30 things you should know about Spain and Spaniards
1. Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the world by native speakers, according to this. Behind Chinese and before English.
| Language | Approx. number of speakers |
|---|---|
| 1. Chinese | 1,197,000,000 |
| 2. Spanish | 414,000,000 |
| 3. English | 335,000,000 |
| 4. Hindi | 260,000,000 |
| 5. Arabic | 237,000,000 |
| 6. Portuguese | 203,000,000 |
| 7. Bengali | 193,000,000 |
| 8. Russian | 167,000,000 |
| 9. Japanese | 122,000,000 |
| 10. Javanese | 84,300,000 |
2. But no one really speaks Spanish in Spain. Spaniards speak Castellano, which is the same thing. But there are other 3 co-official languages: Catalan, Galician, Basque, and plenty of dialects.
3. Spanish has also many Arabic sounding words, since it was conquered by the Islamic Moorish armies for many years.
4. It’s said that Christopher Columbus was Italian, but he conquered the Indies under the orders of the Spanish Catholic Monarchs. Not that Spaniards are very proud of South America colonisation or marrying their princesses with other convenient Royal Families in Europe, but the Spanish Empire used to be known as “the empire on which the sun never sets”.
5. Despite that past, Spain didn’t officially participate in either the First or the Second World War.
6. But things got pretty bad for them too and Spain had a military dictatorship, that in fact, ideologically aligned with Germany and Italy during World War II. Franco ruled the country as a dictator until his death in 1975.
7. Spain is now a Constitutional Monarchy. The King is Felipe VI, the Queen is Letizia and the President of the Country… still to be decided (after a second election).
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