I just came across this sentence. Notice the two "que" in the beginning:
Y es que que la lengua obligue constantemente a escoger palabras y terminaciones que conllevan un género social que no se corresponde con el género de la persona es, como poco, conflictivo.
Elena Álvarez Mellado, Todas, tod@s, todxs, todes: historia de la disidencia gramatical.
A simpler version (more apt as an example for this question) would be:
Y es que que la lengua obligue a escoger terminaciones es conflictivo.
The structure of this sentence has two main parts:
The main clause. Here, [something] can be a noun, but also a subordinate clause:
"Y es que [something] es conflictivo".
"And it's just that [something] is troubling."The subordinate clause used to fill [something]:
"que la lengua obligue a escoger terminaciones"
"that the language forces you to pick terminations".
The problem (or is it?) is that, when you put them together, you end up with two "que" in a row:
"Y es que que la lengua obligue a escoger terminaciones es conflictivo"
"And it's just that that the language forces you to pick terminations is troubling".
Sure, there're ways to avoid this (mostly the same that in English):
Drop the "Y es que" introduction:
"Que la lengua obligue a escoger terminaciones es conflictivo."
"That the language forces you to pick terminations is troubling".Introduce an auxiliary noun in between:
"Y es que el hecho de que la lengua te obligue a escoger terminaciones es conflictivo."
"And it's just that the fact that the language forces you to pick terminations is troubling."Break the sentence into two conjoined ones:
"Y es que la lengua te obliga a escoger terminaciones y eso es conflictivo."
"And it's just that the language forces you to pick terminations and that is troubling."Use a comma, maybe (seems a bit forced though):
"Y es que, que la lengua te obligue a escoger terminaciones, es conflictivo."
"And it's just that, that the language forces you to pick terminations, is troubling."
Just fusing the two "que" together seems wrong to me in Spanish, however, since that breaks the subordinate clause:
Ⓧ "Y es que la lengua te obligue a escoger terminaciones es conflictivo."
"And it's just that the language forces you to pick terminations is troubling."
Now, I've come across similar sentences a lot of times, and I had to write them, too. Sometimes I resort to some of the "solutions" above, but some other times I write the two "que" because I don't really think it is grammatically wrong.
So my question is: is using two "que" in a row correct here, where the main sentence already has one "que" introducing a subordinate clause that just happens to start with a second "que"?
Or, to be more specific: is there any RAE source that states whether this use of two "que" in a row is correct or incorrect?
Related: Two que's in a single sentence which asks about using "que" in a weird way to replace a noun, and Is this a stutter? where the second "qué" is quoting a previous question, not introducing a subordinate. These are different cases; also, none of them cite official RAE sources.