Puerto Rico Culture & Language

Spanish predominates in Puerto Rico's daily life, schools and politics, though English is official alongside it and the island is culturally part of Latin America. The faiths are more mixed than the Spanish past suggests: a 1998 poll found 38 per cent Catholic, 28 per cent Pentecostal and 18 per cent in independent churches, and the evangelical share has been rising since. The coquí, a thumbnail-sized frog whose two-note call is the sound of every Puerto Rican night, is the unofficial national symbol -- "soy de aquí, como el coquí" is how people say they belong.

The status question is the island's permanent conversation. Citizens since 1917 who cannot vote for president, self-governing since 1952 under a name that means one thing in Spanish and another in English, Puerto Ricans divide between statehood, the present arrangement and independence, and a visitor who asks will be told at length.

The music, the food and the Christmas season that runs to mid-January are where the Spanish, African and Taíno inheritances are most audible; Teatro Tapia in Old San Juan is the oldest stage for them. Maria is the newest shared experience: everyone on the island lived through the months without power, and the recovery is a civic story people tell with pride and anger in equal parts.

Spanish and English are both official languages of the government, and Spanish predominates: it is the language of the street, the school and the radio, and Puerto Rico is culturally part of Latin America. English is widely understood in San Juan, at the forts, the airport and the resorts, and less so in the mountain towns and on the small islands. A visitor with a few words of Spanish -- buenos días, por favor, gracias -- is met differently from one without, and the island's own word for itself, boricua, is worth knowing.