According to the annual report made by the Instituto Cervantes, more of 500 millions of people speak the Spanish language that, in addition to establishing itself as the third universal language, represented an increase in 30 percent in ten years.

The report, entitled “The Spanish: a living language. Report 2020 ”marked exactly that they are close to 585 millions of people who speak the language and it is even the third most used language on the Internet, behind Mandarin Chinese and English.

What 585 millions of people speak Spanish means that a total of 7,5 percent use it in the world. On the other hand, According to the report, the great growth in the last decade was due to the “vegetative growth of the population in Latin America and the demographic growth of the Hispanic community in the United States., which is twice that of the rest of the population of that country. 62 million americans (the 18,7% of the total population) they are of Hispanic origin ".

Another growth data is provided by foreign students, increasing by 60 percent according to the report directed by professor David Fernández Vítores.

Comparing with the report made in 2019, the numbers obtained by Cervantes indicate that they are around 489 millions of native Spanish speakers, reflecting an increase of 6 millions of people.

At the same time, Spanish is the second mother tongue by number of speakers after Mandarin Chinese and the third in a global count of users that appears behind only English and Mandarin Chinese.

Within the framework of the Internet, although it is the third language, on social networks and platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Wikipedia is the second most used.

Other data

The Cervantes report also revealed data on the economic aspect, since regarding the economic weight of Spanish, its speakers possess “a joint purchasing power of 9% of world GDP. It is also the second most relevant language in the language tourism sector ".

Finally, it is highlighted that the international presence "is on the rise" because it is "the second most important language in the international arena., the third language in the UN, the fourth in the European Union (You benefit from leaving the UK) and the most used in the American and Ibero-American integration organizations ".