The King asserts that the Spanish language “is as much of a strategic asset as are natural resources”.

The language generates 16 per cent of GDP and 3.5 million jobs in Spain. Vargas Llosa urges speakers to care for the language because “without it our life would have been much poorer.” This Monday the King affirmed that “our language constitutes an immense cultural treasure, and also an extraordinary source of economic wealth” and added that “our language is as much of a strategic asset as are natural resources.”

King Philip made those statements at the closing meeting of a study called “The Economic Value of the Spanish Language,” underwritten by Fundación Telefónica, and according to which, our language generates 164,000 million Euros per year (16 per cent of GDP) and 3.5 million jobs. As the King explained, the Spanish language “is in very good health and has entered the 21st century strengthened” because “it has successfully overcome three great challenges: surviving the passage of time, extending its historical geographical limits, and maintaining its unity within great diversity.” In contrast to what happened with Latin, which diverged into different languages, “the Spanish language is characterized by its great unity,” affirmed the King.  A unity, he added, “within a diversity favored by the participation of the various Spanish-speaking countries in the determination of the norms that affect our common idiom.” The King also stated that due to the 567 million Spanish speakers all over the world (expected to rise to 750 million by 2050), the language “enjoys very good health” and he highlighted that this “raw material” is endowed with an undoubted virtue: “as it is used and shared more and more, it grows quantifiably and its economic value increases in measure.” 

The King also underscored the importance of Spanish to the “great digital revolution” in which we are immersed. “People communicate as never before in history” and “a very significant percentage of those messages are emitted in Spanish.”  As a consequence, he remarked, the Spanish language is not only “a sign of collective identity,” but also “a source of material wealth of the first order.” The proceedings were also graced by Nobel Prize winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, who recalled that “Spanish became in the Americas what the Incas dreamed Quechua would become, the language of general use.”

Read the complete article here: ABC Casa Real