How the Spanish language survived in these islands

How the Spanish language survived in these islands | Daily Tribune

Once the dominant language in these islands, the Spanish language, indeed, has a deep imprint and complex presence in our history and culture and is a fabric of our identity that cannot be ignored. This is evidenced by about 5,000 Spanish loan words that are embedded in Tagalog or Filipino, linguistic assimilations and overlaps that we often gloss over. And even after the Spanish colonial rule had ended and the Americans took over the Philippines, a significant Spanish was still widely spoken, this includes the Spanish creole Chavacano that still thrives in Zamboanga City and Cavite.

We should remember that it was only in 1987 that Spanish was officially abolished from the Philippine curriculum when the then Department of Education, Culture, and Sports (DECS) issued a memorandum removing it as a required subject in schools. This decision reflected the country’s shift towards promoting Filipino as the national language and acknowledging English as the primary medium of instruction. As stated in Department Order No. 46, series of 1987, “Spanish and Arabic shall be promoted on a voluntary and optional basis.” This moment has obviously spelled the further decline of Spanish speaking Filipinos or fluent to some degree but the language has persisted despite this.

To underscore the value of this book, professor Carlos Madrid of the University of Guam and also former director of Instituto Cervantes de Manila notes that it is a critical examination of the Spanish language and the Hispanic culture in the Philippines… and is published to commemorate the centennial of the Academia Flipina de la Lengua Española, providing a timely opportunity to reflect on the long and complex history of the Spanish language in the Philippines.

More than a history book, Vibal has this chronicle as a love letter to the Spanish language: His immersive experience in the language and the culture. As Vibal describes, this book is an eyewitness account of a living culture, something that he personally experienced in the 1960s and 1970s and continues to celebrate. In his introduction of the book, he recalled his interesting initiation to the language during his nascent years leading to his academic pursuits in Spain and and later on, living in the Iberian country that fully shaped the Hispanista in him. All these encounters and intimacies with the Spanish culture were the impetus in him writing this book.

Vibal is the executive director of Vibal Foundation and is a scion of a family long-established in the Philippine book publishing and commercial printing industry.

Obviously, Vibal’s heroic tasks and aims have been successful. Where the book hits its stride is the fact that it is ultimately a well researched book and historically dense with unquestionable academic awareness with a profusion of insightful details that parse through a region of our cultural memory not so often critically examined.

While Vibal has broadly written El Español en Filipinas to explore the changes undergone that Spanish language has gone through in the postcolonial Philippines, it has its historical and contextual specificity. He particularly focuses on what became of the language after the rupture with Spain in 1898, specifically the 1924 onwards. At its core, he examined “ the evolution of Hispano-Filipino culture from the late nineteenth century and the Philippine Revolution through the Spanish Civil War, and the devastation of World War II that impacted Spanish- speaking communities. These historical events transformed Spanish from the dominant language of the late nineteenth-century ilustrados, early nationalists, and the clase directora (ruling century class) into a minority language.”

As the efforts to retain the use of the Spanish had been tumultuous and fraught after the Spanish had given up control of the Philippines, Vibal underscores, however, that he approached these historical circumstances not with a lingering sense of postcolonial nostalgia. He instead assessed current conditions to honestly address the role and future of the Spanish language and Hispano-Filipino culture in the twenty-first century.

To achieve this goal and to anchor the historicization of the Spanish language’s survival in the postcolonial setting, he turns to the microhistory of the Academia Filipina de la Lengua Española, within a broader socio-political and economic context. This is an institution founded in 1924 in Manila, whose work is dedicated to the study, promotion, and preservation of the Spanish language in the country.

He also turns the work of numerous literary scholars, including Wystan de la Peña, Isaac Donoso, Andrea Gallo, Beatriz Álvarez Tardío, Rocío Ortuño Casanova, Irene Villaescusa-Illán, and many others have conducted in-depth analyses of the content and context of this literary period.

Moreover, Vibal again makes a thoughtful and intentional consideration: instead of just limiting his recording of the vibrant literary culture of this particular period, he also focused on the performing arts during a time when Spanish-language theatrical performances, radio shows, musical concerts, and public oratory. This inflection through the combined examination of literary and performing arts has allowed the author to distill the realities that confronted the Spanish language in the complex and intriguing era with. This is while exploring the remarkable insights and challenges faced by the Academia Filipina de la Lengua Española within the context of Philippine history and culture.

As Prof. Madrid further said: “ While language served as a tool for the colonizer to articulate control and assert dominance in any society subjected to colonial rule.” Revisiting the presence of the Hispanic language and it largely shaped this nation’s history and culture allows us to make sense of these pivotal events and reflect on who we are today.

It reads as a valuable resource and is a triumphant literature and an essential read for those interested in Spanish history in the Philippines in the lens of linguistic frames. It is recommended not just for those interested in linguistics and global language conservation but for everyone.