Barcelona City

Known around the world as Spanish, it is the official language of the country as it is stipulated in the Article 3 of the Spanish Constitution. All Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it.
Castillian is also spoken in many countries around the globe which where former colonies of Spain, most of them in Central and South America (except Brazil and the Guyanas), but not exclusively, and that is a fact that many people are not aware of. Equatorial Guinea, the former Spanish territory of Sahara, and parts of the Philippines still speak in Spanish.

Spanish, or Castillian, is then the official and cultural language of some 350 million people. Of these, nearly 300 million speak it as their mother tongue. These figures make the official language of the Spanish State, the most widely spoken Romance language, an expressive instrument of a community which embraces around the world and which is spoken by people of many different ethnic backgrounds.

The name of Castillian, and later on Spanish, really emerges from the Reconquest of Spain from the Moors by the Christians and it became the bridge of communication between the different peoples of the peninsula. It was used in the castles from which it received its name. Castillian was declared the official language of Spain by Philip V in 1714. Spanish became the name frequently used by the linguists and authors of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Spanish Royal Academy preferred to use Castillian until the 1925 edition of its Dictionary, when it adopted the name of Spanish. The Real Academia Española (The Royal Spanish Academy) located in Madrid, is entrusted with "purifying, clarifying and giving splendor" to the language, in close contact with other Latin American academies, and mitigating the problems arising from the use of a language spoken in such a large geographic expanse. Its members are recruited from among the most prestigious literary creators and erudites.