Last Thursday the Cervantes Institute presented «Anuario 2020: El español en el mundo» (Yearbook 2020: Spanish language around the world.

The amount of Spanish speakers has risen 30% during the last decade and the number of foreigners who study it has increased by 60%, which translates for the first time in a total amount of 22 million students of Spanish around the world. These numbers are “very possitive,” and according to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Spain, Arancha González Laya, show that “Spanish is in good health.”

The numbers are overwhelming:  more than 585 million people speak Spanish, five million more than a year ago.  Almost 489 million (six million more than in 2019), are native Spanish-speakers.  Spanish is the second mother tongue by number of speakers after Mandarin Chinese and the third ranking language in global amount of users after English and Mandarin Chinese.

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