‘Welcome to the calentón’: no nation speaks and thinks in a single language

“Buenas tardes, California. Mi nombre es Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio…” The Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny’s performance last Sunday during the Super Bowl halftime show, a display of Hispanic pride and a reaffirmation of the Americas beyond borders and the Monroe Doctrine, has provoked enormous irritation in President Donald Trump and the entire MAGA movement for his use of Spanish and Boricua, the dialect of Puerto Rico. The ultraconservative Fox News network spoke of “culture clash” and “language barriers” for not singing in English. Until Trump’s second presidency, the U.S. did not have English as an official language. In real life, beyond the xenophobia, as is the case in almost every country in the world, the existence of different languages ​​enriches countries, it does not weaken them.

The idea that a strong state can only have one language began to take hold after the French Revolution and has become an obsession for right-wing groups around the world. From the 18th century onward, and with increasing intensity from the 19th century with the consolidation of some European states, national languages ​​gradually gained prominence, in some cases, such as in France, overwhelmingly. Historian Graham Robb dedicates a chapter of The Discovery of France, an essay on French society and history, to the languages ​​that disappeared in this country due to the efforts of Abbé Grégoire after the Revolution. He believed that “without a national language, there could be no nation” and took it upon himself, almost as a divine mission, to “exterminate the patois," the regional dialects.

In total, Robb estimates that 55 languages, dialects, and subdialects were once spoken in France. Many have been lost along the way. In 1977, Shuadit, or Judeo-Provençal, a dialect of Occitan, became extinct. It had survived centuries of persecution, but not globalization. In Italy, where it is said that Dante’s language didn’t take hold until the advent of public television, the small island of Burano is trying to keep alive Buranello, a dialect of Venetian, which is itself a dialect of Italian. On the island of Jersey, in the English Channel, residents want to preserve their local language, a variant of Anglo-Norman, which was once spoken throughout England and is now being swallowed up by English.

Abbé Grégoire—and Donald Trump—couldn’t be more wrong: a language doesn’t make a nation. Linguistic diversity is one of a country’s greatest assets because each language shapes a way of seeing and describing the world; each word holds its own history. Historian Eduardo Manzano Moreno explains this very well in España diversa (Diverse Spain): “No one single language has ever been spoken on the Iberian Peninsula throughout history.” “Compared to neighboring countries like France, Germany, or Italy, Spain has preserved a unique linguistic wealth that coexists with the global reach that has allowed Castilian Spanish to rub shoulders with other universal languages,” he continues.

Spanish has been part of the history of the United States since before its birth as a nation 250 years ago. “The United States cannot be understood without Spanish. This is an undeniable fact. Historically, it arrived in what is now North American territory before English did,” wrote Eduardo Lago in this newspaper in 2025 when Trump imposed English as the official language.

In addition, there are the 150 languages ​​spoken by the various Native American nations. During World War II, the Navajo language (Dine) was used as a code in the Pacific War because the Japanese were unable to decipher it. In the world of Westerns, so glorified by American ultranationalists, languages ​​from all over the world were spoken: Mandarin, Yiddish, Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish… all of which continue to be part of U.S. history. The Amish speak a dialect of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch: members of this community express themselves in this language at home, in Standard German at church, and in English at school. U.S. culture and daily life continue to flow seamlessly within this rich and diverse linguistic universe.

An exhibition at MUVI, an eclectic and entertaining museum in the small Spanish town of Villafranca de los Barros, showcased last summer the collection of Tintin expert Juan Manuel Manzano Sanfélix, which includes comic books about Hergé’s famous character in all the languages ​​into which they have been translated. There was a copy of The Black Island in Sephardic, (La izla preta), and in Romani, (Kali Ada). This fabulous collection of comics showcases one of the greatest riches of any society: its linguistic diversity.

Communication, as the 136 translations of Tintin demonstrate, goes far beyond the language in which one reads, writes, thinks, loves, or speaks. To detest the use of different languages ​​and dialects in a state means to have understood nothing of one’s own country’s history and, even worse, its future. You don’t need to speak Spanish or English to understand Bad Bunny: “Welcome to the calentón.”

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