ABSTRACT
This chapter studies what the Diccionario del español actual (DEA) by Manuel Seco, Olimpia Andrés and Gabino Ramos has meant for Spanish lexicography. It is a new dictionary of European Spanish from the second half of the twentieth century that incorporates living, documented and proven vocabulary, with real citations to support both the semantic and grammatical aspects. Definitions are then articulated around these. Twenty years have passed since the first edition (1999) of the DEA, but the dictionary continues to surprise on the Spanish lexicographical scene thanks to its approach. It is a general monolingual dictionary that is newly built, synchronous, descriptive, documented, contains new definitions and actual support quotes, and is the result of a rigorous and systematic methodological approach. In a sense, the DEA can be considered a unique dictionary of current written Spanish in Spain.
