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The Languages of Spain
These days it's true that you can go to Spain without learning the language. A sizeable chunk of the Spanish tourism industry is reliant on English speaking visitors, with some 14 million Britons heading south to the sunny shores for their holidays. This combined with 750,000 Brits living there permanently means that English is very widely spoken. Most people would think that if you're heading to a side of Spain where British tourists don't tend to dominate, then you'd have to learn Spanish to get by. However, you will probably be mistaken. While Spanish, sometimes known as Castillan, is the language of trade, government, and for the majority of the Spanish population, there are a number of other languages in that are prevalent in Spain aside from it, especially towards the north and western borders. Here's a quick guide to four other official languages in Spain, beginning with the most popularly used.
Catalan
In a country of some 40 million inhabitants, around nine million people can speak Catalan, and it is recognised as one of the country's official languages. Most of these people are within the autonomous community of Catalonia in the north east of the country, which includes the city of Barcelona, with its 3 million inhabitants. The language is also spoken in the Balearic Islands, and a dialect is spoken in the southern city of Valencia. Check out this quick YouTube Video for some commonly used Catalan phrases – you'll find them to be quite different from Castillan.
Galician
The third most popular language in Spain is Galician, with around 3 – 4 million speakers worldwide (500,000 of these are emigrants to South America and Europe). Its home is in the north western autonomous community of Galicia, where the cities of Santiago de Compostela and A Coruna are located. Galicia borders with Portugal to the south, and it is felt that the language has similarities to Portuguese.
Basque
The Basque region lies in northern Spain and south western France, across the Pyrenees region. Some of its indigenous population regard the region, which is an autonomous kingdom of Spain, as a separate country in itself. Certainly the language is very different from other languages spoken in Spain, and indeed Europe, as it is thought to be a language isolate, meaning that it has no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other living languages. This makes it very difficult for non native speakers to understand. Around 700,000 people use Basque as their first language, and it has just over a million total speakers.
Aranese
Aranese is recognised as a co-official language of Spain, but it has been considered to be endangered. It is spoken in Val d'Aran, in north western Catalonia, where about 90% of inhabitants can speak it and 65% can understand it. Out of a total population of some 7,000, that's certainly not a lot compared with the other official languages. It is a standardised form of the Pyrenean Gascon variety of Occitan language.
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