The pretty little village in Spain where locals don't speak Spanish

By John Varga, World News Reporter, Maria Ortega, Foreign Content Specialist

The village is close to the border with Portugal (Image: Google Maps)

Spain is famous for its regional dialects that are a distinctive part of the country's diverse identities and cultures. While Spanish is the official and most widely spoken language, there are many others.

These include co-official regional languages like Catalan, Valencian, Galician, and Basque. However, there is one unique language that is spoken by an overwhelming majority of people in three Spanish villages in the Extremadura region. A Fala is the main language in the small settlements of Valverde del Fresno, Eljas and San Martín de Trevejo.

San Martín de Trevejo is a small Spanish village (Image: Google Maps)

These three villages lie on the border between Spain and Portugal and have about 4,500 inhabitants in total.

In comparison with other European minority languages, A Fala is in a unique sociolinguistic situation due to a very high rate of its speakers in the population, estimated at up to 90%.

However, it is still a seriously endangered language because it is used in small communities that have intensive contact with the outside society.

A Fala is part of the Ibero-Romance subgroup of Romance languages. It is classified as an independent language, and not as a dialect. There are three main varieties of A Fala (Valverdeñu, Lagarteiru and Mañegu), corresponding to the three villages where they are spoken.

Nevertheless, they are easily intelligible, as there has always been interaction among their speakers, who appear to be proud of their own specific language variety and identity.

José Núñez Vázquez, mayor of Valverde del Fresno, highlighted how geography shaped this language: “The valley is closed off towards inland Spain, but its natural exit is Portugal. Interaction with the Portuguese was constant.”

Today, all three councils, together with the University of Extremadura and international experts, are working on a written standard to formalise A Fala.

The language was declared an Asset of Cultural Interest in 2000, but is not taught in any of the schools in the villages. Recently there have been individual school projects to support the presence of the language at school.