Spanish Language in The Philippines - Decline of The Spanish Language

Decline of The Spanish Language

The Spanish language flourished in the first two decades of the 20th century due to the partial freedom of the press and as an act of defiance against the new rulers. Spanish declined due to the imposition of English as the official language and medium of instruction in schools and universities. The American administration increasingly forced editorials and newspapers to switch to English, leaving Spanish in a marginal position, so that Enrique Zóbel de Ayala founded the Academia Filipina de la Lengua Española and the Premio Zóbel in 1924 to help maintain and develop the use of Spanish among the Filipino people.

The Americans propagated the Black Legend in Philippine history to the detriment of Spanish language and Hispanic culture. Neither did it help when some Filipino nationalists and nationalist historiographers during the American Colonial Period who took their liberal ideas from the writings of the 19th century Filipino Propaganda which portrayed Spain and all things Spanish as negative or evil. Therefore, Spanish as a language was demonized as a sad reminder of the past. These ideas gradually inculcated into the minds of the young generation of Filipinos (during and after the American administration) who used those history textbooks at school that tended to generalize all Spaniards as villains due to lack of emphasis on Filipino people of Spanish ancestry who were also against the local Spanish government and clergy and also fought and died for the sake of freedom during the 19th century revolts, during the Philippine Revolution, during the Philippine–American War and during World War II.

By the 1940s as children educated in English became adults, the Spanish language was starting to decline rapidly. Still, a very significant community of Filipino Spanish-speakers lived in the bigger cities, with a total population of roughly 300,000. However, with the destruction of Manila during the Japanese occupation in World War II, the heart of the Spanish language in the Philippines was dismantled. Many Spanish-speaking Filipino families perished during the massacre and bombing of the cities and municipalities between 1942 and 1945. At the end of the war, an estimated 1 million Filipinos lost their lives. Some of those Spanish-speakers who survived were forced to migrate in the later years.

After the war, Spanish became increasingly marginalized at an official level. As English and American-influenced pop culture increased, the use of Spanish in all aspects gradually declined. In 1962, when President Diosdado Macapagal decreed that the Philippines mark independence day on June 12 instead of July 4 which the country gained complete independence from the United States, it revealed a tendency to paint Spain as the villain and the United States as saviour, or the more benevolent colonial power. The Spanish language and Hispanic culture was demonized again. In 1973, Spanish briefly lost its status as an official language of the Philippines, was quickly redesignated as an official language, and finally did lose official status with the ratification of a subsequent constitution in 1987.