Mira was quickly cut off by the male journalist interviewing her, who told her that in school he had “been taught Spanish.” The exchange sparked a national conversation about language that later extended to other Spanish-speaking countries.

For Spanish speakers, talking in gender-inclusive terms is more challenging than for English speakers. For starters, Spanish — like many other Romance languages — is especially binary: Every pronoun, adjective and noun is gendered. And its plural form, when referring to a mixed group of people (even if it’s mostly women and just one man), is often the masculine “o.”  But some Spanish speakers, like Mira, are trying to change that.

For years, the “@” symbol or the letter “x” has been used in an attempt to be more inclusive — sometimes even in an English context, where the terms Latino and Latina are often replaced with Latinx. Yet, for some, these forms have flaws: the “@” symbol is still binary — it represents both the masculine “o” and the feminine “a,” and the “x” in Spanish can be difficult to pronounce. 

The Royal Spanish Academy, founded in 1713 by Spain’s King Felipe V with the goal of “uniting the Spanish-speaking world,” all of which was ruled by Spain at the time, has yet to accept the growing movement to make Spanish more gender-inclusive with the use of the “e” suffix. 

And to this day, the academy continues to be a point of reference for the more than 500 million Spanish speakers worldwide.

When it comes to gender-inclusive language, though, the Royal Spanish Academy says the form is “artificial and unnecessary” because the masculine-plural already encompasses all genders. Rosalía Vázquez, a copy editor in Ecuador, says grammatically speaking, the academy is correct.