First, gather a big army.....

According to this report on The Cervantes Institute's recent "Spanish Language Day", Spanish is now the second most spoken mother tongue in the world. Here's the league table:

1) Mandarin Chinese: 1213 million speakers
2) Spanish: 416.58 million speakers
3) English: 328 million speakers

The report goes on to note that away from the Spanish speaking countries of the world, there are now 24 countries where people grow up speaking Spanish as a mother tongue. This group accounts for 40.52 million people, with 36.305 million of those living in The USA. It's also estimated that by the year 2030, 7.5% of the world's population will be native speakers of Spanish.

So how's that ageing population and baby boomer thing going on up there, guys?

Volveré y seré millones