As you may have noticed, I keep referring to Castellano instead of Spanish. This is because I have been informed that I do not speak Spanish. I speak Castellano. Castellano is the language of Castilla, a central region of Spain, but since the Castillians took over everything a few hundred years ago, everyone in spain Speaks Castellano now. But not exclusively.

Castellano is the only official language for Spain as a whole, but in the various different territories there are various more languages that have official recognition as well (and some that aren’t official but are spoken nonetheless). In addition to Castillan the current Romance languages spoken are Catalan in Catalonia, Aranese in small parts of north-western Catalonia, and Galician which is spoken in Galicia (basically the midway point between Portugese and Castellano). And then there’s Euskera. The language of the Basque country (where I am). It’s not a Romance language and doesn’t resemble Castellano at all….. It is in fact the last remaining pre Indo-European language in existance.

If I may be pardoned for using wikipedia, there is a graphic which beautifully illustrates the languages spoken in the Iberian peninsula over the past 1000 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linguistic_map_Southwestern_Europe.gif