Why don’t Filipinos speak Spanish?

A Philippine flag in hand || Credit: Kurious-679098 via Pixabay

The Philippines were under Spanish rule for 300 years — over 10 generations; not too dissimilar to much of Latin America. Manila and Cebu were centres of colonial administration, and in fact, rolled up into the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

Why then are the Philippines not a Spanish speaking nation, unlike so many Latin American ones?

The answer lies in the amount of immigration, disease, and limited speakers when Independence came.

Fewer people emigrated from Spain to the Philippines. Reasons for this include:

• Distance. Prior to the Suez and Panama canals, Manila was 12,300 nautical miles away. This is in contrast to 3,800 nautical miles to Cuba or 8,900 nautical miles to Santiago (source: https://sea-distances.org/)
• Commercial opportunity. Gold, Silver and Salt were being extracted from Latin America — and these were also the greater centres of power. As such, those looking to make a fortune, or names for themselves would be attracted to this region
• First mover advantage and momentum. With greater established populations in the Americas, there was already momentum — many knew others on the other side of the pond, and life was probably closely resembling Europe than the Asian alternative

Disease did not wipe out large swathes of the population which would have otherwise increased the Spaniard to local ratio. Being part of the old world, Filipinos probably had a non-zero immunity to diseases like smallpox. In contrast, the Aztec and Inca civilizations were brought to their knees by the disease — let alone the smaller Ameri-Indian societies.

Finally, the Spanish language itself was never sufficiently established as a lingua franca. This was because:

• It was limited to the educated minority in the Philippines, and generally not taught to the masses
• Many Hispanophile loyalists were wiped out in the Philippine American war; decimating the already low number of speakers
• American occupation for the first 50 years of the 20th century saw a great expansion of the Philippine Public School system, thanks to the efforts of the US Military, and a group of colonisers called the Thomasites. The revamped system was now anchored in…