The nation’s best Spanish spellers from all over the nation flocked to Albuquerque over the weekend to compete in the national Spanish Spelling Bee. New Mexico has dominated the national competition every year since it began. But that is no coincidence, while the national event has only been going for 5 years the Gadsden Independent School District has been holding Spanish spelling bees for more than two decades.

Santa Teresa Middle School 8th grader Andres Arreola won this years competition, defending his 2014 title.

“I feel so good winning! It is something that you wish and wish for and then you know you got it. It feels so good!” Arreola says “It was like a magical moment”. 

It’s the fourth year in a row a student from the Gadsden Independent School District has won.

The national Spanish spelling bee actually got its start in Gadsden as a district wide competition. It then became the model for the New Mexico Association of Bilingual Education state competition, an organization David Briseño was working with at the time.

“I asked the question, why is there not a national event for that we can send our winners to so they can continue to compete” Briseño says. 

This was fifth annual national Spanish Spelling Bee at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque.

Briseño says stronger Spanish language in education has been long over due for sometime but says it has come a long way since he was in school during the 1970’s.

Briseno’s says though both his parents were native Spanish speakers he only spoke English in school and learned Spanish later in life.

“My parents went through that era where you were punished in school for speaking Spanish so they wanted to make sure that we weren’t being punished” Briseño says.

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