I’m very curious because there is big Latino and Italian diasporas in all of the USA but almost no Spanish stuff in Spain, so I would like to know if there is more stuff(as a Spanish Andalusian).
I’m very curious because there is big Latino and Italian diasporas in all of the USA but almost no Spanish stuff in Spain, so I would like to know if there is more stuff(as a Spanish Andalusian).
Comments
Very very little. It’s mostly Latino. Although, I do know there is a sizable Basque community in Eastern Wyoming.
There used to be a large Spanish community in NYC, around 14th Street, until about the 1980s. My family came to NYC from Spain in the 1920s and settled in that area which was referred to as Little Spain. There used to be a great Spanish supermarket we used to go to down there to buy our ham, chorizo, cheese and fresh churros called Casa Moneo. Unfortunately the community dwindled and the shop closed down. I’m not aware of any existing Spanish communities in NY.
The 2020 Census had 978,978 people self-identify as “Spaniard”; 50,966 people self-identify as “Spanish American”; and 866,356 self-identify as “Spanish”.
While visiting a friend in Boise, Idaho I learned there is a Basque community there.
Does not exist, California and Texas the most populace states Latinos are the majority ethnic group. Miami and New York are the only places in the us with a significant number of Spaniards.
Not big. Why would Spanish from Spain move to the US?
It’s probably easiest to come across Basque enclaves, like in the hills east of Bakersfield, California, and the desert areas of northern Nevada.
I’ve run across Spanish-Americans in central California, in the farm areas. I think there’s a little bit of a community up there. However, in that area the Portugese-Americans are much more numerous and prominent.
I’ve never met a resident who I knew born in Spain. Plenty of Latin Americans here in California though.
I haven’t met a single Spanish person here in the south. Wish I could. I’d tease y’all about the lisp.
Solo estoy bromeando 😁
Only people from Spain I’ve ever met have been tourists coming to our ski town in California, and not very many of them at that. Always threw me off for a second hearing them speak Spanish, having been surrounded by Latinos my whole life.
My friend’s neighbor was from Spain and we drank and smoked weed together a few times
I have known individuals who emmigrated from Spain, but the only “Spanish” communities I have encountered in the US were Basque.
There’s lots of small communities in the annexed Mexican lands, which still celebrate old Spanish catholic traditions, but you couldn’t tell them apart aside from that
There’s not really a Spanish community like that here. I know several people from Spain here in NYC, but they are just here because they wanted to see what it was like to live in in NYC for a while, the same way some people move to London or Berlin etc. They might work in Fashion or the arts. Some people come here and open restaurants.
I live in the most diverse area of all of america, I have met people from tons of countries and places I never heard of. I have met exactly one person from Spain, and she was here just to study and soon afterwards left.
My Spanish teacher in college was from Spain but I think that’s the only person I’ve ever met from there. There really is not a large community of people from Spain here. It’s mostly people from Latin America.
There are very few people in the US from Spain. But there are tons of people from countries heavily influenced by Spain.
In Texas, I’ve met one person from Spain in my entire life who lived here and wasn’t just visiting. She was my high school Spanish teacher, lol.
So, back in the colonial era, the Spanish came to the Americas and
rapedhad children with as many of the natives as they could, creating the people known as Hispanic/Latino. I’m guessing they don’t teach about that in Spanish history classes.There was a similar post recently. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/s/jX3h0Ixb3t
I remember the Spanish teacher at my middle school was from Spain. As far as I remember he was the only person who I knew who was from Spain. Although I’ve met and chatted with plenty of Spanish tourists
Much smaller than the Hispanic Diaspora.
The problem is most Spain descended folks came over years ago and are largely considered white. Look up Rich Rodriguez- he is a football coach of Spanish descent originally. His ancestors came over to work in coal mines in WV. If you hear him talk, however, he sounds like a standard white guy from West Virginia.
I don’t know of any modern day Spanish communities in the US. I know a lot of Cajuns/Creoles in Louisiana have a bit of Spanish ancestry because of when Louisiana was Spanish territory back in the latter half of the 18th century, but as far as I’m aware a lot of those Spanish families mixed with the French and became Francised, and then generations later became Americanized, so I dunno if any non-Latino Spanish culture still exists down there. I know that doesn’t really answer the question, but that’s the best that I have from my knowledge of US/North American history.
>I’m very curious because there is big Latino and Italian diasporas in all of the USA but almost no Spanish stuff in Spain
well no offense but you should look into Spanish colonial history to understand why that is.
mestizos are basically the closest thing to Spanish diaspora
I’ve know a few, some larger cities have communities, but it’s just people who’ve found each other. There aren’t enough to form Spanish neighborhoods or anything.
I had a girlfriend in the SF Bay Area whose mother was Mexican and father was Spanish. That’s the only Spanish person that I can recall that I’ve know.
No real Spanish communities here. You’re either Latino culture or in some cases Creole like in Louisiana.
Also I think in the US a lot of people think Spain and Mexico are basically the same in culture and people. But they are two completely different places and peoples.
Spanish expats are very rare
Pete Alonso and Keith Hernandez are of Spanish descent, Hernandez was nicknamed Mex because he was from California and believed by teammates to be Mexican but he was not.
Quite small. I do know a few Mexicans that have recent (non-colonial) Spanish ancestry living in Texas. So they’re Mexican Americans of Spanish ancestry by way of mexico. Does that count?
I have never met a Spanish American.
My husband is technically Spanish but both me and my husband are of Latino descent, just only that my grandfather-in-law happened to come to the Americas more recently.
My husband grew up with some specific Spanish dishes but beyond that none of the culture.
Outside my husband I have not knowingly come across any Spaniards. Other Europeans but hardly any Spaniards.
Pretty sure the Spanish diaspora happened on this continent before all the rest, lol. Now I’m gonna be stuffed down an internet rabbit hole the rest of the day seeing if there has ever been a time since the early colonial period with a large influx of Spanish or Portuguese immigrants.
From NY, the only people from Spain I ever met were tourists.
There’s a Basque community spread throughout the Mountain West in northern Nevada, Idaho and Wyoming.
There’s a unique ethnic group in New Mexico and Colorado, the Nuevomexicanos/Hispanos, who sometimes self-identity as “Spanish.” In reality, they have their own unique culture and have other ancestry besides Spanish, mostly indigenous from both New Mexico and from southern Mexico.
The Isleño people are a group with Canarian ancestry in Louisiana.
Puerto Rico received huge waves of immigration from Spain in the 19th century, and some people there still identify with Spain or even their specific region/community (Andalusia, Canarias, Valencia, etc.) (Not to mention that most Puerto Ricans living there before the 19th century also had Spanish ancestry.)
There are also small Spanish-American communities sprinkled around major cities, though Spanish emigrants usually preferred Latin American cities where they already spoke the language to US cities.
Why would Spaniards come to the US when there are so many Spanish-speaking countries?
I know exactly one person from Spain. I can find food from all over the world, but I cannot find authentic Spanish food. Papas bravas, tortilla Espanola, Jamon Iberico. Nothing. Not a damn thing.
So to answer you question, basically nothing.
The Spanish diaspora is small enough that most Americans would likely mistake you for someone from Latin America. To paraphrase a comedian, if you’re in California, they will think you’re Mexican. If you’re in New York, they will think you’re Puerto Rican. In Miami, they will think you’re Cuban…
I have never met a person who immigrated from Spain to the US.
I am Puerto Rican, and it could be argued that my family were Spanish subjects until the end Spanish-American war. But I know that’s not what you’re looking for.
Consider the dates though – the biggest period of Italian immigration was from the 1880’s until the 1920’s. In 1880, Spain still had a LOT of territory in the Americas. There would have been no reason for migration to the USA in that time.
There are small communities in rural New Mexico and Southern Colorado that have been there for centuries and speak a dialect of Spanish that would be hard to understand today. They were isolated enough that they retained the older language style. I’m not sure how many of them are left, and I’m sure the internet has changed them a lot. Lots of Asturians settled in West Virginia as miners.
St Bernard’s Parish in Louisiana is originally Spanish. But apart from LA and maybe Miami and New York, anyone you would find would have been here for long enough that they would no longer consider themselves Spanish.
Very few, and at least a few hundred thousand are New Mexico Hispaños whose Spanishness is likely to be subject to questioning by the Spanish of Spain.
Very little. Our Hispanic immigrants are almost exclusively from Central/South America and the Caribbean not Spain proper.
I have lived in a lot of places and I think only two times I have had much interaction with an actual Spaniard immigrant. One was a roommate for a bit and he was Galician but he moved east as a kid and he had a terrible sense of what constituted a “clean” kitchen. So I personally hold it against the city of Laredo.
Compared to the Latinos, it’s not noticeable. If there’s a Spanish name, most Americans will assume the person is Latino.
Not big. I have some Spanish ancestry, but I wouldn’t have even known about it if it hadn’t popped up in a dna test
There are dozens of us! As another commentator said, W 14th St in nyc was Little Spain and a the main focal point of Spanish immigration to the US from the 1800s onward.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Spain,_Manhattan
The Spanish Benevolent Society is still there, and there’s a Casa Galicia in Queens. But as a lot of other commentators have pointed out Spaniards as a group aren’t very noticeable in the US.
Northern New Mexico.
In Northern New Mexico, specially in the cities of Espanola and Santa Fe, as well as the small towns around them, exists a population that call themselves “Nuevo Mexicanos” or “Nuevo Hispanos”. They are descendants of Spaniards who settled there, and they are fiercely proud of their Spanish roots. They have passed on their language for generations and they practice a very old form of Catholicism. Other Hispanics/Latinos in the state blend Catholicism with Native American religion, Nuevo Hispanos have a more “pure” form of Catholicism.
They identify strongly with Spain and the Catholic religion. As Mexican American how do they differ from us? They tend to be middle class, more conservative, usually land owners, and have stronger ties to the state since they have been for so long. Another way for me to pick them out, are their last names, Mexican Americans we tend to have more “commoner” last names, like Hernandez and Gonzales, but Nuevo Hispanos have more “noble” last names like Cordoba, Jiron de Tejara, De la Vega, showcasing their old Spanish roots. For these reasons many to tend to look down on us Mexican Americans, who are seen as more wild Indians and poor/working class. They have a strict social hierarchy up there where last name and family origin are super important
Here is the thing tho, genetically speaking they are still very similar to us, they like us are a mix of indigenous and Spanish, the biggest differences would be they descend from Pueblo Indians, while we come from tribes in Mexico. So culturally this shows up as well, they have some traditional and foods from their Pueblo ancestors that we don’t. However they tend to reject their Indigenuos ancestry, or at best just ignore.
A lot of them look just like us normal Latinos, but there is some small rural towns where they do look like straight up Spaniards/Europeans, and you are like “oh yeah, I can see why they see themselves as different than us”. In the cities they have more of a Latino feel and vibe to them, likely due to intermarriage with Mexican Americans and Pueblo Indians, while in the more remote town they have preserved the European bloodline a bit more (tho they still carry indigenous blood)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanos_of_New_Mexico#Ancestry
But honestly from an outsider perspective, they just come off as regular Mexicans lmao
In CA, there is a Basque population in Bakersfield. My boss in northern CA is Basque.
I’m middle aged and have in major east coast population centers my whole life. I have met two people from Spain that migrated to the USA.
Almost non-existent. Most Spanish speakers in the US are from Latin America, not Spain directly.
Not significant at all. The Spaniards who determined they had to leave Spain for whatever reason had lots of places to go – the remnants of the Spanish Empire.
Minuscule.
It’s like the Mexican diaspora in the UK. It DOES exist, but it’s not very large.
I’ve met very few Spaniards that live in the US.
Until reading some of the comments in this thread, I’d have assumed it was nonexistent, that’s now small it is.
https://www.ine.es/dyngs/Prensa/en/PERE2024.htm
As far as actual statistics, the Spanish diaspora in the US is about 200,000 strong and there’s a sizable number more that have a Spanish parent or grandparent, which is relatively small compared to some other groups and they seem to be locationally decentralized.
Culturally, Spanish influence is massive. Florida, West Florida, and everything west of the Rio Grande used to be part of the Spanish empire and there were some major settlements under their rule like Saint Augustine, Santa Fe, and El Paso, and there was massive cultural exchange between the US and Spain directly and through the proxy of Mexico, which can be seen especially clearly in food and southwestern architecture.
Spanish Americans
Spanish diaspora
My brother-in-law is the only Spanish-born person I’ve ever met in the US, and he would consider himself Catalan, not Spanish. He’s since moved to Valencia along with his family. It’s a great excuse to visit them.
EDIT: I had a Spanish teacher in high school who came from Spain, and insisted on teaching us Castilian Spanish. That went over about how you’d expect in Texas; she wasn’t well liked and didn’t last more than a semester.
Not really that I’ve seen. There is a huge Portuguese population in New Jersey and Rhode Island/mass though
My husband is from Spain. We have loads of Spanish-speaking friends but they’re all from central and South America. He knows very few other Spaniards and none in our current city.
I don’t think there was a sizeable migration from Spain to the US in the mid 1800s-early 1900s when the ancestors of most non-British White Americans came.
I don’t think I’ve met anyone personally of Spaniard descent and the only famous Spaniard-American I can think of is Jerry Garcia.
Southern Colorado had Spanish ranchers who came here in the 1700s had a prominent and place in politics well into the 20th century. While in California they were run out. But one our senators who retired about ten years ago defended from the Spanish who gave Colorado it’s name.
José Andrés has minor celebrity status (at least around Washington DC and among people who do similar humanitarian work) and is known for being a Spanish chef. But he’s an individual. I don’t think the Spanish diaspora is really on most Americans’ minds or has much cultural presence. When we encounter the Spanish language, it’s usually spoken by someone from Latin America. And most people of Spanish heritage look/get considered white. I think the Spanish diaspora kind of gets overshadowed by one of those two other cultural identities.
Edit to add: also, I can’t even get into the politics of whether someone of Spanish heritage who lived in Latin America and then moved to the USA is still considered part of the Spanish diaspora. Or how many generations have to pass for that to change. You’d have to ask those communities.
Ah the “Hispanic Whites”
I know someone who is half Spanish, she was born in Venezuela and moved to the USA when she was 8. Also when I mean half Spanish, I think her dad was from Spain or something.
They are all over , very assimilated and were here before other Europeans.
Spanish and Portuguese descent diaspora in the United States usually integrate into the greater Latino community. And quickly fully integrate into American (English speaking ES) culture if they are not in a Latino area. Example I am Spanish/Portuguese decent (Great grandparents fathers side) my grandpa was integrated into local Latino community and my dad was able to code switch between Latino and ES American. I live in Northern New England and am fully integrated into ES American culture. Though I do speak 2 languages. Just not Spanish or Portuguese.