Eduardo González
More than 1.6 million citizens of Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova, both within each country and in the diaspora, speak the Spanish language to a greater or lesser degree, according to a report by the Instituto Cervantes.
The report ‘Demolinguistics of Spanish in Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova’, presented this Monday, is the fourth volume of the collection ‘Spanish in Europe’, created by the Instituto Cervantes together with the Universities of Heidelberg (Germany) and Zurich with the objective of investigating and disseminating the presence of the Spanish language in different geographical areas of the European continent. The collection is directed by Óscar Loureda Lamas, from the University of Heidelberg, and Francisco Moreno Fernández, director of the Global Spanish Observatory. Previous volumes were dedicated to Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Portugal.
In this new volume, its authors (Cristina Bleorțu, Paul Buzilă, Ilinca Ilian, Alina Țiței-Avădanei, Óscar Loureda Lamas, Héctor Álvarez Mella, Angela Roșca and Dora Mancheva) offer a clear perspective on the social reality of the Spanish language in Romania , Bulgaria and Moldova, a region in which Cervantes has two centers (Bucharest and Sofia) and which is characterized, among other things, by its important migratory flows to Spanish-speaking countries, especially to Spain, which entails learning the Spanish as a foreign language and a greater relationship and openness between the different cultures involved.
According to the study, the number of potential users of Spanish residing in Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova amounts to 799,172 people, with a clearly asymmetric distribution: 610,000 speakers in Romania, almost 200,000 in Bulgaria and less than 10,000 in Moldova.
Furthermore, in Spanish-speaking countries (especially Spain) there are more than 820,000 citizens of these three countries with proficiency of the Spanish language, eighty percent of them from Romania. Therefore, if residents in their countries and migrants are added, the total number is 1,620,291 Romanians, Bulgarians and Moldovans with the ability to speak the Spanish language.
In the case of residents in Spanish-speaking countries, almost half of them have a native proficiency of Spanish. On the other hand, three out of four people fluent in Spanish and residing in their countries have limited competence in Spanish.
It follows that the vast majority of native Spanish speakers have a migratory background, since they are citizens residing in Spanish-speaking countries or citizens returning to these three countries after a migratory experience in Spain and Latin America.
Emigrants from Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova who reside in Spanish-speaking countries, especially Spain, represent 13.4% of the total diaspora. There are 366,171 people living in Spain from Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova who have achieved native proficiency in Spanish. The vast majority (84%) are Romanian citizens, half of whom were already born in Spanish territory. This is a group with relatively high socialization in Spanish compared to other immigrant groups. Furthermore, the most frequent Spanish speaker profile among residents in these three countries is that of the returned emigrant.
Instead, the report shows that the study of Spanish in these three countries takes place in educational frameworks that do not facilitate the training of competent users of the language. Learning Spanish in Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova is small: less than 50,000 people currently study Spanish.
In fact, Spanish occupies a rather marginal position in language teaching in Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova, especially in the initial stages of education. In the best of cases it is the fourth foreign language according to the number of registrations. It is far behind English, French, German and Russian.
The report was presented on Monday, at the Cervantes headquarters in Madrid, by the director of the Institute, Luis García Montero, and by representatives of the embassies of the three countries that are the protagonists of the book: Aleksey Andreev, ambassador of Bulgaria in Spain; Raluca Mihaila, from the Embassy of Romania, and Valeriu Ostafii, from the Embassy of Moldova.
