Spain recovers its positive image in Latin America

Comillas invited the Elcano Royal Institute to present its "11th wave of the Barómetro de la Imagen de España (BIE). Monographic study on Latin America", and provided relevant data on how our country is seen in Latin America in relation to elements such as tourism, historical influence, investment and immigration. According to Carmen González Enríquez, Elcano's principal researcher, "Spain has a positive image in Latin America, with a rating of 6.9 out of 10, similar to that given to France, Italy and the US, and below the 7.5 received by Germany, the country with the best image". In almost all cases, Latin Americans rate Spain better than their own country, with the exception of Mexico.

The Elcano report shows that the image of Spain in Latin America is more positive among people who consider themselves to be right-wing and also among those with a higher level of education, which is the same as the image of other European countries in the region. Even so, as Covadonga Meseguer, co-director of the Chair in Latin America at the university, says, "for young people Spain is less well known, and its historical weight is not very relevant. It is seen as an important and solvent investor, especially its multinationals in the financial sector".

One of the points addressed in the report is immigration. Spain appears as the third most attractive country for Latin American emigration, after Canada and the USA. Even so, according to Meseguer, "still a very significant percentage of Latin Americans, almost 40%, think that in Spain there are discriminatory attitudes towards them".

González Enríquez explained that the current data are better than at the beginning of the century (2003). "The results of this BIE show a complete recovery of Spain's image, which suffered, in Latin America as in the rest of the world, a deterioration as a result of the previous economic crisis," said the Elcano researcher.

The rest of the Barometer's indicators show that Spain's attractiveness as a tourist power is the most highly valued attribute in Latin America, where, in addition, Spanish infrastructures, its educational system, its economy, its technology and its cultural production are more highly valued than in Europe. In addition, the Barometer's results point to the southern cone's desire to facilitate the export of its products to Spain, emigration and development aid. On the historical side, the report notes that "Spanish historical influence in the area in the centuries when it was part of the Spanish empire decreases drastically as one moves down the age scale. Only 48% of the youngest people mention Spain as the country that most influenced the history of their country in those centuries, compared to 73% of those over 65 years of age". According to the researchers, "this seems to indicate that history teaching among children and adolescents in the region is devoting less and less attention to this historical period".