Luis Garcia Montero says Trump overlooks 60 million Hispanic residents
luis garcia montero said Donald Trump overlooks 60 million U.S. residents of Hispanic origin and more than 40 million people who speak Spanish as their mother tongue. The director of the Instituto Cervantes made the remarks after Trump called Spanish “su maldito idioma” and said he had no intention of learning it.
Trump’s Miami remarks
Trump made the comments in March at the Escudo de las Américas summit in Miami. He said he did not have time to learn Spanish and preferred to use interpreters, while also saying Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a linguistic advantage because he speaks Spanish.
The exchange put a language dispute into direct political terms. Trump’s remark was aimed at Spanish itself, and García Montero answered with numbers that describe the size of the audience affected inside the United States.
García Montero’s response
“Cuando hablamos en el Instituto sobre la animadversión de Trump al español, al que llama "maldito idioma", señalamos que pareciera que es un insulto a los mexicanos o a los latinoamericanos que llegan allí, o a España, pero se olvida de que hay 60 millones de norteamericanos de origen hispano y más de 40 tienen el español como lengua materna. O sea que no es un problema que tenga solo con el exterior,” García Montero said during an interview for Día del Libro.
He also said, “Quien intenta generar estrategias de odio no solo genera miedo, sino que diluye la esperanza.” In the same interview, he warned, “Un miedo sin esperanza te condena a la destrucción, al odio, al rencor... a pensar que los demás deben ser exterminados porque es lo único que asegura tu propio futuro.”
Instituto Cervantes and Spanish
García Montero identified Trump’s issue as broader than a dispute with people outside the United States. He linked it to millions of Americans with Hispanic origins and to a large Spanish-speaking population that includes more than 40 million people whose mother tongue is Spanish.
The comments place the argument inside the work of the Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish language institution García Montero leads. They also frame the disagreement as one over language and identity, with Trump’s remarks and García Montero’s reply now defined by the size of the population he cited.
