Facts and figures
The data presented here highlights key socio-economic information relating to both Spain and Latin America and goes some way to illustrate how this impacts upon career opportunities.
'Spanish is growing in economic importance in both Latin America and the US'.
David Graddol, English Next, 2006
'The sheer size of the Spanish-speaking population worldwide, the communications revolution and the emergence of a global economy mean there are more opportunities to use the language and more economic incentives'.
Dr Max Castro, University of Miami
In 2006, 429,293,261 people in the world speak Spanish (latest estimate).
It is predicted that there will be 530,000,000 Spanish speakers by 2050.
Spanish has roughly the same number of first language speakers as English and is growing.
The top five Spanish-speaking nations are Mexico (100 million), Colombia (44.5 million), Spain (44 million), Argentina (38.5 million) and the USA (38 million).
Spanish is the fourth most widely-used language on the internet and represents 8% of all internet users.
Spanish speaking countries represent 6% of the world GDP.
The total value of business between Spain and the UK is approximately £21.2 billion per annum.
The value of UK exports to the 19 Spanish-speaking nations of Latin America is approximately £1.9 billion.
Spain is the country most likely to be visited by British tourists – 16.5 million of us visit Spain each year.
In 2005, there were 34.5 million air journeys between the UK and Spain.