Welcome to Camino al español. You have chosen to learn a language spoken by an estimated 400 million people who live in Spain, Latin America and countries as far apart and diverse as the Philippines, Morocco and the United States of America. The diversity of the native speakers of Spanish means that there is not one ‘Spanish’ but many varieties. The unifying factors of the language, however, make it possible for Spanish speakers from all over the world to understand each other without difficulty. Spanish is the vehicle that connects them all. In Camino al español we present a variety of Spanish that is widely understood, while drawing attention to the principal differences between the main forms of Spain and Latin America (broadly termed as Castilian and non-Castilian Spanish).

Spanish belongs to the Latin family of languages, meaning it derives from Latin and shares similarities with related languages like French, Italian and Portuguese. Other languages that had an important influence on the development of Spanish were Greek and Arabic (a third of its vocabulary comes from Arabic).

The socio-political importance of the Spanish language in today's world is marked by factors such as the fast-growing Spanish-speaking population in the USA (some 30 million); Spain's democratic restoration as a model for countries surfacing from despotic regimes; and economic partnerships such as ALCA and Mercosur, which are vast free-trading areas in Central and South America, similar to the common market in the EU.