Article 3 of the Spanish Constitution states that Castilian is the official language of the State. All Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it.

Castilian, which is spoken in all the national territory, Equatorial Guinea, the former Spanish territory of Sahara, Central and South America (except Brazil and the Guyanas) and parts of the Philippines, is the official and cultural language of some 350 millon people the world over. Of these, nerly 300 million speak it as their mother tongue. These figures make the official language of the Spanish State the most widely spoken Romance language, an expressive instrument of a community which embraces two different worlds and which is spoken by people od different races.

Declared the official language of Spain by Philip V in 1714, it is usually known as Spanish, a name that was already used in the Middle Ages in Castile, and frequently by the grammarians and authors of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Spanish Royal Academy preferred to say Castilian until the 1925 edition of its Dictionary, when it adopted the name of Spanish. The Real Academia Española located in Madrid, is entrusted with "purifying, clarifying and giving splendour" to the language, in close contact with other Latin American academies, and mitigating the problems arising from the use of a language spoken in such a large geographic expanse. Its members are recruited from among the most prestigious literary creators and erudites.

If you need more information about the Real Academia Española, please write or call to:

REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA
Felipe IV, 4
28071 Madrid (Spain)
Phone: 34 - 1 - 420 1478
Fax:   34 - 1 - 420 0079

Thank-you, very much.