Spanish, the favorite language of Italian students

The learning of Spanish has spread enormously in Italywhere 850,000 are currently studying it children Compared to the few more than 25,000 who did so three decades ago, thanks to the impetus given by the Italian educational system and the work of the Instituto Cervantes, which has four branches in this country.

“Spanish has gained tremendous popularity and in Spain it is unknown to what extent there is a demand for learning our language”said Thursday the director of the Cervantes Institute of Rome, Ignacio Peyró, at the Villa Flaminia Institute in the Italian capital, where a collaboration agreement was signed between both institutions.

This agreement is “A symbol of a successful collaboration that we already have with many, we want to extend to universities and institutes”he explained at the end of an act in which the Spanish ambassador to Italy, Miguel Ángel Fernández-Palacio, also participated.

Villa Flaminia is one of the benchmarks for teaching Spanish in Rome, where nearly 500 of its 1,000 students already study it. And next year they will be even more, since it will begin to be given to primary school children.

María Ferrer, a Spanish teacher at the center, explains to EFE that “Spanish is much more booming” that when she arrived in Italy, more than 20 years ago, especially “in important schools like ours” because “It has been understood that with English alone it is no longer valid”.

The teacher teaches Spanish to high school students and also prepares them for the DELE, the official diploma of Spanish as a foreign language awarded by the Instituto Cervantes on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training of Spain and from which students can take the exam at from now on in Villa Flaminia itself, thanks to the agreement signed today.

Italy is the country in the world with the most registered candidates for the DELE exams, some 25,000 per year, according to data from the Instituto Cervantes, with more than 10,000 exams in Rome alone, to which must be added those of its other three locations in Italy. : Milan (north), Naples and Palermo (south).

Simoneta Regine, 17 years old, is one of the students who has passed the DELE: “I started studying Spanish 7 years ago”tells EFE, explaining that it is about “one of the most beautiful and wonderful languages ​​there is” and that also influenced his decision that “It is one of the most spoken in the world.”

He still does not know if he will focus his professional life towards something related to Spanish and, although his are “mathematical and scientific studies”he would like “do something related to languages”particularly Spanish because “Spain and Italy are getting closer”.

The director of the center, La Salle’s brother Salvatore Santoro, also speaks Spanish, because he studied in Madrid for three years, as he recalled at the ceremony in which dozens of children received the Spanish ambassador and the director with flags of Spain painted by themselves. of the Cervantes Institute.

“Villa Flaminia working hard on the internationality of the institution. We start with English” and then “We think of Spanish because it is a widely spoken language in the world and it can also help children, who are the future society”.

“For us it is important that they can not only experience the language, but also the culture and the people”which means “a very important baggage for his life”adds the director, for whom “The closeness between Spain and Italy culturally” has been “fundamental for these kids to decide on Spanish”.

The Italian educational system contemplates the study of Spanish in all its stages of compulsory education, in some professional training itineraries and in the university, and offers it in more than 5,000 educational centers.

(With information from EFE)