The whole Spanish-speaking world

El mundo hispanohablante

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 Cervantes counts almost 500 million native speakers in 2023 and lists 21 countries and territories where the language is at home, from Mexico to Equatorial Guinea.

And the map does not end there. The United States has more than 40 million people with native command of Spanish, and a Spanish that left Spain in 1492 is still spoken, by fewer each generation, among descendants of the Jews expelled that year. The topics here belong to the whole language, with notes on where each one bends.

History

History of The whole Spanish-speaking world: a timeline (31 moments of its history)

Start with

  • between 200 and 1000: Tiwanaku on Lake Titicaca — Near the southern shore of Lake Titicaca, at 3,850 metres, stood the highest city of the ancient world.
  • 12 October 1492: Columbus reaches America — Christopher Columbus, a sailor most historians agree came from Genoa, persuaded Isabel and Fernando to back a voyage west to Asia; the agreement was signed at…
  • 1545: Silver is found at Potosí — In 1545 an Indigenous man, Diego Huallpa, is said to have found silver on the Cerro Rico, a red mountain 4,000 metres up in the Andes of today's Bolivia.
  • 19 March 1812: The Constitution of Cádiz — While French armies held most of Spain, a parliament, the Cortes, met in besieged Cádiz, with deputies from Spain and from the American colonies.
  • 1898: The Disaster of '98 — Most of Spain's American empire had won independence in the 1810s and 1820s, but Cuba and Puerto Rico remained, along with the Philippines.
  • 16 December 1927–August 1936: The Generation of '27 and Lorca — From 16 to 18 December 1927 a group of young poets travelled from Madrid to Seville, invited by the bullfighter and writer Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, to honour…
  • 17 July 1936–1 April 1939: The Spanish Civil War — On 17 and 18 July 1936 part of the army, with General Francisco Franco among its leaders, rose against the Republic.
  • 2009–2011: One grammar and one spelling for 22 countries — At the end of the 20th century the academies changed their way of working.

Culture

Culture of The whole Spanish-speaking world

Festivals and celebrations

  • The twelve grapes — At midnight on 31 December the whole country watches one clock and eats one grape per chime. Twelve grapes in twelve seconds, and luck for the year.

Customs and etiquette

Identity and society

  • The two surnames — Everybody carries two surnames, one from each parent, and nobody changes their name on marrying. How a name is built, why Picasso is not Ruiz, and what to write in the second box.
  • Identity and society

Literature and storytelling

Places and landscapes

History

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