The current "glocal" dynamics poses new questions and challenges for scholars engaged in the study of language policy and planning (LPP), especially with regard to the adoption of measures for the democratisation of languages and their speakers. The latest studies have highlighted the role of speakers' agency (their attitudes, beliefs and practices) as triggering factors in the successful implementation of language policies. In view of the above, the present paper analyses how the different theoretical frameworks in the history of LPP are reflected upon the discursive performance of the different normative agents in the Spanish-speaking world: from governments and other regulatory organisations such as language academies to LPP researchers themselves, whose work is crucial to develop the conceptual and methodological tools of the discipline. An adaptation and contextualisation of the orientations developed by Ruiz [1984. "Orientations in Language Planning." "NABE Journal" 8: 15-34] will help us observe the evolution of the different paradigms in the Spanish-speaking world when it comes to the writings of mainstream linguists and language planners. It is our conviction that an ethnographic and critical approach to the inquiry of Spanish LPP needs to be adopted in a "de facto" promotion of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism.