The most important legacy of Spain’s historical presence in the world is culture. And a special place must be given to its language.

To project a brand image we rely on communication, and any process of communication uses language as a basic tool. This was the thinking of the Spanish Government in 1991 when it created the Instituto Cervantes, modelled on the British Institute or the Goethe-Institut, which are strategic tools of their respective countries. The fundamental goal of the Instituto Cervantes is to spread knowledge and understanding of the Spanish language. It hosts educational and cultural dissemination activities for this purpose.

The Instituto Cervantes was created with a large heritage in mind: in 1984,it was estimated that over 253 million people,5.3% of the world’s population, spoke Spanish. What is more, according to the United Nations’ latest projections, fundamentally based on population growth, there will be 395.3 million Spanish speakers by 2010 (5.8% of the world’s population). These figures come to 537.6 million and 6.0 of the global population by 2050.

It is important to stress the following: needless to say, in all countries where the official language is Spanish, most of the population speaks Spanish (94.6%), but in countries in which English is spoken, only 27.6% of inhabitants have this language as an official language, and in the case of French, the percentage only amounts to 34.6%. And if we also consider the emigration recorded in Spanish-speakers in the Americas, the scene is set for phenomena such as the growth in the Spanish speaking population in the US.

The Instituto Cervantes 2006 edition of its annual report “Spanish in the world”, points to the fact that growth in the demand for studies in Spanish and use of the language has been exponential. Spanish is spoken by over 23 million foreigners across Europe, around seven per cent of the population of the European Union. In France, Spanish is now the second most studied language, after English, while in Germany it comes third, after English and French.

In 2005, the Government of Brazil, where Portuguese is the official language, voted on a law whereby Spanish has become the second compulsory language in all schools.

The presence of Spanish books on the international scene not only promotes the language, but also their authors and the culture as a whole.

Traditionally, the Spanish publishing sector has high levels of exports: sales outside Spain account for over 25% of annual production. Spain is the fourth-ranking exporter worldwide.

Geographically speaking, 46% of the books exported go to Latin America, and 45% to the European Union (France, the UK and Portugal are the main buyers).We should also add that there has been constant growth in exports to the US in recent years.

The strong and numerous language community has helped Spanish to grow in other geographical areas – basically Europe and the US – and also fostered the expansion of works published in Spanish, disseminating Spanish culture and its authors.

As a result of the positive performance in recent years, the foreign trade balance of cultural products as a whole has been positive since 1995, despite the substantial negative balance reported by Spanish audiovisual products in their process of internationalisation.

Films are a special part of countries’ cultural output. Spanish cinema has a very important international presence, even though it is yet to have a major impact on the trade balance. This is the result of certain special and very significant cases such as Pedro Almodóvar, Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz, Alejandro Amenábar, and others. Cinema is a means of promoting the country’s image, given that if it is handled in the right way, it can produce a very substantial multiplier effect. The US has turned this into a fine art.