Spanish is one of the world’s major languages, spoken by approximately 500 million people (about 400 million native speakers and 100 million non-native speakers) • the second most natively spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese, • and the third most spoken language by total number of speakers (after Chinese and English).
Spanish is official language in 20 countries. From all countries with a majority of Spanish speakers, only Spain and Equatorial Guinea are outside the Americas. In Latin America, Spanish is the official language in: Argentina, Bolivia (co-official with Quechua and Aymara), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní), Peru (co-official with Quechua and, in some regions, Aymara), Puerto Rico (co-official with English), Uruguay and Venezuela.
Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. It is also one of the official languages of the European Union.