Monday February 18th, 2013 the Spanish photographer Cristina García Rodero was the fourth woman to be admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando). García Rodero was selected in the first round of voting. Her candidacy had been submitted by photographer Alberto Schommer, film director Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón and sculptor Julio López Hernández.

The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando is the longest-running art institution and most relevant cultural force in Spain. It is composed of renowned personalities in the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, music, film, graphic art, photography, design and art history and theory.

Francisco de Goya was once one of the Academy's directors, and, its alumni include, among others, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Antonio López García, Juan Luna, and Fernando Botero.

Scholars have voted for García Rodero for “her blend of technical quality and powerful testimony of Spain’s present reality". She has won numerous awards during her long-standing career. These include prizes W. Eugene Smith in New York and Cologne Erich Salomon (1990), the Spain’s National Photography Prize (1996) and the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (2006).

Her work has been widely published and exhibited internationally. She has published several books and has been a member of the agency Vu for more than 15 years. Garcia Rodero joined Magnum in 2005 and became a full member in 2009.