The Politics of Language in the Spanish-
Speaking World
‘Clare Mar-Molinero’s work is readable, informative and thought
provoking… {It} should be of interest to language educators and
planners, historians, and political scientists as well as to linguists,
Hispanists, and Latin Americanists of many stripes.’
Jonathan Holmquist, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA
‘A well-organised, readable account of complex and important
issues.’
Ralph Penny, Queen Mary and Westfield College, London
Spanish is now the third most widely spoken language in the world after English
and Chinese. This book traces how and why Spanish has arrived at this position,
examining its role in the diverse societies where it is spoken from Europe to the
Americas.
Providing a comprehensive survey of language issues in the Spanish-speaking
world, the book outlines the historical roots of the emergence of Spanish or
Castilian as the dominant language, analyses the situation of minority language
groups, and traces the role of Spanish and its colonial heritage in Latin America.
Throughout the book Clare Mar-Molinero asks probing questions such as:
How does language relate to power? What is its link with identity? What is the
role of language in nation-building? Who decides how language is taught?
Clare Mar-Molinero is head of Spanish Studies at Southampton University.
An experienced author, Clare Mar-Molinero’s previous publications include The
Spanish-Speaking World (Routledge) and the BBC course Paso Doble.
The Politics of Language
Series editors: Tony Crowley,
University of Manchester
Talbot J.Taylor,
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
In the lives of individuals and societies, language is a factor of

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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© 2000 Clare Mar-Molinero
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mar-Molinero, Clare, 1948–
The politics of language in the Spanish-speaking world/Clare Mar-Molinero.
p. cm.—(The politics of language)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Language and languages—Political aspects. 2. Spanish language—Political aspects.
3. Language and education. 4. Language planning. 5. Nationalism.
I. Title. II. Series.
P119.3.M36 2000
460.90904–dc21 99–058473
ISBN 0-203-44372-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-75196-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-15655-6 (pbk)
ISBN 0-415-15654-8 (hbk)

Spanish-speaking world
78
Spain: from dictatorship to the estado de las autonomías 78
Latin America: invisible nations 91
Conclusion 102
PART III Language and education, 104
6 Bilingual education, literacy and the role of language in
education systems
105
Bilingual education: assimilation or maintenance; exclusion or
empowerment?
106
Education systems and the politics of literacy 112
Conclusion 121
7 Latin American educational policies in the struggle for
linguistic rights
123
From bilingual to bicultural and intercultural 126
Enabling and empowering: radical adult literacy programmes
in Latin America
137
Conclusion 148
8 Politics, language and the Spanish education system 149
‘Igual que Franco pero al revés’? Catalan language education
policies
150
Bilingual education in the Basque autonomous community 160
Conclusion 165
PART IV Language politics in the new millennium: the outlook for
Spanish

of the complexities of the politics of language in the Spanish-speaking world!
Introduction
California decides to abandon its programme of bilingual education for children
of Spanish-speaking immigrants; the front-runners in the US presidential
campaign, George Bush jnr and Al Gore, seek to outdo each other with the use
of Spanish in their election speeches; the King of Spain opens the 1992
Olympics with a welcome in Catalan; Spanish-speaking Argentina is invited to
send representatives to the annual Welsh Eisteddfod; Granma, the newspaper of
the Cuban Communist Party, is published in English; the European Union agrees
not to abolish the ñ from its official documents. What all these events have in
common is that they represent in some way the inter-relationship between issues
of language and those of politics and society. All are taken from situations in
parts of the Spanish-speaking world; many more could be drawn from any other
speech community in any other part of the world.
This book is about the political role of language and languages, in particular in
the vast area of the Spanish-speaking world. This area is defined as those places
where Spanish is either an official language, as in Spain and many countries of
Latin America, or a language of a significant-sized speech community, as with
the case of the Latinos in the US.
1
Throughout I shall seek to answer a series of interconnecting questions
regarding the political role of language in society. These range from:
• How is language linked to power?
• What is its link with identity and, in particular, with national identity?
• What part does language play—consciously or unconsciously—in
nationbuilding?
• To what extent is language a tool in nationalists’ agendas?
through to the ensuing questions such as:
• How does language affect a community’s everyday life and behaviour?
• How is language taught and learnt?

states are frequently seen simply as ‘dialects’.
2
The Romance language
continuum is an excellent example of this, as we shall see in later chapters where
we explore the terminology used to describe, for example, Castilian or Catalan,
Galician or Portuguese.
The book has been divided into four parts which move from the broad issues of
identity and language to the specific outcomes of policies and educational
practices. Throughout, the discussion is illustrated by examples from the Spanish-
speaking world, as well as detailed case studies of specific countries. However,
the introductory chapter in the first three parts—i.e. Chapters 1, 4 and 6—serves
to set the theoretical framework for the themes of the section, and therefore
focuses very little on examples from the Spanish-speaking world.
Part I examines the important relationship between language and nationalism.
Chapter 1 synthesises the work of some of the major writers on the study of
nationalism, highlighting in particular the importance of the nationalist
x
movements in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Many of these
writers specifically discuss the role of language in nation-building and in the
construction of national identity. This will help form the basis from which to
explore this role in the Spanish-speaking world.
Chapter 2 traces the origins and spread of Spanish as the result of imperial and
colonialist designs, while Chapter 3 contrasts the dominance of Spanish with the
competing and conflicting speech communities coexisting with it.
Part I shows how nation-building in the Spanish-speaking world is indeed
closely related to attitudes to and the use of Spanish, or Castilian—even the issue
of what to call this language is relevant to the overall argument. This section will
focus somewhat predominantly on Spanish in the Iberian Peninsula, although by
no means exclusively. This is unavoidable given that it is the birthplace of the
Spanish language and because the political explanations for the later spread of

the Spanish-speaking world that has not yet been discussed but which is in fact
xi
an area where the Spanish-speaking population is increasing at a significant rate,
the case of the Spanish-speakers, or Latinos, in the US. Linked to this discussion,
although clearly having much in common with other Central American and
Caribbean countries, is Puerto Rico because of its special US status. In the case
of the US we will be particularly interested to observe the situation of Spanish
when, unusually, it is the minority, marginalised language of an underprivileged
community. In the case of Puerto Rico, of particular interest is the phenomenon
of the ‘returning migrant’, that circular condition of immigration and return that
Puerto Rico’s unusual relationship with the US has created. With improved high
technology travel and an increasing breaking down of national frontiers at the start
of the twenty-first century, the likelihood of more regular movements, including
returning immigrants, seems a real possibility across the world. The stresses and
challenges that this presents to people’s sense of identity may well become an
issue of far wider relevance than just the case of Puerto Ricans.
In Chapter 10, the concluding chapter, the role of language in society, and, in
particular, in the Spanish-speaking world, is examined in this post-modern world
of globalisation and high technology. Supra-national organisations may now be
challenging the traditional nation-state, and, with this, notions of national
identity. What will the role of Spanish in a supra-national Europe be? How does
Spanish as a world language stand alongside English and other major global
languages? Is there a ‘Latin American’ identity comparable to the emerging
‘European’ one? Is Spanish challenged in the places where it is spoken by other
competing supra-national lingusitic and ethnic groupings, such as a Quechua-
speaking community? Is there, in fact, any real meaning to the term ‘the Spanish-
speaking world’? These are questions we try to address in the concluding
chapter.
It is important to stress that the focus throughout is on the politics of language
and the way these operate in the Spanish-speaking world. Grillo (1989:7–21)

issues of definition when working in the area of the politics of language. Many
questions will be raised and I do not claim to answer them all.
Some readers may also feel that Spain looms disproportionally large in this
discussion of the Spanish-speaking world. It is certainly true that Spain is often
the focus, but I defend this on the grounds that Spain is still perceived in much of
the Spanish-speaking world as the madre patria, hated or loved though she may
be. It is hard, if not impossible, therefore, not to find Spain assuming a central
role in much of the explanation and contextualisation of the configuration of the
contemporary society, culture and politics of this Spanish-speaking world.
xiii
Part I
Spanish as national language
Conflict and hegemony
1
Language and nationalism
One of the principal reasons why language plays a part in the political life of
most societies derives from another defining aspect of language not mentioned in
the Introduction. Not only does language have an instrumental role as a means of
communication, it also has an extremely important symbolic role as marker of
identity. How else can we explain the fact that although humans communicate
through language, they have allowed the creation of endless barriers by
sustaining thousands of mutually incomprehensible modes of communication?
Why has one lingua franca not emerged as the only normal way that humankind
communicates? The answer must lie in an innate need and desire to protect
difference across groups and communities. In this way language is inextricably
bound up with defining this difference.
Such communities are described in many different ways—ethnic groups,
tribes, regions, nations, states, etc.—but, over the past two hundred years at least,
the most common unit into which the globe is divided is that of ‘nation’, ‘state’
or ‘nation-state’. The formation and construction of these is often the result or

a ‘nation’. However, it is in the level of importance attached to political
aspirations where the more modern concept of nationalism is relevant. This
political aspiration may often (but not always) involve the creation of a ‘state’.
For many commentators the modern state, and nationalist movements who help
create them, are the result of modernisation and industrialisation, with the loss of
the old order, the rise of capitalism, the introduction of vernacular languages and
the regionalisation of elites.
Gellner (1983) defines nationalism as ‘primarily a political principle, which
holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’ (1983:1), and
then goes on to say:
Two men are of the same nation if and only if they share the same culture,
where culture in turn means a system of ideas and signs and associations
and ways of behaving and communicating…A mere category of person
(say, occupant of a given territory, or speakers of a given language, for
example) becomes a nation if and when the members of the category
firmly recognize certain mutual rights and duties to each other in virtue of
their shared membership of it.
(Gellner, 1983:7)
Alter (1991) writes:
Nationalism exists whenever individuals feel they belong primarily in the
nation and whenever affective attachment and loyalty to that nation
override all other attachments and loyalties…Individuals perceive
themselves…as members of a particular nation [and] they identify with its
historical and cultural heritage and with the form of its political life.
(Smith, 1991:9)
Kedourie (3rd edn 1993) describes nationalism as a doctrine which,
LANGUAGE AND NATIONALISM 3
holds that humanity is naturally divided into nations, that nations are
known by certain characteristics which can be ascertained, and that
the only legitimate type of government is national self-government.

are many examples in the last two centuries of such attempts to construct national
identities at the expense of the weak or marginalised, not least in both Spain and
Latin America. This type of nationalism which sought to make the state
homogeneous with one set of national characteristics leads to the creation of the
nation-state, which is such a common phenomenon in the Western world, and
partly responsible for the emergence of many nationalist separatist movements in
the latter part of the twentieth century.
4 SPANISH AS NATIONAL LANGUAGE
Nationalism, then, can be said to be a feeling, a consciousness, an ideology,
forming a movement to harness these sentiments and to attain greater self-
determination or even independence. What emerges from the literature on the
subject, as can be seen in some of the quotations above, is that different
emphases exist in terms of the nature of these objectives. This difference is often
(somewhat crudely) divided into the categories of ‘political’ nationalism and
‘cultural’ nationalism (Alter, 1991; Fishman, 1972) or ‘subjective’ and
‘objective’ nationalism (Alter, 1991). The nation conceived of in political
nationalism is sometimes referred to as the ‘civic’ nation (which far more closely
resembles a ‘state’), whilst cultural nationalism is associated with an ‘ethnic’
nation. The former, too, fits better with the modern/instrumentalist view of
nation-building, whilst the ‘ethnic’ nation is seen as that community with roots in
a far-off historic past built on myths and shared memories. These binary
definitions of the nation and nationalism are inevitably over-simplified and in
fact many of their elements overlap, which has, rightly, led many to question
these dichotomies.
3
Nonetheless, these categories are commonly used and are
useful for observing the different goals and ideologies of diverse nationalist
movements.
Alter describing political/subjective nationalism explains how:
A process of domestic political transformation generated the nation as a

cultures, that characterised much of the nationalism associated with the
nineteenth century Romantic movement in literature, music, architecture, art, etc.
(Llobera, 1994:171–4). Romanticism stresses the exotic, the local, and nostalgia
for a glorious past which legitimises a community’s uniqueness in the present.
Whilst essentially a European movement, romanticism was also transported to
the Americas and plays an important part in a certain type of national awareness
in parts of Latin America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The
link between romanticism and indigenismo, which will be commented on in later
chapters, is one example of this.
The role of language in cultural nationalism has always been seen as central,
following the work of the father of cultural nationalism, the German Johann
Gottfried Herder. His work has certainly been of crucial importance in
understanding modern nationalism. Although Herder and his ideas on language are
mainly associated with cultural nationalism, as I will argue in the next section,
language is frequently as important in the construction of national identity to
movements of a political nationalist nature.
Language and national identity
Herder (1744–1803)
5
was writing at a time when a German state as such did not
exist, and from a position of a German angered by the low prestige of his
language, and its people (the Volk). His writings are therefore inspired by a sense
of patriotism and by frustration as a result of this denial. Nonetheless, it is
important to stress that, unlike many of Herder’s followers, he should not be seen
as xenophobic nor racist (at least in the modern sense). He disliked the French
and much of what they stood for, and he was proud of German and the German
people. But his writings stress the existence and importance of diversity. The
important point is that this diversity, in his view, should not be mixed, diluted
and devalued.
As Barnard explains:

ensuring the future for any one linguistic group.
In this way language embodies the living manifestation of historical
growth and the psychological matrix in which man’s awareness of his
distinctive social heritage is aroused and deepened. Those sharing a
particular historical tradition grounded in language Herder identifies with a
Volk or nationality, and it is in this essentially spiritual quality that he sees
the most natural and organic basis for political association.
(Barnard, 1969:57)
In Germany the most prominent contemporary writers of Herder who followed
his seminal ideas were Von Humboldt (1767–1835) and Fichte (1762–1814)
(Edwards, 1985), who, however, focused Herder’s theories in a far more
xenophobic, and specifically anti-French, way. Fichte’s claims for German
superiority based on the superiority of the German language and the purity of the
German race did not allow for the tolerance of diversity advocated in Herder’s
writings and can be seen to set the stage for more radical and politically-
disastrous sentiments of racism which culminated in Nazism. In other parts of
Europe Herder’s ideas were immediately influential, and, as we will see in later
chapters, his writings were central in nineteenth century Catalan nationalism.
LANGUAGE AND NATIONALISM 7
The role of language as a link with the past, thereby giving legitimacy and
authenticity to the sense of the nation, is a theme taken up by others, and is
especially important in the writings on language and nationalism of Joshua
Fishman, a particularly influential figure writing in this field in the twentieth
century (e.g. Fishman, 1972).
Other recent writers on nationalism also comment on the role of language in
nationalism. It is revealing to see how for so many of these writers language is an
important factor whose signficance must be mentioned and discussed. What is
interesting, though, is the often quite different role that language is given by
these commentators in the development of nationalism. We have seen how
Herder places language so utterly at the core of identity that we must categorise

experiences are more directly and formatively provided via the oral and
written literature in the vernacular that both anticipate and accompany
mass nationalism.
(Fishman, 1989:281–2)
This idea that vernacular literature has played a role in representing to national
communities their ‘linguistic differentiation and literary uniqueness’ (Fishman
1989:284, original italics) is one that is fully explored and expanded in Benedict
Anderson’s excellent book on nationalism Imagined Communities: Reflections
on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, which will be discussed below.
Another modern commentator on nationalism who explores the ideas of Herder,
and especially the importance of language to these, is Elie Kedourie. Kedourie
emphasises that when discussing linguistic nationalism, he does not see that a
distinction can be made (as some writers have done) between this and racial
nationalism. He argues that language and race are inextricably linked. Referring
to the legacy of Herder he states:
Originally the doctrine [of linguistic nationalism] emphasized language as
the test of nationality, because language was the outward sign of a group’s
peculiar identity and a significant means of ensuring its continuity. But a
nation’s language was peculiar to that nation only because such a nation
constituted a racial stock distinct from that of other nations.
(Kedourie, 1993:66)
Kedourie highlights the emphasis in Herder’s writings, and even more so that of
Fichte, of keeping the language ‘pure’ by preventing borrowings or other
influences from other languages. This notion of the total congruence between
people and their language has major implications, as Kedourie says:
Two conclusions may be drawn: first, that people who speak an original
language are nations, and second, that nations must speak an original
language.
(Kedourie, 1993:61)
Kedourie thus draws our attention to the political consequences of Herder’s

others realise that this deliberate use and manipulation of
language is even more overt and farreaching.
Hobsbawm (1990) writes:
Linguistic nationalism essentially requires control of a state or at least the
winning of official recognition for the language…Problems of power, status,
politics and ideology and not of communication or even culture lie at the
heart of the nationalism of language.
(Hobsbawm, 1990:110)
In stark contrast to the Herderian view of language and nationalism, Hobsbawm
believes:
Contrary to nationalist myth, a people’s language is not the basis of
national consciousness, but, in the phrase of Einar Haugen, a ‘cultural
artefact’.
(Hobsbawm, 1990:111)
Hobsbawm claims that the activities of Language Planning from standardisation
and codification to what he describes as ‘the virtual invention of new
[languages]’ (1990:111), with the revival of nearly-extinct languages or the
promotion and elaboration of selected dialects, create these constructed national
languages.
10 SPANISH AS NATIONAL LANGUAGE
Hobsbawm also argues that what he calls ‘dialect literature’ which was such
an important aspect of the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century, whilst
doing much to revive minority languages and bring them to the attention of their
communities, did not in fact create linguistic nationalism. He believes that:
Such languages or literatures could see themselves and be seen quite
consciously as supplementing rather than competing with some hegemonic
language of general culture and communication.
(Hobsbawm, 1990:111)
Many would argue with Hobsbawm’s use of the term ‘dialect’ here to describe,
for example, literature written in Catalan or Galician, Breton or Corsican. As we