For those Spanish (and not only) folks, that want their national letters back after htmlentities :)

<?php
protected function _decodeAccented($encodedValue, $options = array()) {
    $options += array(
        'quote'     => ENT_NOQUOTES,
        'encoding'  => 'UTF-8',
    );
    return preg_replace_callback(
        '/&\w(acute|uml|tilde);/',
        create_function(
            '$m',
            'return html_entity_decode($m[0], ' . $options['quote'] . ', "' .
            $options['encoding'] . '");'
        ),
        $encodedValue
    );
}
?>