<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>Around 520 million people use Spanish as their native language, allowing it to surpass, for the first time in history, the figure of 500 million native speakers. In total, there are more than 630 million Spanish speakers worldwide, both native and potential, with an annual increase of 1.5 percent in the case of the latter.</strong></h4> These are some of the main conclusions of the Instituto Cervantes' yearbook "Spanish in the World 2025," presented this Tuesday at the institution's headquarters in Madrid. It includes updated information on the status of the Spanish language and Spanish culture around the world. “The Instituto Cervantes Yearbook helps us define strategies to promote the international projection of Spanish,” a language that, “at a complex time for dialogue,” remains “our best tool for diplomacy and cooperation,” declared the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, during the event. “Spanish is a language of culture and peace, which conveys democratic values. A language with a vocation for dialogue, with the capacity to unite us. It represents plural, mixed societies. It treasures accents that unite us,” he added. Specifically, the minister signs one of the chapters of the Yearbook, in which he explains the strategic importance of Spanish as a language of diplomatic and legal influence and reaffirms that the defense of both the Spanish language and Spain's co-official languages constitutes a state policy. This is the second Instituto Cervantes Yearbook produced by the Global Observatory of Spanish, an inter-ministerial research organization based in La Rioja and publicly presented in November 2024. Within the framework of the Strategic Project for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE) of the New Language Economy, led by the Instituto Cervantes and chaired by José Manuel Albares, the Observatory is responsible, among other tasks, for analyzing the current situation of the Spanish language. and of the co-official languages in the world, to foster the knowledge and prestige of the Hispanic language and cultures, and to promote the language as a driving force for economic growth. According to the Yearbook, approximately 635 million people speak Spanish worldwide, an increase of 30 million and five percent compared to the previous year alone. This figure includes the 520 million native speakers, who now exceed 500 million for the first time in history. “Spanish is one of the great international languages, after Mandarin Chinese and Hindi, and it has gained significant strength on the international horizon,” stated the director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero. There are 460 million native speakers in Spanish-speaking countries. Therefore, more than ten percent of native speakers reside in non-Spanish-speaking countries, demonstrating the importance of Spanish as a migratory language. “Outside of Hispanic countries, there are more than 127 million native speakers,” said the director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero. speakers, and a large percentage are concentrated in the United States, Brazil, and the European Union,” added García Montero. Since 2012, the increase in the number of native speakers has been 22 percent, but natural population growth has slowed, so the Yearbook estimates that the peak in the number of native speakers will be reached between the 1950s and 1970s. Furthermore, the report records 92 million Spanish users with limited proficiency and more than 24 million people learning the Spanish language. It also reveals that the number of language students has increased between 1.5 and 2 percent between 2024 and 2025 and estimates that, at this rate, “a figure of 100 million students could be reached before the end of the century.” There are 25 million people with limited proficiency in Spanish-speaking countries, and the largest numbers of Spanish students are found in the United States, Brazil, and some EU countries. In 2012, the number of non-native speakers increased by 79 percent, and the number of students learning the language as a foreign language increased by 36 percent. For his part, Álvaro García Santa-Cecilia, Academic Director of the Instituto Cervantes, said that "the articles in the yearbook show how the expansion of Spanish in the United States has been linked to the affirmation of a diverse Latino identity that seeks recognition and a voice in the public sphere." "Speaking Spanish becomes an act of cultural resistance and, at the same time, a form of civic participation." In the same vein, García Montero reminded Hispanics living in European countries or the United States who face a very harsh reality: "The Spanish they learned from their families is not valued in some of the societies in which they live, and they will end up losing it if we don't remedy it. This is the remedy sought by the work of the Instituto Cervantes in the face of a harsh reality that repeatedly attempts to interfere with the ever-increasing demand to learn Spanish as a foreign language."
