The Baltic countries have over 100,000 Spanish speakers, with usage “growing steadily” in the educational sphere

The Diplomat The number of potential Spanish users in the Baltic countries totals 129,843 people, 102,974 of whom reside in the region, while the rest live in Spanish-speaking countries. This latter figure represents 1.7 percent of the population, where learning the language is "growing steadily" in the educational sphere, according to data from the study "Demolinguistics of Spanish in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania." The Cervantes Institute presented the eighth volume of the "Spanish in Europe" collection this Tuesday at an event that included a speech by the institution's Secretary General, Carmen Noguero, and a debate moderated by Héctor Álvarez Mella, head of the department of the Global Observatory of Spanish and one of the publication's co-directors. Dámaso Izquierdo Alegría (Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Navarra), Ana León Manzanero (Latvian Academy of Culture), and Pilar Valero Fernández (Observatory of Spanish in Europe, Center for Ibero-American Studies at the University of Heidelberg), three of the book's authors, participated in the colloquium. Among the data detailed in the report, it reveals that 26,869 of the total number of Spanish speakers are Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian citizens living in a Spanish-speaking country. Within the Baltic countries, the distribution of the Spanish-speaking population is "fairly symmetrical": approximately 34,000 people live in Estonia; 31,000 in Latvia; and 37,000 in Lithuania. The educational opportunities for Spanish in the Baltic region are limited compared to other more established foreign languages such as English, Russian, German, or French. However, the profile of students of this language has grown "significantly," especially in the number of students learning it as a foreign language in primary education (largely due to the decline in Russian). More than 22,000 Spanish learners Currently, there are approximately 22,400 Spanish learners, with a greater presence in pre-university educational stages (the fifth most studied foreign language, after English, Russian, German, and French). For example, in Estonia, Spanish is becoming more established, surpassing French in this area. The Baltic countries are not priority destinations for Spanish-speaking migration, as less than one percent of foreigners residing in the region come from Spain or Latin America. The report, however, highlights that, despite these being "low figures" in the continental context, significant growth has been observed in the last ten years. Demolinguistics of Spanish in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania is the eighth volume in the "Spanish in Europe" collection, a research project of the Center for Ibero-American Studies at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Zurich, published by the Cervantes Institute. This report focuses on the state of the Spanish language in the Baltic countries, joining previous editions that analyzed Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova, Italy, southeastern Europe, and central Europe. These reports, which contribute to decision-making in the institutional and educational spheres, reveal that in Europe, excluding Spain, there are already nearly 42 million people who speak Spanish (either as migrants or as a foreign language), a figure close to the population of Spain.

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