‘Why do you speak Spanish?’

Colin Harding

The young German stared hard at me across the dinner table of our jungle lodge in the Tambopata region of Madre de Dios, south-eastern Peru.

“Why do you speak Spanish?” he demanded. 

I felt my hackles rising at the indignant, even accusatory undertone to his question.  Or was my British sense of propriety merely caught off-guard by his unfamiliar directness?

I was non-plussed: all I could think of in reply was a defensive “it’s not illegal, is it?”

The German was one of a group of tourists visiting Peru for the first time, whom I had just met that evening. We were now all gathered for our evening meal, and I had been talking to our local guide, who was sitting next to the German. It did not seem to have occurred to the latter, nor to any of his party, that a few words of Spanish might be useful in a country in which it is the main official language. I presumably appeared to them to be an English eccentric, indulging a rather tiresome affectation. It was natural that he and his companions would address me in English, of course, but Spanish …?

This was in 2019, and it was by no means the first time I had been challenged on my interest in the Spanish language, and not just by young Germans. What use was it, after all?  No Spanish-speaking country was a significant player on the world stage, and if you went to one of those places you were bound to find that many of the locals spoke English, particularly in the big tourist spots. So why bother?

Although these assumptions are not necessarily true, it is perhaps worth thinking about how to answer that question. 

English is the international language these days, with much the same status that Latin enjoyed in the Middle Ages. However, even in monoglot England it is now widely recognised that some knowledge of foreign languages can be useful. Yet Mandarin, Russian and Arabic would appear to demand more urgent attention.

On the other hand, worldwide there are more native speakers of Spanish than English (496 million, according to the Instituto Cervantes, against perhaps 373 million native English-speakers).  Moreover, Spanish is fast growing as an international language, with almost 100 million non-native speakers, according to the Instituto. It is still far behind English as a second language and lingua franca at conferences, sporting events, etc, but this state of affairs is not necessarily permanent.

In addition, there are now about 42 million Spanish-speakers in the United States, accounting for more than 12% of the total population.  About half of all US college students are choosing to learn Spanish as a second language. By mid-century, if current trends continue, it is possible that one in three Americans will be speaking Spanish, very many of them bilingually. Although second- and third-generation immigrants to the US often no longer use the language of their forebears, Spanish has proved remarkably resistant to the melting pot ideal across the generations.  It is fiercely defended by many in the large US Latino communities as a badge of identity and cultural continuity.

I recall taking part in business discussions with a couple of Cuban-Americans in Miami a number of years ago, which were conducted in English and Spanish – they were both perfectly bilingual.  We later attended a meeting of the local Latin Chamber of Commerce (as it called itself) which was entirely in Spanish. I was told you would struggle to find anybody speaking English on the streets of Hialeah, a city of 220,000 in the Miami conurbation, where last year almost 90% of the inhabitants said they spoke Spanish.  The same applies to many parts of Los Angeles and other large US cities.

I found it natural that my initial interest in the Spanish language would lead me on to find out more about Latin America and the Caribbean, where most of the 33 countries (plus Puerto Rico, a US territory) are Spanish-speaking. I did a post-graduate course on Latin America at Oxford, and then, at the age of 24, went to work at a university in Lima. It was the start of a life-long fascination with everything about the region. 

I was not the only one to take an interest. Both Russia and China have been working hard to establish beachheads in Latin America in recent times. China sees the continent as an increasingly important source of vital raw materials, buying quantities of iron ore, oil and soya beans from Brazil, for example, and has been pouring money into mining and energy projects all over the continent. Venezuela has displaced Cuba as Russia’s most important trading and military ally in the region, buying billions of dollars worth of advanced weaponry over the past 20-odd years of Bolivarian government. Venezuela, along with Cuba and Nicaragua, can be relied upon to defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in international forums.

My journey with Spanish started at the age of 12, in my second year at a Liverpool grammar school (now a huge academy trust), where the clever boys were selected to study Latin and later Greek, while the also-rans could make do with Spanish as their second foreign language (after French, which was compulsory for everyone).

As it happens, I was happy enough to be passed over for the Latin set. My father had studied Spanish at the same school just after the First World War.  He had told me what an absorbing language it was, and how useful it would be in a city that had substantial fruit-importing links with Spain. I never followed that route in my subsequent career, but I did discover that I had an aptitude for the language, and later decided to study it, along with French, at university.

That was in the mid-1960s. Far more students are going down that road these days: Spanish is the fastest-growing foreign language taught in English schools, and now has more A-level students than any other. Spanish is, after all, beguiling both to speak and to listen to, and far more user-friendly than either Russian or Mandarin.  And the countries where it is spoken can get under your skin, for all sorts of reasons. Spain enjoys the mixed blessing of vast numbers of foreign tourists pouring in every year to enjoy the sun, sea and sand of the Costas.  Latin America’s exotic yet accessible charms draw in a consistent flow of westerners enjoying a break from their studies and their careers.

Latin Americans tend to take an idealistic view of their vaunted ‘continent of peace’ image – there was, after all, a brief border war between Peru and Ecuador as recently as 1995, and constant political changes mean there is an ever-shifting pattern of alliances and rivalries – but the ideal is not entirely devoid of content. Leaving Brazil to one side, their shared language plays a role in this, giving them a sense of a family of nations, and there is a good deal of continental solidarity on a range of issues, such as defence, climate change, and, of course, football.

Colin Harding is a journalist who has been writing about Latin America for more than 50 years.