Spanish (Spanish: español, pronounced "Eh-span-yole"), also called Castilian, is a Romance language. It is the most spoken Romance language in the world. As of November 2015, over 360 million people in the world spoke Spanish as their first language.

Like the other Romance languages, the Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin, which here was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War, beginning in 210 BC. Several pre-Roman languages (also called Paleohispanic languages)—some distantly related to Latin as Indo-European languages, and some that are not related at all—were previously spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Proto-Basque, Iberian, Lusitanian, Celtiberian and Gallaecian.