The 2015 Instituto Cervantes Yearbook provides relevant information about the international expansion of Spanish and its scope as a language of communication and culture:

• In 2015, nearly 470 million people spoke Spanish as their mother tongue.

• The group of potential users of Spanish (native domain, the group of limited competition and the group of foreign language learners) reaches almost 559 million.

• Spanish is the second native language in the world by number of speakers, after Mandarin Chinese.

• For demographic reasons, the percentage of world population that speaks Spanish as their native language continues to increase, while the proportion of speakers of Chinese and English descends. · 6.7% of the world population is already speaking Spanish, well above the percentages of Russian (2.2%), French (1.1%) and German (1.1%).

• The forecasts estimate that by 2030 Spanish speakers will constitute 7.5% of the world population and in 3 or 4 generations it will be 10%. 

• The latest edition of the Yearbook also includes important information on the position of the Spanish language in the field of communication par excellence in the XXI century: the Internet.

• Highlights include the following conclusions: · Spanish is the third most used on the Internet, after English and Chinese language, and it is the second most used language in the two main social networks, Facebook and Twitter.

Source: Instituto Cervantes Yearbook - January 2016