HIBAPRESS – Rabat
The annual report of the Cervantes Institute places Morocco among the largest non-Spanish countries in terms of the number of Spanish speakers worldwide, with approximately 2 million people.
The aforementioned institute's report indicated that the number of Spanish speakers in Morocco is about 1.8 million people, including 136,892 native speakers and 1,751,733 from the "limited proficiency" category. The report added, according to the "El Independiente" website, that Morocco ranks fourth globally among non-Spanish-speaking countries in terms of the number of speakers of this language, confirming that the largest category of Spanish speakers in Morocco is concentrated in the southern regions of the Kingdom. The report clarified that the 2025 estimates indicate that the population of the Moroccan Sahara is 673,266 people, and that the percentage of Spanish speakers among them who are over fifty years old reaches 18 percent. The institute also maintained the 4.6 percent rate for Morocco in general to avoid breaking the statistical series, despite the age of some data. The report, according to the same source, pointed out that Spanish was historically present in Morocco, noting that there is an increasing demand to learn it in educational institutions and specialized institutes, which reflects the importance of the language as a tool for cultural exchange and communication with the Spanish-speaking world. The report also confirmed that Morocco includes six active branches of the Cervantes Institute distributed between Rabat, Casablanca, Tangier, Tetouan, Marrakech and Fez, which enhances the position of Spanish in the Kingdom and supports the continued growing interest in it among different segments of the population, without the Institute having established branches outside these cities.
