a member of the Basque Language Academy; he has eight months to prepare the presentation. With Rekalde, there are 93 people who have been in the position of Euskaltzaindia number scholar since 1918.

Rekalde holds a degree in Basque Philology from the UPV/EHU. He is currently a translator of Basque from the Government of Navarra and a member of the Special Committee on Terminology of the Basque Government. He started his career in Euskaltzaindia twenty years ago and works in the following committees and working groups: Corpus, Euskalkiak, Euskaltzaindia Dictionary, EBE, Grammar and Onomastic. The Hizbea Linguistic Quality Observatory is also responsible for the service. In 2003 he was appointed a member of the Basque Language Academy and since 2018 he has been a subdelegate of Euskaltzaindia in Navarra.