Which countries speak Spanish? The full list of Spanish-speaking countries

Quick answer: Spanish is an official language in 20 countries: Spain, Equatorial Guinea and 18 countries in Latin America. With about 500 million native speakers, it is the world’s second most-spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese.

Spanish-speaking countries

The full list:

• Europe: Spain
• Africa: Equatorial Guinea
• North and Central America: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama
• Caribbean: Cuba, Dominican Republic (and Puerto Rico, a US territory)
• South America: Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay

The biggest Spanish-speaking country

Mexico has more than 120 million Spanish speakers, more than Spain and Colombia combined.

Spanish and Arabic

Spanish contains thousands of words of Arabic origin from al-Andalus, such as aceite (oil), azúcar (sugar) and ojalá (hopefully).

Spanish in the Americas

Spanish arrived in the Americas with Columbus in 1492 and spread through Spanish colonisation. Today about nine out of ten Spanish speakers live in the Americas. Each country has its own accent and words: a bus is a guagua in Cuba, a colectivo in Argentina and a camión in Mexico.

Al-Andalus

From 711 to 1492, much of the Iberian Peninsula was under Muslim rule, known as al-Andalus. Cities such as Córdoba, Seville and Granada became centres of learning, and buildings such as the Alhambra in Granada and the Great Mosque of Córdoba still stand. This long history explains the thousands of Arabic words in Spanish.

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