The Spanish-speaking world

Spanish is the everyday language of Spain, of most of Latin America, of Equatorial Guinea and of millions of people in the United States. It is one language, and it is lived in very different ways.

This atlas is organised by cultural areas rather than by flags: a custom belongs to the places where it is actually practised, which is sometimes one city, sometimes two countries on either side of a river, and sometimes the whole Spanish-speaking world.

Pick a place: its history and its culture, together.

Places

  • Spain — Spain is not one thing. Its constitution names Castilian as the language of the State and then, in the next line, makes the other Spanish languages official in their own regions: Catalan, Valencian…
  • Mexico — Mexico has more Spanish speakers than any other country, and the accent of its capital is the one half of Latin America learned from films and dubbing. Its Spanish is softened by diminutives and by…
  • The Spanish Caribbean — Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico share a sea, a fast and friendly Spanish, and a vocabulary inherited from the Taíno, the first people the Spanish met in America: canoa, hamaca, huracán…
  • Central America — Six small countries between Mexico and Colombia, built around the same square: church on one side, town hall on another, shops and a café on the other two, and everybody knows to meet there without…
  • Colombia — Colombia runs from the Caribbean coast up into the Andes, and its Spanish and its music change with the altitude. The coast gave the continent cumbia and vallenato, and Barranquilla stops for four…
  • Peru — Peru climbs from a cold sea through desert to the Andes and down into the jungle, and each level has its own larder: four thousand kinds of potato, three chillies with names, fish that must be eaten…
  • Chile — Chile is a long, thin country with its own words for everything: palta for avocado, volantín for a kite, marraqueta and hallulla for two kinds of bread that families argue over. Its evening meal is…
  • Río de la Plata — Argentina and Uruguay face each other across the River Plate and share more than they admit: the mate passed round a circle, the Sunday asado with wood and coarse salt, the tango that UNESCO lists…
  • The whole Spanish-speaking world — Some things are not Spanish or Mexican or Argentine but simply Spanish-speaking: the choice between tú, usted and vos, the elastic hour of an invitation, two surnames on every form. The Instituto…